Out-of-Network Benefits Today, we feature the Out-of-Network Benefits video found at healthcarenavigation.com/videos. The out-of-network benefit is sought after but poorly understood. This results in many individuals having substantial out-of-pocket exposure they didn’t expect because out-of-network providers do not have a participation agreement with their insurer. Of the U.S. healthcare system’s many disappointments, the administration of the out-of-network benefit is one of the most egregious. Most of the difficulty stems from consumers thinking their coinsurance amount (the percentage the patient

The Product Your health insurance benefits are provided through an insurance company that offers various products (watch our video at healthcarenavigation.com/videos) with different parameters (referred to as “Plan design”), packaged in an annoying array of abbreviations which are unintelligible to most consumers. Was it always this way? No, this is a modern phenomenon associated with the evolution of health insurance. Health insurance is a vital protection but the existence of health insurance also drives up healthcare

As mentioned in our first Health Insurance Basics article, the deductible is the amount…

Our Story and More We are delighted to announce that the “Our Story” video explaining our services and history is now available at healthcarenavigation.com/videos. And now, on with the “Health Insurance Basics” series. Copayments and Coinsurance As mentioned in our first Health Insurance Basics article, the deductible is the amount the insured pays for covered services before the insurance company is obligated to pay. The out-of-pocket maximum (our last video in the Basics series)

The deductible is the annual amount you owe before your insurer pays …

Loss of Subsidized COBRA — A Special Enrollment Period?   A Special Enrollment Period allows someone to change healthcare coverage outside of a normal enrollment cycle. In the individual market, when the reforms of the Affordable Care Act took effect in 2014, if one elected COBRA (temporary extension of group coverage) they were locked into the COBRA coverage until the next annual open enrollment period or until the end of COBRA. We recently learned that several years later, states served by the

Avoid Medicare Enrollment Headaches! Hello, Enrolling in Medicare involves more steps than most people realize and the process has recently changed. Applying for Medicare A and/or B is done through Social Security. If an application for Medicare A and B is for someone who paid in to Social Security (not a spouse, ex-spouse, or deceased spouse) then an on-line process can be used for Medicare Part A and also for Part B (if applying for B around one’s 65th birthday). An on-line process rather