This is the age-old question. Does a better service necessarily give you better results? With health insurance figuring as such an important part of your life, it’s important that you make sure you’re getting the best service possible. Whether you’re looking into medical insurance or dental insurance, this guide is going to answer that question once and for all.
Quantity of Care not Quality of Care
One of the most important things to keep in mind is that insurers gauge their costs based on the quantity of care not the quality of care. If you have a problem with a tooth that requires five procedures instead of two, you’ll always pay more for the five procedures no matter how complex the two procedures were. You must understand that senior dental insurance policies are priced based on quantity only.
Better Health Insurance Can Still Have Bad Coordination
Now that we know how much quantity matters we can look into the coordination issue. A patient may visit many different departments prior to getting the treatment they need. And if specialists keep referring them to different healthcare professionals that ‘better’ health insurance plan can lead to you getting bad service and higher premiums all at the same time.
Good Insurance Doesn’t Protect Against Needless Hospital Admissions
Better health insurance doesn’t necessarily provide you with lower premiums and better service because of the number of needless hospital admissions in the US. Re-admission rates are high because hospitals only provide treatment, they don’t offer support for patients when they leave the hospital. That leads to more hospital admissions, higher premiums, and to make things worse many insurers will offer little to no support in this area.
What about Customer Service?
A better policy that offers more add-ons may not come with the level of support you’re looking for. You may be paying for more services, but that doesn’t mean the insurer is easy to deal with. It’s not uncommon to find that insurers will offer a poor level of customer service despite the fact that you’re getting more services and lower premiums. And that can be the most frustrating part of all.
Excess Care
You may want to investigate whether your ‘better’ insurance policy is actually giving you anything of value. It’s estimated that a third of all US dollars spent on healthcare is spent on ‘excessive care’. These are the tests and procedures that do extremely little to improve a person’s health.
Think about whether the add-ons you’re taking advantage of are actually giving you an improvement in service. It may be the case that your policy suffers from providing excessive care.
Last Word – How Do You Get the Best Policy?
The only way to get the best policy and to make sure you’re getting the service you deserve is to do your research. Read each clause of the policy and ensure that you’re not suffering from maintaining services you don’t actually need. Talk to the company and ask them for their recommendations, along with how much support they’ll provide you.
Are you happy with your insurance policy?