Health Insurance pays for medical expenses and is sometimes essential for covering disability and long term custodial care requirements.
These insurance policies can either be attained form a Government entity or a private company which can be purchased for a group or an individual where they pay the premium to get assured help in case of high or unexpected healthcare expenses in the future. When choosing these plans make sure that these features are well defines such as Coverage, Co-Payments, Coinsurance, Deductibles, Pre-existing conditions/scenario, and limitations on the devices, drugs and your access to the specialists.

Health Insurance plans vary in accordance with the company offering these policies. The basic types of Insurance plans are Employment Based, Direct Purchase, Government and State specific plans. Employment or Private Insurance is a plan provided by a person’s employer which is purchased from a private insurance company by the organization the person is working for.

Direct plans are coverage policies with different levels of coverage bought personally from a private insurance provider. There are varied coverage plans under the Government provided insurance plans which include Medicare, Medicaid and Military Health care. State specific policies cater to diverse sections like low cost family health insurance and low cost policy for the child and so on. Most plans provided by the Government or Private players cover doctors\' appointments, emergency room visits, hospital stays, and medications.
There are Managed Care Health insurance plans which provide services at a lower and affordable cost. There are basically three types of managed care policies- Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) where you get health benefits for a set free with no deductibles.

You get the option of choosing a doctor from the given list of prominent doctors who you basically call when you are not well and this doctor will refer to a specialist as and when required. Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) helps you get treatment from an approved group of providers. For this plan you normally pay copay which will help in satisfying the need of a deductible before you start receiving the benefits.
Point of Service (POS) acts as a hybrid of HMO and PPO. In this plan the care doctors will refer to other doctors who can help you but if you choose to consult a doctor outside the network of doctors provided in the list this plan will pay a specific amount of the bill.