Point of Service Health Insurance Plan: The Ins and Outs of POS Health Insurance Plan
In the course of our lives, there always comes a point of uncertainty, a moment of desperate need. The common wisdom tells us to prepare for those times so that when they come, we'll be sufficiently stout to brave them.
However, life continues to pull surprises for us, and some of these are of the unpleasant variety. For example, when we get sick, it is always a burden on the family particularly if we do not have sufficient savings for hospitalization and medication expenses. So is there a way that will prepare us for these dire times?
The answer of course is to provide for ourselves health insurance plans. In the U.S., there are three main options to choose from:
- Point of Service (POS)
- Health Maintenance Organization (HMO)
- Preferred Provider Organization (PPO)
Of these three types of health insurance service, the most preferred is the POS Health Insurance Plan. It is often considered as the one providing the best coverage and its rates starts at the lowest level as compared to the other two health insurance systems. The POS is ideal for those who prefer lower rates payments for insurance but without the downfall in service quality as commonly associated with low rates. The basic rationale behind POS is lower medical costs in exchange for limited options.
When a person enrolls in a point of service health insurance, you will be asked to select your own physician, in whose shoulders falls the responsibility of providing the owner of the plan. This physician must come from within the chosen health care network, and he becomes your “point of service.” It is from here that the plan takes its name.
Furthermore, the primary POS physician may make referrals to other physicians and health institutions outside the network, but when this is the case, only a limited compensation will be provided by the client’s health insurance company. Most clients express anxiety whenever they are made to choose their primary physician from a list provided especially if they have their own family doctor where they are most comfortable receiving medical attention from. But these anxieties are usually eased by the low cost of the plan.
For transactions within the preferred network, all documents will be processed by your parent health company. But if the transaction is done with other networks, the client will have to personally process the documents.
Advantages of Using POS Health Insurance Plan
The point of service health insurance plan offers many advantages, to wit:
POS afford you maximum freedom in choosing the types of care you can receive. This freedom of choice encourages a client to use service providers within the network, although it is not rigorously required.
In seeking medical treatment, there are some costs that the person has to shoulder by himself. In the POS, the costs paid out by the client are limited. Normally, the annual costs an individual pays is only about $2,400, while for families, it is about $4,000.
POS health insurance plan does not prevent you from seeking medical attention from outside the network. However, in doing so, a client must bear in mind that there may be some costs that he will shoulder if he sought medical attention from outside the network. Further, there need not be any notification to the primary care physician.
As long as you remain within the ambit of point of service health insurance plan network, there is no other deductible – that is, as long as you select to use network service providers.
Point of service health insurance plan boasts of minimal co-payment. This means that you only pay nominal amount for network care. Ordinarily, co-payment fee is only around $10 per treatment. However, a client can always seek medical care from outside the network at a lower level.