To keep from getting ripped-off when you purchase medical insurance make sure that you buy from a company that is approved by your state's insurance department, that has few complaints, is has the money to pay claims and that has will sell you a good contract.

The first and most important thing you should do before purchasing any medical insurance is to check with your state's insurance department to ascertain that the carrier is accepted to sell in your state.

Each insurance department will have different standards. You cannot stop with this step For this reason. However, you will eliminate the worst carriers from consideration by restricting the carriers you consider to companies that have been approved by your state's department of insurance.

The ratio of complaints a company receives to the number of plan holders is important. Your state's department of insurance should be able to help you. They may have this information..

To make sure that your insurance department's standards are good enough, you may want to check with AM Best to see how financially stable an insurance carrier is. You get a free report on their website that includes not only AM Best's opinion of an insurance carrier's current financial stability but also their opinion of of a company's future financial stability.

Determining how strong an insurance plan is can be more difficult than determining how strong the carrier is. Insurance carriers sometimes sell both good contracts and not so good ones. Another is the fact the insurance policies are inherently complex.

The percentage of contract holders who complain is a good indication of how good the insurance carrier's policies are. While some complaints are baseless, a carrier that has too many complaints is a carrier that either doesn't live up to their promises or that offers contracts that don't meet their contract holder's expectations.

However, since carriers that have a low level of complaints may sell both top notch and lousy policies, each contract will need to be looked at independently. Things to avoid are policies with low lifetime limits, annual limitations on benefits and that limit or don't pay for physician visits.

A policy's lifetime limit should be several million as a minimum unless you are certain you will be switching to another plan soon. If you are close to being eligible for Medicare a plan with a one million dollar limitation won't have much time to be ravaged by inflation. If you are younger, a million dollar limit may not be enough when you older.

Some policies have excellent lifetime caps, but limit what they will pay in a year. These contracts should be avoided. They won't pay all medical costs if you have a major accident or illness.

Contracts that pay in the hospital only are not recommended either. If you have significant expenses in the hospital you are all but certain to also have some very significant doctor bills either before or after your hospital stay. You may experience both.

To avoid being scammed when you purchase medical insurance buying from companies that pay their claims is important. Just as importance is getting a plan that meets certain standards. You will need to understand which policies limit their benefits and stay away from them if you want to avoid being ripped-off.