Catastrophic health insurance coverage reduces rates by covering major medical expenses at extremely affordable premiums.
Most large health insurers such as Blue Cross, Aetna, UnitedHealthCare, Cigna and Assurant offer this type of coverage for their individual and family plans.
Also, short-term temporary plans tend to feature catastrophic benefits instead of routine medical expenses.
Typically, catastrophic health insurance policies provide coverage for inpatient and outpatient hospital expenses, emergency room charges, anesthesia, X-rays and lab tests, surgical expenses and professional fees of doctors, surgeons and other medical providers.
Occasionally, preventive benefits will be provided.
However, most catastrophic plans do not pay for office visit and prescriptions.
Occasionally, limited office visit benefits may be covered, but a deductible will probably apply.
A "High Deductible Health Plan" (HDHP) is another form of catastrophic coverage.
An HDHP is an inexpensive health care plan that typically does not pay for the first several thousand dollars of medical expenses.
However, after those expenses have been paid (your deductible), the policy pays 80%-100% of remaining expenses.
HDHP plans are required if you are going to open up a Health Savings Account (HSA).
However, you are also able to take out an HDHP without using the HSA feature.
HSAs are affordable alternatives to traditional health care designed to use tax-deductible funds to pay for eligible medical, dental and vision expenses.
This type of account allows consumers to have more control over how they spend their health care dollars.
Rates also are lower than traditional medical insurance plans, allowing for additional funds to be deposited into the HSA Account.
Self-employed individuals and families often purchase HSAs to reduce costs and take advantage of the tax benefits.
Any funds that are not used by the end of the calender year can be rolled over to the next year.
Catastrophic health insurance plans are ideal options when you are primarily concerned with covering major expenses and are willing to pay a relatively high amount of out-of-pocket money for these types of claims.
Generally, over time, the money saved by purchasing these types of plans more than offsets your out-of-pocket losses.
Of course, you can lower the deductible on a catastrophic plan to reduce the rate that you pay.
Many insurers will offer deductibles as low as $500.
High deductible plans are growing in popularity as premiums health care premiums continue to rise.
Although this type of coverage does not meet every person's needs, as national health care reform forces rates up, catastrophic health insurance, if available, will continue to be a very popular choice.
If future state health insurance exchanges do not offer high-deductible plans, policies will be able to be purchased outside of the Exchanges.