Today’s health insurance industry is doing a booming business with a myriad of buzz words that scintillate the ears and heart of the consumers. Words and phrases like coordinated care, wide coverage, affordable premiums and full indemnity excite ordinary consumers seeking the best of health insurance today. This is not surprising with the continual rise in the cost of living and medical care across the world.
Modern insurers seem to be more proactive in consumers’ health care; they recommend a wide array of health care policies with attractive payouts and promises of the stellar services before, during and after sales or closure of a policy agreement. It is common to have insurers promising higher quality care with affordable premiums, but would consumers really benefit in the end?
Health policy issues
Smart consumers who are looking for an attractive health care policy need to consider various aspects of health care before signing up for a recommended policy. Health insurers today are merely cranking the figures in the newly generated health insurance exchanges based on new health reforms set in the nation.
There is no need to identify the past health issues of consumers seeking health care insurance as in the past to avoid discrimination and exclusions on various types of care to be included in the policy. A consumer’s past and current health status in previous health care policy generation tends to exact a higher premium on the applicant; if not, the applicant gets excluded from the desired coverage.
With Obamacare, health insurance exchanges do not permit insurers from seeking more than essential information on the applicant’s health status to avoid discrimination. Health insurers are frustrated in their internal planning without the wider scope of data on their applicants. When re-enrollment happens, insurers would find it difficult to offer the best rates and policies without a clearer budget plan that would boost bottom lines.
An innovative insurer today might manipulate forecasting models with the necessary information on applicants to generate the desired details for their planning and policy generation purposes. Many forms of prediction models are currently employed by modern insurers today to project the health condition and value of the policy on their applicants or clients regardless of accuracy and relevancy. A meticulous and experienced insurer would engage all tools and resources to make a more accurate prediction for a more accurate policy generation that would put profit to the company.
Technology assisted solutions
The progressive technologies of today make it easier and simpler for healthcare insurers to identify the health condition of their clients. The consumer is not obligated to provide any personal, financial, work or health information past or present to the insurer when seeking out a health care policy. This is favorable to the consumer who wants the best of coverage without discrimination based on past health and insurance claims as the consumer may undergo different phases of life.
Modern insurers can engage modern technologies to target preferred consumers as clients on their available range of health care policies. Creativity is the key to generating accurate and current information about the consumer whether a health care insurance policy is on his or her shopping list.
Some consumers may consider this form of information collation as a violation of their privacy. The onus is on the consumer to decide and control what the insurer should know and the source in which the information came from. Modern technology can also be manipulated as easily by the consumer to prevent easy access by third parties without authorization.
Safe data
Many state-of-the-art software solutions are readily available for consumers and insurers to safeguard or access essential data to the respective parties. It is imperative for the different parties to manipulate the data safely for the proper purpose with the right authorization.
Technology offers the upside and downside to insurers and consumers with modern solutions. Consumers would need to have such systems installed, monitored and maintained to safeguard their data and information, whereas insurers may press consumers to consider unnecessary policies based on inaccurate projections. Although this is deemed the ‘technology’ era, not all consumers are IT savvy to handle such a task which is time consuming, costly and unproductive.
Conclusion
A consumer should have the last say in picking out and taking on any health care insurance policy that is affordable without having to indulge in sharing personal information to the insurers for a proper insurance coverage in order to live a fulfilling life.
