New Year, new goals and in many cases new insurance. Time to start familiarizing yourself with what it is you’ve gotten. If you can fill in the 20 blanks below, you’re on your way to saving yourself money by understanding health insurance, in other words you’ll be the diner, not the dinner in the world of healthcare.
I’ve signed up and therefore I have health insurance. If I go to get a checkup I should not have to meet my ____1_________ or pay _____2_______, or a ______3_________ for my checkup.
I can check on whether my health insurance covers this checkup by calling _______4____________. If at my checkup the doctor says he wants to run “other” tests these will NOT be covered by my free checkup because they are ____5_______ and not _____6_______.
If I get a cold or want to see if I need an antibiotic for a winter nasal infection, I can visit a _____7__________. I will only have to pay _______8____________ and/or ___9________for that visit and the tests performed in connection with that visit.
I can also use the _____10_________ for information about my coverage which is required under Obamacare and must be available to me online and offline. In order to be sure of my coverage I cannot use the _______11__________ alone but must see the exact text in my health insurance policy. If I’m not sure of how much I will have to pay I should call _________12_____________ and check. If I think the information I’m getting might be wrong, I should confirm in ________13___________ the name, date and information I received and send that to my ______14__________.
After I see a provider I will get in the mail an ________15______________. I should not ignore this document because it will show me how my insurance company considers the money I’ve spent rather than the real cost. These amounts are important when it comes to calculating how much of my ____16__________ I’ve met and how much money I’ve paid that counts towards my ________17_____________.
Even if my healthcare expense is NOT covered by insurance, I should keep receipts and a tally of how much I spend because I can use that amount of real spending to determine whether or not I spent more than ______18__________ of my income on health expenses which means that I can deduct additional expenses over _________19_________ from my tax bill. To find out what kinds of medical expenses I can count in my medical expenses I should look at lists from the __20______ called Qualified Medical Expenses.
Answers: 1-deductible, 2-co-insurance, 3-co-payment, 4-insurance company 5- diagnostic 6-preventive
7-Participating provider 8-co-payments 9-co-insurance 10-Summary of Benefits and Coverage 11-Summary of Benefits and Coverage, 12-my insurance company 13-Writing 14-insurance company
15-Explanation of benefits 16-deductible 17-out of pocket maximum
18-10 percent 19-10 percent 20-IRS
