A high deductible major medical insurance plan is a relatively new kind of plan that can save you money every month on your premium. If you're in the market for health care coverage, you should investigate whether a high deductible major medical plan is right for you.

What is high deductible major medical insurance?

These are plans that offer low-cost coverage for serious injuries or illnesses. With these plans you select the level of deductible you want, usually ranging from $500 to $10,000. You pay all your medical expenses until you reach the deductible. After that, your insurer pays your medical expenses, often up to 100%.

These plans are often coupled with a medical savings account, in which you regularly deposit funds to help cover your medical expenses until you meet your deductible.

Why choose a high deductible major medical plan?

The major reason for choosing this plan is that it can save you money on your monthly premiums. In fact, your monthly premiums can be half of what you would pay for a traditional health care plans.

If you do choose one of these plans, you need to be sure that you can afford to pay the full deductible should you have an accident or serious illness.

As the year-end approaches, the providers again face the participation-non-participation dilemma because status change notifications are accepted until January 1 only. The doctor must choose between higher reimbursements and patient collections or lower reimbursement and direct deposit. The choice is complicated because the Congress has not yet completed the debates about an upcoming 10.1% Medicare cut to physicians. The Congress delay and the unprecedented cut size dramatize the possibility of being locked for another year under a newly reduced fee schedule and raise the urgency and importance of this decision.

"Unless Congress takes immediate action ... Medicare will begin across-the-board cuts on January 1," said AMA President Ron Davis, MD. "Congressional action is not guaranteed, so physicians interested in changing their Medicare participation status for 2008 should review the information now, fill out the forms and prepare to mail them prior to December 31," (http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2007/12/24/gvl11224.htm).

The physician has three options about participating in Medicare, namely, participation (PAR), non-participation (non-PAR), and private contracting:

1. Participation: The physician participating in Medicare (PAR) agrees to standard--and possibly reduced in 2008--Medicare fees for every submitted claim. The participating doctor gives up the right to "balance-bill" patients for the difference between the standard Medicare fee and doctor's "reasonable and customary" fee. But payment timing predictability and the convenience of direct deposit using electronic file transfer (EFT) are major participation decision factors: first, Medicare typically pays the "clean" claims submitted electronically within 14 days since claim submission, and second, Medicare pays the physician directly.
2. Non-Participation: The non-participating physicians (non-PAR) can decide on a per-patient basis to accept the reduced fee (accept "assignment") or balance-bill patients up to 15% more. Therefore, the non-PAR physician that balance-bills every patient, may receive up to 9.25% more than a PAR doctor for the same services. The downside of non-PAR is that Medicare reimburses the patient directly and the physician must invoice the patient for the full amount: the payment, co-payment and balance-billing charge. If the physician postpones invoicing the patient until the patient receives reimbursement from the insurance, the doctor risks collection problems with financially irresponsible patients.
3. Private contracting: Private contracting means that physicians opt out of Medicare completely for at least two years. During these two years, neither the opted-out physicians nor their patients can bill Medicare for any services.

Other par-non-par decision considerations:

1. Collections work-around: The number of collection problems from patients may be negligent or it can be completely eliminated the physician who collects the entire fee at the time of visit.
2. Saving grace: Financing out-of-pocket fees for more needy patients with higher fees collected from balance-billed patients might be the saving grace alternative to turning away patients.
3. Patient perception: Patients who are used to all of their medical costs covered by a system of primary, secondary (and perhaps tertiary) insurance companies, might protest higher out of pocket fees.

Note also that "participation dilemma" is not exclusive to Medicare. While some insurance companies, e.g., Oxford (United Healthcare) and Cigna still send checks to non-PAR doctors, others, like Horizon BCBS, penalize non-PAR doctors by paying directly to patients.

An AMA document (www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/399/medicarepayment08.pdf) outlines participation options and status change procedures."With a 10% cut about to be imposed, many physicians may consider balance billing an extra 9% as one means of helping close the gap between 2007 and 2008 payment amounts," the document says. "When considering whether to be non-PAR, however, physicians should consider whether their total revenues from Medicare, including amounts the program pays, patient co-pays and balance billing, would exceed their total revenues as PAR physicians, particularly in light of collection costs, bad debts and claims for which they do accept assignment."

The pressures and the steep learning curve required of the newly graduated chiropractic doctor are nothing short of monumental because of the mounting complexities of the business in an increasingly hostile billing environment defined by insurance companies bent on minimizing payouts to doctors. The coach has become a critical element of the chiropractor's team - a consultant with experience and leadership in the field - who mentors the new chiropractor through this minefield of potential revenue-chewing issues. The enlightened coach uses automated systems that collect and segregate data among all client practices, allowing them to more easily identify and address problem areas.

This is the third article in the series of three articles focused on automated coach assistants. The first article presented an overview of the issue, touching on automated coaching assistance need, features and networking. The second article focused on specific practice issues and data collected, and how this helps the coach identify problems. The last article in this series focuses on the networking effect (Metcalfe's law).

Automated coach assistance systems (CoachMate) address every aspect of chiropractic office workflow management. CoachMate stores information for each client in a coach's database within a central repository, providing a single point of contact via the Internet to both aggregate and individual patient information. The coach can then take a universal perspective when evaluating trainee performance in the aggregate, flagging deviations and isolating the trainee who is most in need of coaching advice promptly, meaningfully, and efficiently.

CoachMate's value to the coach and to each of the student doctors grows in step with the number of chiropractors that subscribe to the coach's service, creating the "network effect." The network effect, according to Wikipedia, "causes a good or service to have a value to a potential customer which depends on the number of other customers who own the good or are users of the service." For example, by purchasing a telephone, a person makes other telephones more useful - and therefore more valuable to their users - by virtue of expanding the network. A telephone without a network of other telephones is worthless, nothing more than plastic and silicone. In other words, the more players on the team, the more value to each player. Thus, a consequence of a network effect is that the purchase of a service by one individual indirectly benefits others who use the same service. This bandwagon effect is an example of a positive feedback loop, an essential aspect of the network effect.

The network effect (also known as Metcalfe's Law) says that while the system's costs are proportional to the number of submitted claims, the value is far greater than the sum of the participants - proportional, in fact, to the square of the number of practice owners using it. For example, when you multiply the number of users by ten, the coach's system-wide cost goes up by a factor of ten while the value goes up a hundredfold. The hundredfold increase in true value represents the possible number of relationships between one piece of data to another - with ten users, there are 100 possible relationships among them. In other words, Metcalfe's law - as applied to CoachMate - says that the value to the individual practice owner and the coach using it is proportional to the number of other practice owners (N) sharing the same knowledge base and processes. The more participants, the greater the value to the extent that the number of possible value-providing relationships has been raised significantly, to a factor of N-squared.

In the early 1980s, when Robert Metcalfe discovered his law, he was vague about the notion of value. In those days, it had something to do with sharing expensive resources like fax machines and printers, exchanging electronic mail, and accessing communications technologies, such as the internet. But value is not remotely vague when considering what an automated system does for the chiropractic business and the coaches who apply it to their base of active trainees. For the chiropractic coach, CoachMate shatters any perceived limits on capacity and growth. Its users receive value in four primary ways: improved collections, lower audit risk, efficient practice management, and added revenue sources. And, according to Metcalfe's law, this value continues to grow long after the coach began using such a system, in proportion to each new practice that joins the service of the coach using the system.

If you are looking for cheap medical insurance companies then your best bet is going to be looking for them online. However, the answer to finding the best possible price for your health insurance isn't just blindly looking online, but rather having at your fingertips just the right answers to the questions you will be asked so that you can create the best possible policy that will save you the most money right from the beginning. Then any additional that you save by purchasing your insurance online will be pure gravy.

Let's start with something extremely simple. Pay your premium each month automatically from your bank account. In this way your insurance company won't spend money billing you and they pass that savings on to you. Don't participate in extreme sports or dangerous hobbies. Don't drive a fancy sports car or a fast muscle car. If you intentionally put your health at risk you certainly can't expect an insurance company to reward you with a low rate, can you?

Believe it or not, your credit record also affects how much you pay for your medical insurance. When you apply for this your company will look at your credit score and the better your credit the better your rate will be for your insurance.

Don't smoke or use chew or any other tobacco product. If you are serious about finding the cheapest medical insurance online then you are going to have to be serious about breaking the smoking habit. You may have to lose weight as well. Losing weight can be even harder than quitting smoking for most people, but the fact remains that insurance companies look at your BMI (Body Mass Index) when setting your premium rate and the higher your BMI the higher your rate.

The good news is that often losing even a few pounds can make all the difference in the world and will allow you to slip down a rung on the insurance company's BMI chart - and if that happens you can save money month after month. In other words, every pound counts. If you seldom see your doctor then you really need to increase your co-payment to 50%. This will save you a considerable amount of money every month.

How large of a deductible can you afford? Increasing your deductible will lower your monthly health costs immediately. Just be sure you don't increase your deductible so much that you can't afford to pay it!

Buying your health insurance online is the best way by far to find this in companies in your state. You'll want to check with more than one of the price comparison websites if you are really serious about finding low rates, but as soon as you've check with 3 or more sites your job is done. Just grab the lowest-priced policy you found and feel confident that you have found the cheapest medical insurance in your state.

More than half of all families with medical insurance in this country report that the cost of their monthly premium is a severe financial hardship each month, and fully 16% of all Americans can't afford health insurance in any form. So is it any wonder that almost every person in the country is looking for cheap medical insurance online?

The good news is that almost everyone can save money on their health insurance if they purchase it online. However, in order to find the very best price possible for your insurance it will be necessary for you to fill out the forms on the price comparisons websites in the right way so as to create the perfect low-cost policy to begin with.

Let's start with something simple. Did you know that you can save money on your insurance if you pay your premium automatically each month from your bank account? If your insurance company doesn't have the cost of billing you every month they pass that savings on to you. Keeping your credit clean will also save you money. All insurance companies base your monthly premium, at least in some small part, on your credit score - so be careful with those plastic cards!

If you really and truly want to find this then you can't smoke and you can't use chew. This should come as no surprise - so if you're genuinely serious about getting the best possible price for your medical insurance then you're going to have to give up smoking.

You'll also have to watch your weight. If you are overweight it should also come as no great surprise that you are not going to get the best possible price on your health insurance. Insurance companies look at your Body Mass Index (BMI) when determining your monthly premium cost, so the lower you can get that BMI the lower your cost of insurance is going to be.

Driving a fast sports car and taking part in extreme or dangerous sports or hobbies will also increase the cost of your insurance.

If you can find group health insurance you'll pay considerably less than if you attempt to buy it. Most people buy group health insurance through their place of employment, but if your workplace doesn't offer affordable group health then see if any clubs or organizations or associations that you belong to offer it to their members. You just might be surprised at the number of groups that do.

If you don't see your doctor very often and you're generally in good health then it might very well pay you to increase your co-payment to 50%. Increasing your co-pay will save you money every single month.

Similarly, increasing your deductible will also save you a bundle on the cost of your health premium every month. Just don't go overboard and increase your deductible past the point that you can actually afford to pay for it.

Ultimately if you want really cheap medical insurance you'll have to look online. In order to get the very best deal online you will have to find at least 3 different websites that encourage you to compare the prices of policies between different insurance companies. Because each of these websites only compares the prices from a small number of insurance companies you will need to look at prices from a minimum of 3 sites in order for you to see prices from the majority of companies so that you can feel confident you've found the lowest price possible.

But once you've seen the prices from at least 3 price comparison sites then you'll know for sure where the best price can be found and you can feel confident that you have bought the cheapest insurance available online and that you have saved the most money you possibly could.

The cost of medical insurance is enough to make anyone sick and because of that many people are now in the market for affordable high risk medical insurance online. While almost anyone can save money simply by purchasing their medical insurance online, a little extra effort spent in answering a few of the questions you'll be ask on the online price comparison websites could save you even more.

For example, setting up an automatic payment system for making your premium payments will save you money. If you are truly serious about finding affordable medical insurance then you can't smoke or use chew or any other tobacco products. If you currently smoke you will have to stop - or accept the fact that you will always pay more for your health insurance.

Unfortunately the same goes for being overweight. If you are overweight and you seriously want to save money on your insurance then you're going to have to try to shed at least a few pounds. The good news is that losing even a few pounds might move you down a rung on the insurance company's Body Mass Index - and if you're lucky enough for that to happen you could save quite a bit over the course of a year.

Group health insurance will save you money over individual insurance. If you can't get affordable group health at your place of work try asking at any clubs, associations or organizations that you belong to. You would be surprised at the number of groups and organizations which provide this to their members.

Do not participate in dangerous sports or take part in extreme games or other dangerous activities on a regular basis. Intentionally putting your health in jeopardy will result in your paying more for your health insurance. Driving a fast and flashy sports car or a head-turning muscle car can also increase the amount you pay for yours.

And did you know that your credit rating can affect how much you pay for your health insurance? It's true. Most insurance companies check your credit rating and the better your score the less you'll pay for your insurance.

If you don't see your doctor on a regular basis and are generally healthy you should definitely consider increasing your co-payment to 50%. Increasing your co-pay will reduce your monthly cost of insurance considerably.

Eating right, getting some exercise and just generally improving your health will also save you money on it as well as on your overall health care costs. Cut out all fried food, cut way back on the stops at fast food restaurants, eat more fresh fruits and vegetables and get as much exercise as possible.

Exercise, by the way, can be something as simple as walking around the block a few times a week or biking with your kids to school or biking around town to run errands. If you like company when you exercise why not join a mall-walking club? Increasing your deductible is a sure-fire way to lower your insurance cost as long as you don't go overboard and increase your deductible to the point that you can no longer afford it.

And that brings us to our final way of saving money on your health insurance - buying your policy online. If you truly want to save the most money possible don't stop after looking at the prices for competing policies provided by just one site. Instead, check out competing prices on at least 3 different websites.

Also, try to answer the questions on each of the websites in the same way each time. This will insure that you are comparing the same policy each time - and that is one of the keys to saving money.

But as soon as you've gotten the prices from at least 3 different sites your job is done - just pick the lowest price you've found and you can feel confident that you have found the most affordable high risk medical insurance online.