What are the most important factors I should consider when choosing a health insurance plan?
First, you choose a broker based on experience and added value services as well as recommendations from close friends who may have just gone through this process. Then you need to determine your current financial resources in addition to your health history, both past and expected events in the near future, i.e., pregnancies, operations. One important question is whether you would rather pay more in monthly premiums and then pay less money out of pocket when you use your health benefits or whether you would rather pay less in monthly premiums and more in out of pocket expenses when you do use your health insurance. Second, you need to find out whether the network of physicians and professionals that you use are going to be in the network of the health insurance plan that you may buy. For example, HMO's, which at one time were the most prevalent health plan around, are far less popular now with physicians in that the insurance companies pay the physicians far less for HMO patients than PPO patients. As a result, there are fewer doctors on HMO networks than there are physicians in PPO networks.