Compare Private Medical Insurance

You've probably heard the annoying debate and ever-present tooth-gnashing surrounding the recent healthcare bill.  Regardless of your politics, health insurance plan costs have increased by 12% every year for each of the last 5 years, and nobody's expecting that trend to reverse any time in the near future.  The unfortunate (and unintended and very short-sighted, I might add) loophole in the new healthcare law that companies are discovering, which allows them to save tons of money by dropping employee health coverage in exchange for paying a government fine that's several thousand dollars less per employee per year than healthcare costs themselves, has many employees looking for their own medical insurance.

If you're unfortunate enough to be in this category, be sure to do your homework before you sign on a contract with your new insurer.  You really do need to compare private medical insurance providers, as they are notoriously good at two things:

1. Generating hopelessly confusing application questions that are only good for causing applicant errors.  Companies later use your errors against you as grounds to drop your policy, particularly if you happen to contract an expensive ailment.  It sounds grievously illegal and miserably unethical, but it happens thousands of times every day in the United States, and Congress has done nothing to stop it.
2. Dreaming up ways to make you think you're going to be covered for a procedure, then nickle-and-diming you into paying far more than you anticipated.  This is part of the confusion campaign as well, as these details are buried in reams of legal-ese.

As you begin your search for private medical insurance, be sure to investigate each candidate to find out whether you'll be covered by their policy if you travel frequently.  I routinely use global late deals to get large last-minute discounts on travel to strange, faraway places.  Aside from being a great way to see the world and save a few dimes in the process, traveling frequently puts me in situations where I'm not sure I'll be covered for medical expenses by my normal policy.  I chose an insurer with a liberal foreign travel policy to minimize these situations, but I still check with them if I'm not sure about a particular location.