Personal health coverage offers reimbursement for health care. Prescription assistance programs may be included in some policies. A number of programs might provide for payment of health bills incurred on a reimbursement basis by paying benefits to the plan owner, payment on a service basis by paying those who provide the services directly, or payment of an indemnity by paying a established sum regardless of the amount charged for medical expenses. Medical expense or hospitalization insurance could be issued on an individual or group basis. Many of these programs will provide prescription help.

While there are lots of types of benefits available, individual medical expense insurance will normally be categorized as basic health expense insurance, major medical insurance, comprehensive medical insurance, and special policies. These plans ought to cover prescriptions because prescription drugs help so many people. Most of these plans have mainly been replaced by managed care policies and are no longer offered as stand-alone plans. These types of programs have been adapted and replaced in answer to changes in the health care field relative to cost containment and market competition.

Basic insurance provided by a personal medical expense policy includes hospital expense, surgical expense and medical expense. These three basics might be issued as one or separately. Often this is written as “first dollar” coverage, which means it does not contain a deductible.

Like the name indicates, hospital expense medical insurance offers benefits for expenses incurred throughout hospitalization. Hospital indemnities are regularly classified into two general categories:

• Room and board, including nursing care and special diets

• Miscellaneous medical charges, including x-rays, laboratory fees, prescription medicine, medical supplies, and operating and treatment rooms

In some cases, surgical benefits may be built-in for specific types of surgery and related costs. Hospital expense healthcare insurance offers benefits for daily hospital room and board and various hospital charges while the insured individual is confined to the hospital. The plan possibly will provide for a guaranteed dollar amount for the daily hospital room and board benefit, though the movement is in the direction of health insurance of not more than the semiprivate room rate unless a private room is medically needed. The room and board benefit could be paid on either an indemnity basis or a reimbursement basis, depending on the particular policy.

Indemnity policies are on occasion called dollar amount policies. Room and board rates change by geographic location, however it is not uncommon to discover room and board rates ranging from $150  to $1000  per day or more.

By and large, the maximum number of days is from 70  to 450 . More commonly, room and board charges are paid on a reimbursement basis. This is {frequently called an expenses incurred basis~Frequently known as a expenses incurred basis~This is frequently called a expenses incurred basis}. Under this arrangement, the policy will pay in one of two methods.

• The actual expenses for a semiprivate room are covered.

• A percentage of the actual expense is paid, with no explicit dollar limit.

Under the first reimbursement option, the healthcare insurance company will pay the full actual semiprivate room rate, regardless of what it is. Under the second reimbursement option, the healthcare insurance carrier pays a specific percentage, regardless of what the actual charges are. A usual percentage is 80%.

To recap, with the actual expenses style of reimbursement program, the insurance will pay the actual amount billed for a semiprivate room with no regard to a specific dollar limit. With the percentage type of reimbursement policy, the program may pay a certain percentage of the actual charges.

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