A great number of Americans know how hard it is to earn money nowadays. Once you find a job, you need to work hard just to get that salary that will be used to finance most of your monthly expenses. You always want to get the worth out of your hard-earned salary. Every cent counts and should not be wasted. Thus, creating your list of important expenditures is really a tremendous task to perform since you want to finance the most important ones and eliminate expenditures that are not so important anymore.

The education of your children is an important expenditure.

Your utility bills matters to you.

The home mortgage payments must always be one of the top priorities every payday.

But how about health insurance? Does it matter to you at all?

Most low-income families in the United States do not prefer to be covered by any type of health insurance plan. They pointed out that most of their salaries turn out to be used for monthly premium payments of health insurance plans. There are instances wherein they are paying out for the monthly premiums that they have availed yet they are not getting the health benefits that they need. They tend to pay thousands of dollars annually for health insurance plans only to find out later on that their health coverage on such plans are not sufficient to cover their health needs.

As a result, more and more low-income individuals are uninsured in the country, especially in the state of California. According to the report published by a California-based consumer group Communicating for Agriculture and the Self-Employed, there are 6.5 million California residents (non-elderly population) who are uninsured. It is equivalent to around 20.6% of the total population of the state, and noticeably higher than the national average of 17.2% or 43 million uninsured Americans all over the country.

The same reason is also pointed out to the growing number of uninsured individuals in California. Most of them are earning less than the standard wage and they have a hard time financing their health insurance plan every now and then. There are other important matters to be financed by their meager salaries, thus neglecting health insurance coverage in their list.

The California state government, in response to the growing numbers of uninsured low-income California residents, has made several measures to provide low-cost health insurance plans for low-income California residents. One of which is through the California Major Medical Insurance Plan which provides an access to low-income individuals who are unable to go medical underwriting by the conventional individual insurance plans. It was enacted in 1989 and became operational as of March 1991.

As of May 2005, there were around 8,572 low-income California residents enrolled in the plan. The guaranteed issue coverage come from the present offering of four plans included in the program yet with much higher annual benefits that amounts to $200,000 and $750,000 lifetime cap. Such low-cost plan enables every low-income California residents to have an access to health benefits that they need.

Aside from the California Major Medical Insurance Plan, there is also low-cost health insurance for California kids ages 1 to 9 years old which is called Healthy Families Plan. In order to be eligible for such plan, your monthly income must not be more than the following:

• $2,314 for a family with 3 members;

• $2,784 for a family with 4 members; and

• $3,254 for a family with 5 members.

The coverage includes hospital confinement, dentist and pediatrician visits, prescribed medicines, and physical therapy. It can be availed by any low-income family for lower monthly premium payments.

With the help of the California state government, you can get a low-cost health insurance not only for yourself but also for your family as well.

Tags: low cost health insurance in california, health insurance

Texas is the home of the some of the “largest” in the United States.

It is one of the densely-populated areas in the country, which has a population of around 22.8 million (second to the state of California in terms of population).

It is also one of the largest states in the country in terms of total area, with around 268,581 square miles or 695,522 square kilometers (second to the state of Alaska in terms of total land area).

Texas also boasts the “Six Flags” that have flown over its soil: the national flags of Spain, Mexico, and France (Fleur de Lis), the United States of America, the Republic of Texas, and the Confederate States of America (which existed from 1861 to 1865).

However, Texas also possess the largest number of uninsured population in the United States, which is now around 5.4 million individuals or 25 percent of state’s total population, according to the State Comptroller’s Office. The numbers are still increasing because of the substantial increase of immigrants in Texas without any health insurance coverage. Out of the 25 percent uninsured Texas population, 23.9 percent belongs to the non-elderly population. It is relatively higher compared to the national average of 15.5 percent uninsured Americans.

It is accounted to limited Medicaid coverage and a low percentage of individuals with employer-sponsored health insurance plan compared to the national average (58 percent against 66.1 percent). In addition, Texas also has fewer health care providers than the national average. For instance, there were 81 physicians per 100,000 Americans in 1994. On the other hand, there are only 61 physicians per 100,000 Texas populations.

To address the need for a low-cost health insurance in the Lone Star state of Texas, the state government as well as Texas-based health insurance companies formulated some measures to provide an easy access to low-cost health insurance plans for the uninsured population of Texas. On the part of the state government, the legislative department enacted the Texas Health Insurance Law, which has the following provisions:

• Provides for Texas Health Insurance Risk Pool that will sell major health care policies with prescription coverage to Texas residents with uninsurable medical conditions or commonly referred to as pre-existing conditions.
• Provides for CHIP or Children Health Insurance Program to offer low-cost health insurance plans for children of Texas-based families whose income is below the poverty level.
• Provides the health care needs of special children, especially those with chronic illness and developmental disabilities.
• Provides that most health insurance plans available, including low-cost ones, cover traumatic brain injury treatments as well as neurological and cognitive therapies and treatments.

On the part of the private health insurance providers, they also offer several alternatives such as HMO (health maintenance organization) wherein there is a limited coverage within the network of doctors and medical facilities that has existing contract with the HMO yet low-cost in the sense that you are exempted from paying deductibles.

With the aforementioned measures now in implementation, the Texas state government as well as different Texas-based health insurance companies addressed the problem of the growing numbers of uninsured individuals in the state. At last, low cost health insurance plans are now available especially to those low-income individuals and families living below the poverty level. Thanks to the government and private insurers for the immediate action.

Tags: low cost health insurance texas, health insurance