Basic types of insurance, HMO, POS and PPO
When deciding your health insurance plan, check to see what style of plan is best for you.
HMO
An HMO or Health Maintenance Organization, is a localized plan. You are generally required to have a primary physician who acts as your gatekeeper to all other avenues of healthcare. If you needed surgery, a specialist or anything more than that primary physician, they would have to refer you and confirm that is needed. This helps reduce healthcare cost by not over utilizing specialists when it is not necessary. HMO have a localized network and anything outside of the physicians or hospitals in the local area can cost someone quite a bit more money than it would in network, again, usually in a local area. often more inexpensive than other plans.
PPO
A Preferred Provider Organization is by far the most popular choice in policies. Here Insurance companies have a large network spread across a large area consisting of Doctors offices, hospitals, ASCs and many more. A Primary gatekeeper physician here is not required, freeing people to get into emergency care faster. Here, with the larger network you can avoided the higher costs of receiving care out of network, this is still prevalent though less common. Often more expensive than other plans.
POS
A Point of Service is a sort of Hybride between the two plans. You may or may not need a primary gatekeeper physicain, and may or may not have a more restricted network.
Ultimately, when choosing a health Insurance plan, think about how much you will travel, whether you will leave your area or not, think of the cost of using your insurance out of network and if that higher premium is worth the extra flexibility.
