How much does health insurance cost?
Insurance is a written contract or a certificate that holds the promise of reimbursement in case of a loss or hazard usually paid to people or companies. There are different insurances for different things and Health insurance is one of them.
Health insurance is the type of insurance that pays for medical, surgical, and sometimes dental expenses incurred by the insured person. In simpler terms, health insurance is a coverage that provides for the payments of benefits as a result of sickness or injury. It includes insurance for losses from accident, medical expense, disability, or accidental death and dismemberment
Sometimes it covers just a part of the risk and other times it covers the whole medical costs.
This is how insurance policies work, an estimate is made by the insurer of the overall risk of health care and health system expenses. Once this is done, the insurer then creates a routine finance structure that would provide the money to pay for the health care benefits contained in the insurance agreement. The payment could be monthly or per annum, depending on what works for each person and each insurance company. The benefits enjoyed by the insurer from his subscriptions are usually tax-free.
Why you need health insurance
Most people often feel like they don’t need health insurance and try to skip it. Sometimes they even have somewhat valid reasons to think so, especially people in their 20s who are relatively agile and people who hardly get sick. Also, people, who aren’t particularly wealthy and are running on a tight financial budget, to these people it might seem like a good idea to cross off the health insurance from their budget.
However, except you have some superpowers that will keep both you and everyone in your family forever healthy and safe, you have no reason to not subscribe to a health insurance premium.
The reason is simple, the absence of health insurance will cost much more in the long run than the cost of subscribing to one. If and when you do not have health insurance for you and your family, you will singlehandedly bear the cost of any sickness or sudden injury that might occur.
Even though the option to pay for your medical expenses is available to you, you should still make sure to get health insurance instead. This is because, the lack of health insurance can make things difficult for you in case of an ongoing health issue, an accident or a very serious illness. The costs of all these can become very large and very quickly, so, in the long run, it is to your utmost benefit to have some form of health insurance.
Medical emergencies are another reason why you need Health Insurance. They can occur anytime and to anyone. If you mistakenly break your bones and have to undergo emergency surgery without health insurance, you will rack up thousands of dollars in medical bills. Now imagine having multiple medical emergencies, one can potentially become bankrupt. All of these reasons are why you should have health insurance for yourself and your household.
The cost of health insurance in Toronto
There are different types of health insurance and the costs vary by the types. In most countries like Canada and the USA, there is a health insurance program that is called Universal Healthcare. The universal health care allows you to visit the hospitals, see a doctor, receive treatments and also get prescriptions all under the Universal Healthcare insurance.
The price of medical health insurance for each person, directly taken from their taxes, comes out to $2000 Canadian money. When you break it down to a monthly value, this comes out to just over $160 per person per month.
During which if they make a visit to a medical practitioner or have a procedure done, all of that would be covered by this insurance policy.
Outside of the Universal Healthcare program, the average cost of health insurance costs about 4000 Canadian dollars which when broken down is about $500 monthly. The average Canadian household would spend $2000 on health care costs and $4000 on private insurance premiums. A large percentage of Canadians (about 60-65%) have some form of private health insurance because the Universal Healthcare insurance does not cover all medical expenses.
Factors That Influence the cost of health insurance
Over the years there has been an ongoing increase in the cost of health insurance and its due to many reasons.
There are several factors that contribute to the price of health insurance premiums, these factors include, your location i.e where you live, state and federal laws regulating costs, the medium through which you got your insurance and the type of plan you choose.
Asides the aforementioned, Population growth is also one of the reasons for a decrease or like in most recent times increase in the cost of health insurance. The population keeps growing in large numbers by the day. People are being born daily and the population is expanding , which in turn brings about an increase in healthcare spending.
The other factors include population aging, disease prevalence, increase in service price and intensity, the cumulative increase in health care cost, increase in medical service utilization.
Conclusion
If you have gotten to this point, I’m sure by now you’ve seen all the reasons to be subscribed to a health insurance package. It is necessary and in your own best interest to have health insurance.
Remember, health is wealth. We don’t want you to fret about what it will cost you now, think of the safety and assurance that comes with it. With health insurance, you are assured of a more secure future both health-wise and money-wise. Make sure you get yourself and your household under health insurance today.