Broadly, there are two reasons to have health insurance:
• Health insurance supports you if you get sick • Health insurance helps you avoid getting sick to begin with Let’s look at each of these reasons in more detail.
Health Insurance as a Safety Net
It’s important to have health insurance as a safety net. If you unexpectedly get sick or injured, health insurance is there to help cover costs that you likely can’t afford to pay on your own.
Health care can be very expensive. It can be an enormous financial burden. Surgery, emergency care, prescription drugs, lab work, scans, and examinations – these sorts of costs can add up very quickly. They can even be high enough to cause individuals to go bankrupt, or to turn down care that they need but can’t afford out-of-pocket.
But, with health insurance, you’re not facing those costs as an individual; there’s an insurance plan helping you cover the costs, and help you navigate the confusion of medical billing.
Let’s face it, medical bills aren’t the sort of thing you want to be dealing with while ill, injured, in a hospital bed or the emergency room. It’s smart to make difficult financial decisions ahead of time, by getting health insurance before you get sick.
Preventing Illness
The other reason it’s important to have health insurance is that it makes it easier for you to keep from getting sick in the first place.
Having health insurance makes it easier for you to access – that is, find and pay for – routine and preventive health care. This includes:
- • Annual checkups
- • Vaccinations (flu shots, MMR, etc.)
- • Blood tests and lab work
- • Scans and screenings
- • These all play a role in keeping you healthy, and diagnosing any illness you might have as soon as possible.
