Although you may be healthy now, the situation may change quickly if you have an accident or develop a sudden illness. For these reasons, you will want to know which hospitals are part of the plan and where your primary care doctor is likely to admit you. If having access to a particular hospital is important to you, this should influence your enrollment decision, or at least your choice of primary care physician. Having easy access to specialists is important, even if you are healthy right now. Each plan may differ in its requirements for seeing a specialist.
Most plans provide basic preventative health care coverage, but the details are what counts.
Some doctors in a managed-care plan refer only to specialist s within the plan, but many allow referrals outside the network in rare circumstances. In other plans, you simply have to pay more to see an outside specialist. Selecting a health insurance policy is a matter of balancing the cost of a plan with the amount of coverage you need and the degree of choice you want. Consider all three elements in your decision. 1. Cost .