Health Insurance
Approximately 60% of Canadians have private health care benefits, mainly through their employers. Not only are the other 40% not covered, but many of the existing individual plans fall short of covering what the client needs coverage for. At Erb and Erb Financial Services, we work with a number of insurance carriers to provide you with options when it comes to coverage types, amounts, and cost.
While those without Group Benefits coverage feel they can manage the out of pocket expenses for health, dental, paramedical, and vision care in an average year, not every year will be average in one's lifetime. For certain the older someone gets, the more likely they are to pay more out of pocket for their health care needs such as prescriptions, physiotherapy, glasses, hospital stays, etc. Regardless of age, however, anyone at any age runs the risk of an accident or illness adding significant expense to those not covered by a group plan. An individual health and dental plan can cover such an eventuality.
Plan Design
There are a number of ways to design an Individual Health Plan for a client depending on their needs. Some plans are for health care related expenses only, some will offer the ability to add on dental coverage. Further, some will add vision care and even out of country coverage for travel.
It is imperative to look closely at what you get for your money in each plan. Having prescription drug coverage that only covers 80% of the costs is more affordable than one that covers 90 or 100%. The same goes for dental care coverages whereby the percentage of coverage and what services are covered will make a big difference in the cost.
Many times those coming to us looking for health and dental coverage are those that have left a workplace where they had group benefits. If such a client comes to us within the first 90 days of leaving their group benefits plan, we can often put them into an individual health and dental policy that has no medical underwriting requirements outside of a few simple questions. If this is you, contact us before those 90 days are up.