Choosing a Health Insurance Plan That's Right for You

my role here at Washington Hospital is to assist community members in navigating their health insurance when you retire you got so many choices that you've got to make insurance wise it's really a trying period of your life when you get that certain age you need trust and to know that I can trust somebody who's interested in my health and welfare it to me is a blessing in disguise [Music]

what I find most rewarding about my job would be the people that I'm able to serve our service here is a free service to the community and when people come in they're usually pretty nervous pretty upset perhaps they're having to make a big decision or they've lost their insurance and they feel like they're not going to have health care which is very scary some people have pre-existing conditions and they're seeing doctors and some worried about their future it's very important to have health insurance I really can't stress that enough I run across people who decide to go uninsured

because they're healthy and everybody's healthy until they're not healthy you can't just jump into health insurance you have to wait for open enrollment sometimes there's government programs that can help like medi-cal until open enrollment rolls around and then they can choose a plan so an HMO and a PPO are the primary plans in our area so a PPO is a preferred provider organization which typically allows you to go wherever your insurance company is contracted with for a lot of people it's very important for

them to stay with the same doctor and also their local hospital so that is something I have them considered an HMO is a health maintenance organization which you choose a Medical Group so you have to stay within that group we're lucky living in the Bay Area to have so many great doctors and facilities to be able to go to we have such great specialists I've been here for nine years and I've seen a lot of growth a lot of change and it's been so positive

I think it is important to have an advocate when you're choosing a health insurance plan especially with Alice and Joe with Medicare what happens is when you turn 65 you get a lot of mail you get a lot of insurance companies contacting you and that's fine but each one of them is trying to sell their plan our service is an unbiased service and when people come to me for their Medicare choices I help them map that out in the very beginning so that they

know what they're looking at for their future when you retire you got so many choices you've got to make insurance wise and it's really a trying period of your life so we came over here we didn't know what kind of insurance to get what we needed and prescription drugs and so forth you know that's quite a challenge all the different programs and we really avoided some costly mistakes really yeah getting in your 75 close to 80 and these

existing conditions can wipe your life savings out so we gave her all of that information and she brought us in and presented the programs when we met with her and you know you got that warm fuzzy when you left not only that is is you knew she was working for you not an insurance representative for an insurance company you can be so easily taken advantage of without a program like that you know you don't have to like jump through three hoops to be able to see someone here so

that was wonderful too talking to Christine who has helped me at my health insurance has been a blessing being single and as senior my budget is limited and so she's helped me with the medication and what insurances would pay that would do full coverage rather than out-of-pocket and since I'm diabetic medicine does get expensive and she knew which category and insurance would fit

for my budget fit me as well and very happy with the choices she presented to me and it choices that I made it's like a giant load off your chest I don't have to worry about that did you know the older you get your help doesn't go the way you want it to go things change and every time my doctor does it change I'm fine the insurance takes care of anything so I'm happy I'm a happy camper learn more at Bay Area healthier

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