Affordable Health Insurance

Affordable Health Insurance Coverage for Heart Conditions

September 15th, 2011

Cardiovascular diseases or heart disease is a prevalent health problem in America. It has in fact become the country’s leading health concern. According to a record by The University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell, one out of three Americans live with a heart disease. This is equivalent to at least 80 million Americans with these corresponding heart conditions:  65 million with high blood pressure, 13 million with coronary heart disease, 5.5 million with stroke, 1 million with congenital cardiovascular defects and 5 million with congestive heart failure.

Cardiovascular diseases or heart attack in particular used to be attributed only to men but it is now becoming a leading killer among women over 65 years old. In fact recent studies discovered that heart disease kills more women than breast cancer.

The most common symptoms of heart disease are chest pain or discomfort, shortness of breath, dizziness, palpitations, fatigue or feeling tired during the day and even fainting. Unhealthy diet and lack of physical activity are the primary risk factors for heart disease.

Treatment for heart disease is hard and expensive for it involves taking in various prescription drugs, regular lab tests, frequent trips to the doctor and hospitals and the use of medical devices. It will be very costly if you don’t have an affordable health insurance coverage. Even if you do, your coverage must be adequate for all your health and insurance needs or you’ll incur a lot of out of pocket costs. If you have a heart disease, choose a plan that has low co-payments for doctor visits, specialist care and medical services. However if you have a heart condition and you don’t have coverage for it, you might find it hard to apply for an affordable health insurance. Insurers will treat it as a pre-existing condition and might apply pre-existing condition exclusions which will deny or delay coverage for you.

The best thing for you to do is to apply for an inexpensive health insurance through a group plan. Insurers are usually lenient towards group coverage since a lot of members mean a bigger risk pool. They usually cover members with pre-existing condition without exclusions. If however it is not possible for you to apply for group coverage, see if you can qualify to apply for PCIP plans
(Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plans). This is a federal government program administered by states or the department of Health and Human Services in line with the health care reform’s provision to guarantee coverage to all Americans especially to those with pre-existing condition who have the hardest time acquiring coverage.