Individual health insurance in Arizona provides one with a colorful array of choices almost equaling Arizona's beautiful scenery. Evaluating those choices can be a daunting task. You should find your search for health insurance a little easier using the tools provided on this site. Your personal rates, for various health plans from several insurance companies, can be seen at a glance just by entering your age, gender and smoking status. You can then select up to five plans and compare a summary of benefits in a table format. All individual plans represented here are considered major medical insurance policies since the insurance company assumes essentially all the risk after you pay a deductible and your percentage of shared expenses, called coinsurance. This is in respect for the Department of Insurance's recommendation that having no coverage, too little coverage, or the wrong kind of coverage could be costly to you.

Individual plans are available is several designs and deductibles allowing you to choose options to keep your plan affordable. While not low-cost, the number of choices allows you to select plans to keep your cost low as a trade-off for other benefits.

Remember that premiums are driven by the cost of medical care in the geographic area in which you live. Generally if you purchase a policy that costs less in monthly premium, you will usually end up paying a greater share of the medical expenses when you are sick or hurt.

Most Arizona plans are managed care plans where you receive higher benefits when you play by the rules of the plan. Some are Preferred Provider plans where you receive the maximum benefit if you stay within the plan's provider network, the physicians, hospitals and other medical providers who have agreed to the plan's schedule of payments for services performed. These plans usually allow you to receive healthcare services outside their network of providers, but at an additional cost to you. Some may require the selection of a Primary Care Physician (PCP), a personal physician who directs all your care and who's written referral you need prior to visiting a specialist.

Family insurance is simply an individual policy with more than one insured member of the family included in the application and coverage. Private and personal insurance are other names for individual health insurance.

Applying for health insurance requires filling out an application which includes questions about your past health conditions and treatments, in most cases. The insurance company uses this information to determine whether to approve you for coverage. Do not try to hide information about your health condition, as it can be reason to retroactively terminate your coverage, leaving you responsible for all of your expenses from that time forward, less any premiums paid. If you have exhausted COBRA coverage, loose COBRA coverage because your former employer went out of business and are considered federally eligible, insurance companies are usually required to offer you a choice of two different plans regardless of your health condition. These can be more expensive as can be any conversion policy available to you within 30 days after you terminate employment.

If you have not previously had health insurance coverage, the insurance company will usually impose a waiting period before your coverage starts for anything you were treated for in the past, and in some cases anything you should have been treated for. Coverage for preexisting conditions may be limited in coverage, limited in time, or excluded altogether. Please make sure you understand where you stand with the insurance company on preexisting conditions during the first 10-day free review period after receiving the policy, if not before.

If you do not find the information you need here, please use the "Have You Help Us" choice at the top of this page to let us know.