Where health insurance is concerned, what is truly affordable is a function of both what you can afford based upon your income and expenses and how determined you are to understand your options and research available policies. If you do his successfully, then there certainly is such a thing as affordable health insurance for you. There are some other questions you need to know the answers to as well. Does your employer carry a group policy for his employees and if he does, are you eligible? Do you need an individual policy or must you cover the entire family? All these factors and considerations are ‘must knows’ for persons needing affordable health insurance coverage.

Let’s look at some statistics from eHealth Insurance.com the most successful provider of insurance via the internet. According to eHealth, a healthy family of two parents and four school-age children can sign up for a major medical plan that has a $1,000 annual deductible; $30 co-payments for each visit to the doctor; and $10 for prescription drugs, and pay around $400 per month. If you were to elect a higher deductible of say $5,000 annually, this monthly cost will drop to $200. A single man or woman, electing the same $1,000 annual deductible would only pay about $160 per month and $50 per month if he chooses the higher deductible. Either deductible means that you pay up to that amount out of your pocket before the health insurance takes over. So there’s fact number one: The higher the deductible, the lower the premium cost.

Let’s look at another option called short-term insurance. If you will only need coverage for the next six months or so when you will start a new job, you can purchase a policy that will cover you for this period quite inexpensively. These policies do exclude prior medical conditions and reimburse less of your costs. There are also policies that are very inexpensive because they set a low upper limit for costs they will cover. Once that limit is reached, you’re on your own.

Another good recommendation is to utilize the services of an experienced insurance agent to explain the complexities, define your real needs and help you select the best policies at the lowest cost.

Finally, if you are unfortunate enough to have a very-low or no income, there are state agencies that will cover 100% of your medical and hospital costs once you apply and demonstrate you have no real assets. Many seniors over 65 who have Medicare, receive coverage from the state for everything not covered by Medicare. There are many ways to get affordable health insurance.