Insurance Basics: Home

Palliative Care and Shared Decision Making

Palliative care is medical care that tries to relieve discomfort and stress for people with serious illnesses. It focuses on improving quality of life for patients and their families. Palliative care doesn’t try to cure the illness.

Palliative Care and Shared Decision Making
Flexible Spending Plans

Flexible spending plans let you set aside money from your paycheck. You can use it to pay for care before meeting your deductible, and for copays and coinsurance afterward.

Flexible Spending Plans
Insured and Self-Insured Plans

Employers offer health coverage to their workers in several ways. Some buy an “off the shelf” plan from a commercial insurance company.

Provider Networks

Your plan may contract with doctors, dentists and other healthcare practitioners; hospitals; labs; radiology facilities; pharmacies and other types of providers. These are the providers in your “network”.

When Out-of-Network Care Can be Covered In Network

Receiving care from a provider in your health plan´s network usually costs you much less than going to an out-of-network provider.

Major Life Events and Planning for Health Insurance

Sometimes you know ahead of time that a major event will happen in your life. Examples might include getting married or divorced, changing jobs or having a baby. Other times, such as at a death, you may not have advance warning.