Eye Care Insurance Too Expensive?

Sep 29
07:41

2010

Alston J. Balkcom

Alston J. Balkcom

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While It is undeniably imperative to have good vision, it may or may not be crucial to have vision insurance. Many shopping for medical insurance overvalue this insurance and over pay.

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While It is undeniably imperative to have good vision,Eye Care  Insurance Too Expensive? Articles it may or may not be crucial to have vision insurance.  Many shopping for medical insurance overvalue this insurance and over pay.

To know whether you a dollars worth of coverage for every dollar spent when you buy eye coverage, it is vital to know what vision insurance covers and what it doesn't reimburse for.  Knowing the limitations of vision or eye insurance is necessary to determine whether you should pay extra for the coverage.

You should know what the extra insurance will include.  Eye or vision insurance covers expenses that are associated with contact lenses or eye glasses.  Typically vision or eye coverage will cover an eye examination.  It may also cover part of the cost of prescription glasses or contact lenses.

You should also know what it doesn’t cover.  eye coverage does not cover the expenses associated with eye injuries or diseases that impact the eye.  Medical insurance will usually cover these medical expenses.

Neither your vision coverage nor your medical insurance is likely to include coverage for laser eye surgery.  Surgery to improve vision is usually specifically excluded by health care insurance policies.  This is different from surgery to repair your eyes.

The typical health care coverage policy will  not include coverage for corrective lenses.  Typical health insurance policies will also exclude coverage for the eye examinations  you will need to buy corrective lenses. Corrective lenses can be either prescription contacts or prescription glasses.

Costs associated with eye injuries and organic diseases that affect the eye are still paid for as part of the health benefit.  A separate optical coverage rider is not necessary to have eye trauma covered.  Many people pay extra for vision coverage because they assume that their medical policy will not cover anything associated with the medical care of your eyes.

When comparing medical coverage policies that include eye insurance, be sure to see how extensive their coverage is.  Since some insurance policies will offer a free examination and nothing else, those plans are less valuable than vision plans that will not only cover the examination but will also pay towards glasses.

Another issue to consider is the availability of eye care professionals.  Most policies will limit the places you can go to have your eye examination to network providers.  You should make sure that there are opticians or optometrists near you and that you will feel comfortable using those eye care professionals.

Don't pay for vision or eye coverage only to find that none of the in network vision care providers are ones you can or want to visit.  Often consumers will automatically check to make sure that their physicians are in the network, but will forget to check for dentists and opticians.

Knowing the value of your coverage is essential if you are going to make the right choice.  If the vision or eye coverage only includes an annual exam, you should contact an optician or an optometrist and ask what they charge for an eye examination.  If the policy also pays something toward prescription glasses you should add that to the cost of the exam.  Multiply the cost by the number of family members that will be covered.  Then divide that cost by 12 of your policy premiums are being paid monthly.  This will allow you to properly compare the added cost of having eye or vision coverage with the additional premium for the coverage.

Optical insurance is often worth the additional money, but for many scenarios it won't be.  Sometimes people will compare different plans that are otherwise the same and choose the one that has eye care insurance without the doing the math.  Now you know how to compare plans and buy the one that is right for you.