Low Cost Health Insurance

If you do enough research and navigate the market carefully, you may be able to find more than one form of low cost health insurance. For example, you would learn that children might actually be eligible for free or low cost health insurance.

Obviously, to any parent, their children are their greatest concern. They work hard to provide for them putting food on the table and a roof over their heads all so they can grow up strong, healthy, smart, and with good character. But, still, parents worry about their children. They have to. It’s part of their job. They worry especially if their children don’t have health insurance.

However, every state in the United States of America runs a free or low cost health insurance program for infants, children, and teens. It’s available to children in working families. This free to low cost health insurance pays for: doctor visits, prescription medicines, hospitalizations, and more.

Children that do not currently have health insurance are likely to be eligible, even if their parents are working. Different states have different eligibility rules, but, in most states, uninsured children 18 years old and younger, whose families earn up to $34,100 a year for a family of four are eligible for this free to low cost health insurance.

The state of Illinois was the first state in the nation to provide affordable, low-cost health insurance for every child. Governor Rod R. Blagojevich started this program officially on July 1, 2006. It grew out of his concerns about the 250,000 uninsured children in Illinois and how more than half came form working and middle class families who earn too much to qualify for other low cost insurance programs like KidCare, but not enough for private health insurance. Now with All Kids Low Cost Health Insurance, comprehensive health insurance becomes available to every uninsured child at rates their parents can afford.

The All-Kids low cost health insurance program offers Illinois’s uninsured children comprehensive health care including: doctor’s visits, hospital stays, prescription drugs, vision care, dental care, and medical devices like eyeglasses and asthma inhalers. Parents pay monthly premiums for this low cost health insurance, but rates for middle-income families are significantly lower than they are on the private market. For instance, a family of four that earns between $40,000 and $59,000 annually would pay $40 for a monthly premium per child and a $10 co-payment per physician visit.

Providing every child with this low health care costs means better attendance and performance in Illinois’s schools and it also reduces the pressure on insurance premiums. It can also boost local economies and improve productivity in the workplace.

Also, morally speaking, it is the right thing to do. It gives more children the chance to grow up healthy and make significant contributions to society. Children who have health insurance generally have better health throughout their childhood and into their teens. And children who stay healthy have more time to focus on their studies and are less likely to miss any school days due to illness.