When you mention health insurance most people picture traditional group or individual health insurance, designed to cover you in the long term and allowing for routine visits to the doctor and such things as prescription drug coverage. However, for many people, such as those who are between jobs or in part-time or temporary agency employment, traditional health insurance is not always readily available. In these and similar circumstances you may therefore decide to turn to short term or temporary health insurance to protect you in the event of accident or illness.

As its name suggests, temporary health insurance is designed to cover a short term gap in normal health insurance coverage for any number of different reasons and is issued in the expectation that it will be your intention to resume normal health insurance coverage in due course. Accordingly, it is designed essentially for accidents and injury and provides cover for emergency treatment and medical expenses such as ambulance fees, intensive care treatment and limited hospital expenses, including such things as x-rays. Temporary health insurance does not however normally cover routine medical treatment, including regular visits to a physician, and generally also excludes any pre-existing conditions. This said, as with health insurance plans in general, short term health insurance plans do vary quite considerably and some provide greater coverage than others.

Temporary plans also vary considerably in terms of cost and typically range from a monthly premium of $25 up to $100, with a deductible of anywhere from about $200 to $5,000. Plans today do however generally have quite reasonable maximum payouts of generally between about $1 million and $2 million. Plans can normally be taken out for anywhere from 30 days to 6 months and, in some cases, as much as one year. It is rare however for a short term plan to run for more than 12 months.

Temporary health insurance is very widely available today and a simple search on your favorite Internet search engine will produce a long list of companies providing temporary health insurance plans. The Internet also provides the ideal place to compare different plans.

Remember however when you are looking for short term cover to check out not only the plan (including such things as the cover provided, plan exclusions, monthly premium and deductible) but also the company providing the plan to ensure that you not only get the cover you require, but also the service you need when it comes to making a claim.

Medical Health InsuranceToday.com provides advice on purchasing affordable health insurance and also provides further details on short term health insurance cover.

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