What Consumer Guided Health Insurance Means

What Consumer Guided Health Insurance Means: "Consumer Guided Health Insurance is designed to help fix the traditional health insurance system, in which costs have been spiraling out of control for decades. The idea is to let consumers apply their own common sense about cost and value to health care, then make smart buying decisions — just like they would for any other purchase. Simply put: when customers can see real value, they can choose real value and minimize out-of-pocket costs. To make Consumer Guided plans work, HealthMarkets is using new insurance ideas and technologies that make it much easier for our customers to be smart consumers of their own health care. For instance, our plans are the first to show relative cost information for different doctors and hospitals nationwide — with information for over 400,000 doctors and 45,000 facilities for more than 20,000 procedures readily available to customers, to help them choose the best value. Consumer Guided Health Insurance rewards consumers who become involved in the process of knowing their plan and making decisions related to their health care. These rewards are many — including the ability to attain lower costs for competitive benefits, giving our customers greater freedom to choose a doctor or provider based on their own priorities. That puts the ability to control costs and benefits back in consumers' hands, where it needs to be ."