Insurance Insights Blog

When you're buying something important you want to make sure you’re getting the best that you can afford. Right now you might be having a hard time finding someone who can tell you what the best is for your health insurance.

Don’t worry, your search can finally come to an end.

My job here at Giangola Insurance is to help identify the “best” plan for you. It’s a question I helped hundreds of people answer every year.

Since Obamacare officially kicked in two years ago, this list has been pretty short. So short that it only featured plans from one health insurance company.

This year I’m relieved to finally be able to put another name on the board.

Let’s get into the list.

You might be starting to go a little cross-eyed after looking at so many different health insurance plans. During your extensive search you might have noticed these three letters that keep showing up next to “Plan Type.” PPO and HMO

This is a question I’ve probably been asked over 1,000 times by people. Here at Giangola Insurance every year during open enrollment I help hundreds of clients make decisions just like this one.

If you want to know the answer to the question is a PPO or HMO better? All you have to do is ask yourself the question do you want the option to see more or less doctors?

When the leaves start falling and the days start to get shorter, you might think it’s time for football, halloween or apple picking. But for the last couple years this time has been dominated by something else.

Signing up for health insurance.

During the first two open enrollment periods, following the official release of the Affordable Care Act (see Obamacare), I’ve helped hundreds of people make their way through the process.

If this is your first time not only dealing with open enrollment, but getting health insurance for yourself, don’t worry. It’s not mine.

So let’s help answer all the questions you might have about this new special time of year.

This article is a continuation of an ongoing series that compares Ohio’s top insurance companies. The goal is to look at the strengths and weakness of each company and how they compare to one another.

Every year at Giangola Insurance, I help hundreds of people sign up for health insurance. What everyone want’s to know is which health insurance company they should consider.

Which is fantastic. It’s important.

Picking the wrong company could lead to not getting the treatment you want/need or paying more money than you should.

This comparison article should help you understand the differences between these two companies.

It’s possible neither company works for you. Being an independent insurance agency, we don’t work for one health insurance company. We work for you.

It’s our job to help you find the right solution even if it's with a company we don't represent.

In this case, it just so happens that we represent both Anthem and Aetna. So I should be able to help if you have any extra questions.

The truth is with health insurance, agents can be appointed with almost any company they want. It's only when a company decides to not to allow agents to sell their policies that we can't. There are only a couple of companies in Ohio that do that.

This is a bit of a trick question.

There is no such thing as a life insurance policy for your family.

Your family doesn’t need life insurance, you need life insurance because you have a family.

A life insurance policy is only sold individually to one person at a time.

Meaning you and your spouse would need to each buy your own separate policy.

Supplemental health insurance couldn’t have a more descriptive, yet confusing name if it tried.

It feels like you should know what this type of insurance does or is suppose to do, but at the same time hearing the word supplement or extra when dealing with your primary health insurance makes you want to lock yourself in a padded room somewhere.

Let’s start with the basics. There are a few different types of supplemental health insurance. The first big distinction you will want/need to make is if it’s for your major medical health insurance or your 65+ Medicare coverage.

It’s very common, almost expected, for you to have a Medicare supplement in addition to your government provided Medicare parts A and B.

It is however much more uncommon for you to have supplemental coverage for your regular old health insurance.

That is until now.

We’re going to spend the rest of this article taking a look at what supplemental health insurance does for your existing (under 65) plans and why in a post Obamacare world they might start to make a little more sense.

As a parent you would do anything for your children and I’m sure they’ve tested your definition of anything over the years. It started out as simple as making sure they ate, slept, were clean and had cloths on (that last one may have been optional depending on the day).

Then you graduated to slightly more complicated tasks like homework, friends and even relationships. Yikes!

I’ve got at least a handful of years before I have to start worrying about that as my kids are only four and two.

You’ve been preparing them their whole life not to need you someday, but no matter how successful you may have been in that quest there’s one thing they can’t seem to do without you.

Making that final choice between health insurance plans is never easy. There’s always that thought in the back of your head that’s telling you, “maybe I’m missing something?” or “What don’t I know about this plan?”

Don’t worry, it’s normal.

That’s why I wanted help you sleep better tonight and go over line by line Medical Mutual’s 6400 HSA (Bronze) plan.

Your knee deep in this health insurance stuff and you're getting close to narrowing down what plan might be right for you and your family.

You want to know more about this gold plan from Aetna and this $5 copay thing sounds interesting.

Chances are you’ve probably heard of Aetna before not only are they the third largest health insurance company in the world, they’re also one of the biggest companies in the world period.

Let’s go in depth and break this plan down line-by-line and help you know exactly what you can expect from it.

So you’ve been researching health insurance plans in Ohio for what feels like three and half life times, even though it’s probably only been a couple weeks.

Your search has led you to this plan from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield and you want to know as much as you can about it before you put it in charge of covering you and/or your family.

Well, I just might be able to help you out with that.

Even though Anthem would win hands down the award for worst, most complicated and confusing health insurance plan names, we are going to do our best today to move past that and go as in-depth as possible to make sure you know everything you need or want to know.

Click here to view the summary of benefits for the Gold Pathway X plan and follow along (Page 25).