• Learn how health insurance rating regulations can affect you and your family.cost of healthcare image by Cindy Haggerty from Fotolia.com
  
  Health insurance protects you and your family from financial ruin by providing money for medical expenses when you are sick or injured. Health insurance companies are able to pay these benefits because they assume that only a percentage of their policyholders will need the insurance at any one time. However, health insurance companies also need to be able to rate policyholders in terms of risk in order to provide consistent benefits.
  
  

Pre-Existing Conditions

• A pre-existing condition is a health condition that you have prior to applying for health insurance benefits with your insurance company. Pre-existing conditions are often excluded from health insurance policies unless you have had prior coverage. Many states allow you to use your previous coverage as a credit towards a new policy's exclusion period. For example, if you were covered for 12 months prior to obtaining your new policy, and your new policy has a 12 month exclusion period, then your new insurance policy's exclusion period would be credited by your previous policy's coverage. In this example, you would not be subject to an exclusion period because you maintained coverage for the last 12 months and this coverage will count towards your new policy's exclusion period. Insurance companies are generally not allowed to base rates on pre-existing conditions, though they can typically choose to exclude the condition altogether.
  
  

Current Health Status

• Many states allow health insurance companies to deny coverage to you based on your current health condition. This generally only applies to individual policies, however. Group health insurance laws prohibit denial of coverage due to a subscriber's health status.
  
  

Renewability

• Many states mandate guaranteed renewability. This means that if you have a health condition when your policy is about to expire, and you need to renew your policy, you will be able to renew your policy without worrying about being rejected due to health reasons. In other words, health insurance companies cannot turn you away when renewing your policy because of your health status.