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Health Insurance: Medicare, Medicaid & Cobra? What Does It All Mean

Guest post by: John Clark

Article Overview: Health Insurance: Medicare, Medicaid & Cobra? What Does It All Mean

Health Insurance: Medicare, Medicaid & Cobra? What Does It All Mean

Health insurance contains many confusing terms. Among these are Medicare, Medicaid, and Cobra. All three are government programs that help out different groups of people. Their similarities mostly end there. What is Medicare?

Medicare is the federal government provided program for health insurance. It was designed to cover the majority of people who are sixty-five years of age and older. There are few other younger people who can also qualify for coverage, such as people suffering from permanent kidney failure caused by End Stage Renal Disease and also some disabled people.

Medicare covered individuals are also known as beneficiaries. While medicare will pay for a great deal of these beneficiaries' health care, it does not cover the entire amount. Medicare does pay for the majority of medical conditions from which patients generally get better. Its limitations lie in expenses associated with assisted living facilities, home given care, nursing homes, and chronic diseases or long lasting illness. Medicare does not cover the majority of these needs. Many people suffer from significant lack of coverage in their prescription medication plans as well.

h4>What is Medicaid?

Medicaid is a completely separate program from Medicare. The government created it to help out families who struggle with low income so that they are able to have health care for the adults and children in the family. Besides this, Medicaid provides health care coverage for people who live below the federally set level of poverty. Medicaid provides for doctor visits, emergency room visits, other hospital visits, medicines, prenatal care, and other treatment needs.

Besides these groups of people, Medicaid provides for children less than six years of age who are in families with low income. It also covers foster and adopted children and other kids less than nineteen years of age who belong to families living under the poverty level. Besides this, it helps out the recipients of supplemental security income, some medicare beneficiaries, groups that are specially protected, and a few other people that each state chooses to help. For the majority of people getting welfare, they will also be eligible.

What is Cobra?

COBRA is a program that the government created to help some people keep their pre existing health care coverage going at special group rates. The people who can be covered by this include retirees, children, former spouses and spouses, and former employees. The coverage is limited to those who lose coverage for special situations, like with the termination of employment. This continuation of coverage typically costs more than active employee coverage. The reason for this is that the people using COBRA also have to pay the employer's portion of the coverage. COBRA is still cheaper than most individual health care coverage.

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Article Tags: cobra, health insurance, insurance, medicaid, medicare, medicare medicaid
Referred by: http://www.franchisefix.com/



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