It is imperative for consumers to understand health cover underwriting before they purchase health insurance. A health plan is generated through the process of underwriting which looks into several aspects such as age, sex, and health history. The underwriting decides the costs to provide to your health care when you apply for one. The plan will be completed through the underwriting process before the insurance company would accept you and they are obliged to have an actuarial basis for decision making.

What are your rights? A plan may not approve you based on your health history, but it may not deny your insurance because of your race, colour, religion, marital status, or sexual orientation, whether you have a physical or mental disability, have a family history of genetic disease or being a victim of abuse. A health plan also does not require any HIV test for the application.

As we all know, insurance companies decide on the approval by looking at the applicant’s health plans which require the applicant’s health history information. You are required to complete the enrollment application by answering all the questions honestly so that the actuarial can underwrite your health insurance. If you intentionally provide false information, the plan may rescind your insurance coverage.

Since there are various and uncountable amount of insurance companies all over the world, they may not provide a 100% similar underwriting guidelines for actuarial. Each health plan of a company has its unique underwriting guidelines although they may be similar in several aspects. The guidelines make take your health conditions, height and weight standards, health history, health care service utilization, lifestyle or behaviour into producing an underwriting for you.

For your information, health insurance underwriting procedure may differ on an individual basis and family or group. The underwriter might not be able to judge each individual in the group separately; instead the underwriter will consider the hazards of the company before insuring the group. This is done by providing insurance to groups that are similar.

If you still wish to find out more on the underwriting procedures, you may proceed to various insurance companies for more information. It is better to find out more rather than to be on the losing side.