Health Insurance

How to find and keep affordable health insurance

The editors at the Health Insurance Resource Center have gathered the best information from across the Internet, plus an ever-expanding collection of original content, to help you put together the pieces of the health insurance puzzle:

Finding affordable coverage for your family can be confusing. We provide several tools to help you make better choices.

• glossary of medical insurance terms
• information on high risk insurance pools.
• Frequently-asked questions on health insurance
• get a quote on health insurance
• Self-employed health insurance

What can you do to provide low cost health insurance for your family?

Here at the Health Insurance Resource Center, we strive to make you a better-informed consumer to aid you in your quest to secure and keep adequate health insurance protection for your family, regardless of your personal situation.

Lack of health insurance an epidemic - what should be done?

Nearly 16 percent of Americans -- about 47 million people -- are uninsured. According to a story last year in USAToday, the people without health insurance aren't just the poor -- they are all of us. Medical bills are the cause of more than half of all personal bankruptcies in the United States. Access to health insurance and health care that is safe and affordable is easily the biggest domestic crisis facing us.

Lacking a national push, many states have begun seeking ways to tackle the health insurance problem on their own, and we talk about some of these initiatives on our state-specific pages. We also have links to the contact forms for your elected officials, so you can easily lend your support, or offer alternative ideas, on how how to solve the nation's individual health insurance crisis.

Urge Congress and the states to act -- a call to action

On our state-specific pages you'll also find information on where and how to contact representatives in each state legislature and in the U.S. Congress, so that you can urge them to work toward better health care access options, whether through universal health care, guaranteed issue or expansion of state risk pools. Contact a member of the House of Representatives. Contact a US Senator. Contact the White House.

You'll also find information about the quality of health care in each listed state, and links to health insurance information for those states which can be found elsewhere on the Web which our editors have reviewed and chosen for you.

In the News:

The Washington Times -- NEW YORK -- Cynthia Casey's husband was in the hospital with a failing liver when she was laid off in September, stranding the family without health insurance. Medical bills were piling up. She had two teenagers to feed and a weekly unemployment check of less than $300. Read the story.

MSNBC.com -- WASHINGTON -- The push for paperless prescriptions is about to get a boost: Starting in January, doctors who e-prescribe can get bonus pay from Medicare. For patients, the benefits are obvious -- from shorter drugstore waits to increased safety, as pharmacists no longer squint to decipher doctors' messy handwriting. Read the story.