Do you feel a pit in your stomach at the thought of choosing health insurance? Does your head spin when you try to distinguish HMO vs. PPO vs. EPO?
Health insurance can be anxiety-inducing, but it’s crucial to have in the case of serious illness or injury. That’s why The Insurance Source, voted the best insurance agency in the Upstate multiple times, aims to make health insurance easier.
“Trying to buy individual health insurance or Medicare or any other type of insurance can be very frustrating because you don’t even know where to start,” said Guy Furay, owner of The Insurance Source. “But it doesn’t have to be. We break it down so that people understand it, and we take the mystery out of insurance. That brings people some sense of comfort immediately because when we can break it down in a way they understand, they are better able to make the decisions for themselves.”
And insurance professionals are exactly the people you need in your corner when trying to navigate the marketplace. Not only do they understand the ins and outs of insurance policies, they also know how health insurance affects your daily life and the struggles that can come with it – or that can come when you don’t have it.
“It’s something that you need to have, and you need it when you really need it,” said Furay. “When the chips are down, you don’t want to be wondering ‘do I have the right policy?’ That can be a scary realization if you don’t. We get the opportunity to ask questions that sometimes he client doesn’t even think of. When it comes to health insurance, they don’t know what they don’t know.”
There are 70 different health care plans available for an individual under 65 in Greenville County. And when you’re trying to approach the insurance marketplace without full knowledge of those plans, you can end up with analysis paralysis – the inability to make a decision when there are too many options placed in front of you.
To fix this feeling of powerlessness, a consultation with a professional who knows the details of insurance plans can help you narrow your options. The Insurance Source takes its job a step beyond that, approaching its clients’ questions with a friendly, personable perspective and the knowledge that the health care needs of an individual may vary.
“One size does not fit all with insurance,” said Furay. “Finding the right fit for a particular client is going to depend on what needs that client has, what their evaluations are and what their desires are. What’s important to them is going to be different from one client to the next. We love that opportunity where we can drill down and find out what’s important to somebody and then do our job to help that person protect that. We help people not only pick the plan but enroll in that plan in a process that’s much easier than the Healthcare.gov process, which takes quite a bit of time and is not always user-friendly.”
As helpful as they are on a one-on-one level, the team at The Insurance Source fights for their clients on a national level as well. Furay serves on the board of Health Agents for America and travels to Washington, D.C., at least twice a year to lobby for improvements to the health care industry and to let politicians know how their decisions affect the people he works with.
“The people in Washington, D.C., aren’t in the same systems that our customers are. So how can they possibly know if they’re not personally affected? And some of them, unfortunately, don’t really care about the people they claim to represent. So we meet with senators and tell them the stories of our clients and the challenges they may have based on how the government acts.”
In a complex and ever-changing world of health insurance, having the right broker on your side to guide you through the buying process can make all the difference. The team at The Insurance Source doesn’t just act as middlemen. They are invaluable partners to their clients and a key asset in securing a healthier future.
By Katherine Waters