When people have the information and support they need to confidently understand and use their healthcare benefits, they can make better decisions and improve their health outcomes. This can also help with healthcare cost management.
This series explores health insurance basics, from the industry’s history and the roles of different plan sponsors to the key terms and processes that shape the healthcare experience.
Health insurance does more than protect one person at a time. When more people have health coverage, the whole community benefits. Healthcare delivery groups can plan and invest for the long term, people can get care when they need it, and the community attracts high-quality care providers. This helps improve health for individuals, families, and communities.
Elevance Health Chief Health Officer
Our industry must help members through the challenges presented by a shifting healthcare landscape. We’re embracing that responsibility with humility and intention, because we know trust is earned, and we believe a better approach to health and healthcare is not only possible — it’s essential.
Chief Financial Officer, Elevance Health President, Carelon
What Is the Purpose of Health Insurance?
Health insurance exists to help people get—and pay for—the care they need. It helps pay for covered medical services, from routine checkups and preventive screenings to emergency care, prescriptions, hospital stays, and ongoing treatment for serious or chronic conditions.
Types of Health Insurance in the U.S.
Health insurance coverage in the United States reflects more than a century of economic shifts, public policy decisions, and efforts to increase access and distribute financial risk. The types of health insurance coverage available today—employer-sponsored plans, individual policies, Medicare, and Medicaid—developed in response to market forces, government policies, and changing demographics while reinforcing a shared-risk arrangement.
Common Health Insurance Terms Everyone Should Know
Building a better understanding of health insurance includes becoming familiar with common terms. From premiums to provider networks, being familiar with these concepts makes it easier to anticipate costs, choose the right coverage, and access necessary services.
Maximizing Benefits: How Informed Decisions Shape Healthcare
Making the most of health insurance benefits means understanding processes and documents that apply to everyone and, at the same time, are specific to each individual. From open enrollment to explanations of benefits, knowing how these pieces fit together helps people make more informed healthcare decisions.
Ideas, Research, and Action
A Whole Health Story
Addressing the Cost of Healthcare: Relief for Today, Solutions for TomorrowAs a partner in health, it’s our role — and our responsibility — to help manage healthcare costs on both fronts, making it easier for people to get the care they need. To do so, we’re focused on lowering costs, improving health outcomes, and making healthcare easier to navigate.
Elevance Health Impact
From Payer to Partner: How We’re Working to Make Healthcare BetterWhat health insurance companies do is about more than policies and processes. It’s about being an active partner in health with the people and communities we serve. And we agree that we have work to do to improve health insurance and the overall health system.
A Consumer-Centered Health System
The Role of a Health Plan Today: Prioritizing a Broader Approach, a Simplified Experience, and Personalized CareA cancer diagnosis. A mental health crisis. An unexpected health concern during pregnancy. From employer-sponsored health insurance to government-sponsored programs, health plans are evolving to better support their members in a broader range of situations that affect health.