Before getting New Mexico Health Insurance you should carry out a fundamental analysis of your requirements when it comes to purchasing health insurance in New Mexico, because there are a number of different ways that you can get covered, and you may well find after research that some of them are considerably preferable to others.
In many ways the question of how much health insurance you really need is a bit like enquiring how long a piece of string is! The fact is that you can always do with more health insurance and better cover, but like anything else there are trade-offs to purchasing that additional cover, and opportunity costs in the form of the other things that you cannot then spend the money on.
According to statistics from the Kaiser Family Foundation, New Mexico has one of the worst rates of people who are uninsured and who do not have any New Mexico Health Insurance Cover. That figure stands at 21%, which means that 424,400 people in New Mexico do not have any access to health care.
Much of the thrust of the Affordable Care Act which will fully come into force in January 2014 is to combat exactly this problem, and to endeavor to make sure that everyone has access to affordable healthcare.
Of the remaining 79% of people there are very high numbers of people who are already on government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid to provide them with health care (35% of the total, or 713,700 people); 39% (781,000 people) get their insurance through employer based Group New Mexico Health Insurance Plans, and just 3% through Individual New Mexico Health Insurance Plans.
What are most striking about these statistics from New Mexico are both the relatively low proportion of people who get their insurance through employer and individual schemes; and the relatively high proportion of people in New Mexico who only get health care with government assistance.
For example, the figure of 39% for employer insurance plans in New Mexico is fully 10% less than the average in the country as a whole of 49%, and is in fact the lowest of any of the states. By comparison, in New Hampshire (the highest), the rate for employer insurance plans is 62%, 23 points higher, and in addition government assistance programs are 22% compared to 35% in New Mexico.
The reason that statistics relating to Group New Mexico Health Insurance Plans is so interesting is that historically this has been the cheapest way for most normal families to get health insurance cover.
Employers tend to considerably subsidize their group policies, because providing a good health plan has become something of a required recruitment aid to ensure that you get the best people to work for you. And so when the rates of group policies are low in comparison to other methods of getting insurance cover, it is indicative of wider problems in the state’s economy.
This is further backed up by the figures for participation in government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, because over a third of the population of New Mexico is enrolled, and also the low levels of purchasing of Individual New Mexico Health Insurance which stands at just 3%, which is much lower than the national average of 5%.
Nevertheless, it is possible to get good quality health insurance in New Mexico, but just like the other states the best way to find it is to get some quotes and to compare the features and benefits of the different policies.
