Eye Care Insurance -- Do You Need It?

Although it is without a doubt imperative to have healthy eyes, it may or may not be critical to have vision insurance. Many insurance shoppers overvalue this insurance and pay too much for it.

To know whether you a dollars worth of coverage for every dollar spent when you pay for vision coverage, it is crucial to know what vision or eye insurance covers and what it doesn't cover. Having a good understanding of the limitations of eye insurance is necessary to determine whether you should pay extra for the coverage.

You will want to know what the extra coverage will include. Vision or eye insurance covers expenses that are associated with corrective lenses. Typically eye or vision coverage will cover an eye exam. It may also cover part of the cost of contacts or glasses.

It is also important to know what it doesn’t cover. optical insurance does not cover the medical expenses associated with eye trauma or diseases that impact the eye. Medical insurance will usually cover these medical costs.

Your vision or eye coverage nor your medical coverage is likely to include coverage for laser eye surgery. Surgery to improve vision is usually specifically excluded by health insurance policies. This is different from surgery to restore vision.

The typical health insurance policy will not include coverage for corrective lenses. Typical health insurance policies don't cover for the eye exams you will need to buy corrective lenses. Corrective lenses can be either prescription contact lenses or prescription glasses.

Costs associated with eye trauma and organic diseases that affect the eye are still paid for as part of the medical benefit. A separate eye care insurance rider is not necessary to have an eye injury covered. Many consumers pay extra for vision or eye coverage because they assume that their medical insurance policy will not cover anything associated with vision.

When looking at medical coverage policies that include eye coverage, be sure to see how what is and isn't included in the coverage. Since some vision insurance policies will cover the exam only, those policies are less valuable than policies that will not only cover the examination but will also pay towards glasses.

Another issue to consider is the availability of eye care professionals. Most insurance policies will limit the places you can go to have your eye examination to network providers. You should make sure that there are eye care professionals near you and that you will feel comfortable using those opticians or optometrists.

There is no point in paying extra for eye care coverage only to find that none of the in network providers are ones you can or want to use. Often consumers will routinely check to make sure that their doctors are in the network, but will forget to check for dentists and optometrists.

Knowing the value of your coverage is essential if you are going to make the right choice. If the eye care coverage only includes an annual examination, you should call an eye doctor and determine the fee for an eye examination. If the policy also pays something toward prescription glasses you should add that to the cost of the examination. Multiply the cost by the number of family members that will be covered. Then divide that cost by 12 of your policy premiums are being paid monthly. This will allow you to properly compare your cost of having eye or vision coverage with the extra cost for the coverage.

Eye or vision coverage is often worth the additional costs, but often it won't be. Sometimes consumers will compare different plans that are otherwise the same and choose the one that has eye or vision coverage without the weighing the costs verses the benefits. You now know how to look at the policies like a professional would and only pay extra if the extra coverage is worth the extra price.