For many Americans, the last place they ever want to spend any length of time is a hospital – either as a patient or as a visitor. Despite the best of intentions by nurses and doctors alike, hospitals tend to carry the same institutional smell and feel, and can often make a person feel sicker upon leaving than when they entered. But no matter how careful the person or how scrupulously they attempt to avoid both injury and disease, almost everyone will spend some amount of time in a hospital bed awaiting treatment. What many people do not realize, however, is the effect that hospital stays can have on their health insurance quotes. While it is common knowledge that hospital stays are expensive, patients are sometimes unaware of not only the amount of strain they can place on health insurance, but the effect they may have on future insurance quotes from the same or a different provider.

It begins when a person is first admitted to the hospital. Everything from the ambulance ride to the drugs administered to the type of bed and room they are placed in are all assigned a dollar value, and insurance plans know exactly how much of each portion of a cost they will cover. In the exclusion listings of many plans, things such as extra pillows or extra food are not covered, and the charge by the hospital for such things is fairly significant. As well, if psychological care is required in addition to physical restoration, there may be insurance gaps as well. Typically, only certain mental health treatments are covered under a standard health insurance plan, and those that are not can be startlingly expensive. A hospital stay of a few days can be expensive – anything more than a week has the possibility to exhaust the annual maximum of a plan.

In addition to the actual cost of the treatments received, an insured must also understand the risk they pose to an insurance company. If, several years after a prolonged stay in a hospital, an insured seeks out new insurance options, they may find that their health insurance quotes have increased significantly from the last time they applied, and this may be in part due to their hospital stay. Anything that presents itself to an insurance company as having the possibility of re-occurring and once again requiring a monetary payout will result in premiums being raised.

This is not to say that all plans do not cover hospital stays, or that hospital care should be avoided – simply that patients need to be aware of what their plan covers and for how long, and what it will mean for them down the road.