When searching for a new health insurance policy, the process can be somewhat confusing at times. It's wise to have a good understanding of the health insurance system and research several health insurance quotes before purchasing a new policy. Health insurance gaps (having coverage and then losing it for one reason or another), can also affect this process and the prices you pay dramatically. This makes it important to understand the role that health insurance gaps and health insurance risks play in the formulation of your health insurance quotes.

Health insurance companies are operating based entirely on risk factors that their customers might represent. Being profit based businesses; they of course do not want to pay out on any claims more than necessary. They try to minimize claims that they may have to pay out on by determining the level of risk that a client represents. If an individual is in excellent health and fairly young, not possessing any high risk behaviors, that individual could probably find an insurance policy from any number of health insurance companies at a very low price.

However, if an individual possesses one or more health risks, he or she would quickly see their health insurance quotes become very expensive. This is because certain risk factors have been determined statistically to cost the insurance company money. They, therefore try to recoup these losses by charging more to the individuals representing the greater risk. In some cases, if the risk factors are determined to be too high, the insurance company may choose to no insure the individual at all.

Some of the biggest risk factors are if an individual is overweight or smokes cigarettes. Both of these factors have been proven to be direct causes of myriad other health problems which can be very serious and extremely costly. Obesity can cause diabetes which is a debilitating disease and which has many different health costs related to it, from hospital visits to testing supplies to insulin treatments. Smoking cigarettes can exasperate a number of other troublesome health conditions as well as lead to cancer development, both in the lungs and otherwise. Of course the risks and costs associated with cancer and its treatment are astronomical.

In order to determine if a client possesses any health insurance risks, many insurance companies require a full physical exam before issuing any health insurance quotes. This way they can gauge the level of risk a client represents. Because health insurance gaps represent a time when a person was uninsured and therefore not being treated or examined, health insurance companies view these gaps as equally risky and try to stay away from them.