Health Insurance

Summary

This practice note explains fundamental legal and regulatory concepts affecting health insurance policies and provides practical guidance to attorneys working with stakeholders including insurers, insureds, and participating providers. Health insurance is a distinct type of insurance that is routinely joined with life insurance into a unified line of insurance. Life and health insurance fall within the broad category of personal insurance. Health insurance is sometimes called sickness insurance. That can be confusing because the term sickness insurance may also be used for policies designed to pay benefits for specific maladies (e.g., cancer coverage). As a group, the latter kinds of policies are sometimes called critical illness policies. There are also similar policies that pay a per diem amount of money to the insured for each day the insured is hospitalized or for a cause specified in the policy.