Health insurance is one of the most common kinds of insurance plans we may find in every part of the world. In a nutshell, in this type of plan the insurer (the insurance company) pays every medical costs in the case of the insured suffers from some disease after the signing of the contract (if such disease is among the covered causes). Health insurance plans in general also cover other cases that require medical treatment, such as accidents. It’s interesting to mention that when health insurance was first created (around 1700) it only covered diseases or accidents that led the injured to some physical disability.

There are basically two types of insurers. They might be whether private companies or government agencies. Depending of the country, the government offers a highly qualified public health system, so people are able to rely on the public health insurance in case of any unexpected events. However, the quality of public health and availability of public health insurance plans depend on the country.

Health insurance plans also don’t cover any experimental treatment, which is a very controversial issue, since many diseases that are supposedly incurable may be treated with some experimental procedure, but as insurance plans in general don’t allow treatments until they become standard medical practice, patients have to deal with high costs to find some kind of treatment. It happened frequently when organ transplantations started to be practiced.

Within the near future, the health insurance industry is expected to suffer a high pressure. With the current technological advances regarding DNA testing and mapping, scientists will be able to know beforehand previously unknown diseases or risk factors that involve genetic make up, what may lead health insurance companies to become extremely selective to try to limit the number of high-risk clients. It is expected to take place deep and authoritative changes in the way such market is managed.