Primary, Secondary, and Supplemental Health Insurance: What are the Differences?

Types of Health Insurance
Distinguishing between your health insurance plans and how they work with one another can be a bit confusing. Hopefully, the information below will shed some light on this matter.- Primary: For people with more than one health insurance plan, one of them will be the primary payer. Usually, this is your employer-sponsored health insurance. Even if you buy comprehensive health insurance through your spouse, your own health plan will be the designated primary health coverage. The primary payer will pay your medical claim first, but only up to your policy’s limit.
- Secondary: This is the insurance plan that pays the remaining portion of your medical claim. You’ll first submit your claim to your primary and then your secondary payer will cover the rest (up to the policy’s limit).
- Supplemental: This type of health coverage is somewhat different from the first two we’ve discussed. You purchase it on your own as additional insurance to cover healthcare that is not provided under your primary plan. For most people, this would be vision care and dental care. Supplemental insurance will pay for deductibles, co-insurance, and co-payments. But it doesn’t replace your primary insurance. It only supplements any out-of-pocket costs you may incur.