Shopping for Health Care

**Disclosure: This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of United Healthcare. All thoughts and opinions, as always, are my own.

As most of you know, I’m pregnant right now and due with our first child at the end of December. It is incredibly exciting but it’s also a bit stressful because we have some big decisions to make in the next couple of months. In the midst of doctor’s appointments, working, and getting ready for the baby, my husband and I also need to shop for new health insurance. November is the open enrollment period for our health care plan. We aren’t thrilled with our current plan so we are re-evaluating our options and plan to make a change in our health care plan as of January 1^st, 2015. We can stick with what we currently have, or search for new options. We’ve been pursuing all options right now.

I was talking to the folks at United Healthcare about my situation because we work together each month on these awesome “We Dare You” photo challenges through the Source4Women community. This month’s dare is about how you “Spice Up Your Meal” and we’re giving away a Le Creuset Baking Dish. During our conversation, they mentioned these great video resources that are available online on the UHC website that help customer tackle these same exact issues I’m going through right now. Since I’m self-employed, I don’t have an HR person on-hand to help answer many of my questions so I’ve found this site to be really informative and helpful for me during this period of research and planning for our health care coverage for 2015. The site is broken down into three sections:

• Overall Health Care Reform
• Planning Components
• Details

I went through the site and found the quick videos to be educational and informative. I mean, the subject of health insurance itself is pretty dry, but when you need answers these videos are quick and helpful. The first section covers the basics such as the history of health insurance, health care reform, and what the open enrollment period means. Each video is accompanied by a transcript if you want to quickly scan the info they are covering. Here is a quick video on Why Health Care Reform Matters:

And here’s a video on the History of Health Insurance and how it became a part of an employee’s compensation package in the workplace. I thought this was pretty interesting.

Overall I’ve found the UHC website to be really helpful and a useful guide for how to think about health insurance and a plan that’s right for our family (yes, family…eee!) moving forward.

I will continue to keep you all updated on our quest to figure out the right health insurance plan because I do believe making sure you have proper health care coverage is an important part of living a fit and awesome healthy lifestyle! If anyone has any tips for us, I would love to hear them!

What about you? Do you have health care through your employer or the affordable health care act? How do you inform yourself on the type of health care available to you? Post in the comments and let me know!