Health Module

Unit 3:  Understanding Health Insurance

Lesson 2: Choosing a Health Insurance Plan       AHS

While some advanced ESOL learners might do well with this lesson, the topic is fairly complex.   It is recommended for AHS rather than ESOL.

Materials Needed:

• flipchart or board, markers or chalk.

• Computers with Internet access

• Website www.insurance.com

• Handouts 1 (Making Health Insurance Choices), 2(Choosing the Right Plan), 3a (plan comparison chart) and 3b (example page) and 4(writing/presentation assignment)

Word Bank:

(Vocabulary from Unit 3, Lesson 1, is a prerequisite.)

prenatal
commercial
demographic
private
spouse
applicant
approved
consider

 Introductory Activity:  Whole group discussion

• How do you get health insurance?  What are some ways to get it? (through job or paying independently for private insurance)
• Usually when you get insurance through a job, you can choose between a few different insurance plans.  The premiums for the plans are different, and they offer different coverage, or payments for your medical care.  What are some of the things you need to think about when choosing insurance?  Did anyone here have to make decisions about insurance before?

Activity 1: What do you need in health insurance?

Distribute Handout 1.  Have students work in pairs to maximize interaction.  All instructions are provided on the handout.

•  Now we will think about what kinds of things are important for you personally in looking for health insurance.  I'm going to give you a handout with instructions for using a government website.  This website will tell you things to consider about health insurance.

Activity 2:  Choosing between Plans

In this activity the learner will identify their own or their family’s demographic details and use them to locate insurance plan choices on a website.  The learner will then compare two plans and determine which is the most suited to his/her family's or individual needs.  Distribute Handout 2.  You will need to distribute Handout 3a and Handout 3b, its example page, as students come to the end of Handout 2.

You might want to discuss the difference between government and commercial sites.  The commercial site may only be presenting information on plans that belong to the company which maintains the site, or plans of companies who have contracted for promotion with the site operator.

• Now we're going to use a commercial website to look at to see what private insurance you or your family qualify for, and to compare different insurance plans.

      Instructions are on the handout.

You might want to go over the example page for Handout 3 as a whole class before students do their own comparisons to make sure everyone understands the task.

Students may be reluctant to enter personal information as directed in handout 2.  It might be helpful to run through it using your own or fictitious information, to show learners that they are not committing to anything.

When everyone is finished, debrief the activity as a whole group.

• What did you find out about the insurance plans?  Did you find anything that looked good?  Did anything surprise you?  If you have insurance now, was the cost of the private plans the same as what you pay through your job, or different?  What is your opinion about health insurance now?

Activity 3:  Writing or Oral Presentation Expansion

This activity could be done in small groups also.  They could list their ideas on a piece of flip chart paper and present them to the whole group.

Students can write and/or give a presentation to the class on their opinions of health care and whether or not reform is needed.  Instructions are on Handout 4.