One of the things you better realise when you are in the US is that health costs are prohibitively expensive [unless you happen to be a millionaire :) - even then it's a loss to pay relatively high costs out of your own pocket].
For international students who want to buy insurance quickly, it is not feasible to use policies such as those from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which require you to show a physical exam prior to approval and also charge high monthly fees for providing coverage. I am not trying to single out one company here, but just showing you one example of a policy which like many others makes the expenditure by students too high for comfort. The temporary policy from Blue Cross Blue Shield which alone provides flexible month by month coverage [which you would want if you have open plans regarding travel back to your country etc.] has a deductible of $500 which renders the plan useless for small emergencies.
OK, before I make some newbies scratch their heads, let me explain what a deductible means. It turns out, for basic understanding, copay and deductible are terms used to mean almost the same number: the amount you must pay before the insurance company pays any bills. Then, there is the coinsurance which is a percentage that stipulates what fraction of costs beyond the deductible are to be borne by you. Usually it's an 80-20 split meaning you have to pay 20% or a fifth of the cost if your medical bill exceeds the deductible. Add to this the constraint of the coverage rates being valid only for specific groups of health care facilities or hospitals and you as a student get a raw deal in many cases, if you choose regular plans with monthly payment option [imagine having the sense to select the hospital where you have better coverage and looking up the insurance card or document when you have fallen down a flight of stairs and cannot get up!].
Anyway, there are some insurance policies for international students although not numerous. My advice is that you pick one of them. These have slightly better terms than mainstream policies. Don't buy very cheap insurance either, as for the regular policies , this would mean your deductible might be as much as thousands of dollars! Imagine shelling out $1000 of your own money for an X-ray-- I bet most of us as students won't have that much cash lying around our house.
So, those were some simple tips from this simple man for neophytes fighting in faraway lands. On a side note, I found this pretty interesting link which explains to people without a degree in philosophy the movements of 'Enlightenment' and 'Romanticism':
http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/1999/06/15/brin_note/index.html
Also, for those interested in spirituality, here is an interesting interview:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/04/28/ken_wilber/
Apparently, Ken Wilber who is interviewed, is a philosopher who follows an amalgam of teachings of various scholars such as Sri Aurobindo among others. You might recognize SriAurobindo as the 'guru' of 'The Mother', a prominent Hindu 'yogin' who had set up an 'ashram' in Pondicherry near Chennai in India and has several followers. I was familiar with The Mother and surprised to find out that there are many philosophers like Ken Wilber who follow Sri Aurobindo's writings to this day. I am new to spirituality and I am just mentioning things I know here. So, don't think of me as a very spiritual person!
Ciao, boys and girls .
