About.com Rating

If you are searching for the best and most affordable health insurance coverage available, one good place to begin your search is eHealthinsurance. The company is one of the most well-known and established health insurance websites in the industry. Vip Patel founded the online health insurance agency as a result of a bout with food poisoning as a college student in the 1980s. After not being able to find a health insurance company for individuals in the telephone listings, Patel developed the concept of an Internet-based health insurance company in 1997.

Since its early days, eHealthInsurance has written over 3,000,000 health insurance policies. You can also get a quote for dental, vision, travel insurance and business health insurance. The parent company of eHealthInsurance is eHealth, Inc. You can shop for coverage and buy a health insurance policy on the website in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. The company went public in 2006 and is traded on Nasdaq with the ticker symbol of EHTH.

How it Works

On the eHealthInsurance website, you can search for health insurance quotes by entering your personal information and then being matched to insurance company partners. All personal information entered on the website is secure and protected through TRUSTe technology. Some of eHealthInsurance’s company partners include Aetna, IHC Group, Humana, Assurant Health, BlueCross, Kaier Permanent and UnitedHealthOne. The availability of a certain health insurance company may be limited by your geographic location. Once you have purchased a policy, eHealthInsurance continues to provide services on your policy.

The website has 24 hour support to answer any questions and provide assistance.

You can find much helpful health insurance information on this website including the basics of health insurance for individuals and businesses as well as providing information news about health insurance on the website’s blog. There is a health insurance glossary, a free book about individual health insurance and tutorials about health insurance, Medicare, health care reform and general health insurance advice.

There are some unique and helpful features of the eHealthInsurance website that you might not find available on other websites:

• Doctor Lockup Tool: This tool allows you to find out if your doctor accepts the health insurance plan you are about to purchase
  
  
• eApproval: This is instant approval (within 3 minutes) after submitting your application. This feature is only available with certain selected health insurance companies.
  
  
• Mobile Applications: eHealthinsurance offers mobile applications for smartphones, iPhone and Android mobile phones.

Company Rating

As one of the oldest health insurance websites in existence, eHealthInsurance has been recognized and awarded by prominent business and insurance industry professionals. Some of these distinctions include receiving the “Kiplinger’s Best Insurance Site” award every year since 2006. The company’s excellent performance has also been publicly recognized by Silicon Valley Deloitte Technology, Upside Magazine, Compterword Premier 100 and InfoWorld CTO 25. The company has an “A+” rating with the Better Business Bureau.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Easy to shop for and buy a health insurance policy
• Service after the sale
• Excellent customer service record
• Top-rated insurance company partners

Cons

• No ability to quote or buy other lines of insurance
• Some insurance companies may charge a non-refundable application fee for completing a health insurance application.

The Bottom Line

I found the eHealthInsurance website to be very thorough in explaining the procedure for shopping for insurance and buying a policy. The company is very professional and offers service before, during and after the health insurance application process. The company partners are reputable and you can rely on their financial stability. I would recommend this site to individuals and business owners who need to shop for and purchase a health insurance policy. To shop for health insurance, you can visit the eHealthInsurance website or call 1-800-977-8860.