Individual health insurance,
built around your budget.

Individual health insurance is coverage you buy for yourself or your family instead of getting it through an employer. You choose the plan, you pay the premium, and the coverage belongs to you, so it does not end when a job does. It is sold through the government marketplace and directly by private insurance carriers.

That is the whole definition, and the word "individual" is the key: it describes who owns the plan, not how many people it covers. An individual plan can cover one person, a couple, or a whole household. What it is not is group insurance, the employer kind, where a company picks the options and pays part of the bill.

Millions of people carry individual coverage: self-employed workers and contractors, employees whose jobs do not offer insurance, part-timers, people between jobs, and people who retire before Medicare eligibility begins, at 65 for most people. If you are on this page because one of those describes you, the next two sections cover where to buy and how to choose.

How is it different from a job-based plan?

Three differences do most of the explaining. First, who pays: employers typically cover a large share of a group plan's premium, and with individual coverage the whole bill is yours, which is why the sticker price surprises people leaving a job. Second, who chooses: instead of the one or two options an employer picked, you choose the carrier, the network, and the deductible yourself, which is more work and more control. Third, who keeps it: a job-based plan typically ends when the job does, while an individual plan is yours through job changes, contract work, and everything in between.

None of this makes one kind better. If an employer offers you coverage and pays most of the premium, that is usually hard to beat. Individual coverage exists for everyone without that offer, and for people whose work life changes too often to keep re-qualifying for someone else's plan.

Four questions settle most cases.

Your health history. If you have significant conditions that need covered treatment, the marketplace's guaranteed acceptance is built for you, and that is the honest answer. If you are generally healthy, both routes are open and the comparison is worth making.

Your income. Marketplace premium help is income-based. In a qualifying year it can change the math decisively; in a higher-income year it may not apply at all, which puts both routes at full price and makes the comparison about the plans themselves.

Your timing. Inside open enrollment, or within about 60 days of a qualifying life event, both doors are open. Outside those windows, private underwritten plans are typically the door that still opens this month.

Your doctors. If keeping specific doctors matters to you, the deciding detail is the plan's network, not the route you bought it through. PPO plans are the type most often chosen for network breadth, and any specific plan's network is a thing to verify by name before enrolling.