It has gotten so bad that right now almost 17% of all Maryland residents are without health insurance coverage of any kind, and with more and more businesses phasing out health insurance or requiring a larger contribution from their employees, the number of uninsured people in Maryland is likely to grow before it shrinks.

If you can get health insurance through your employer you will almost certainly save over trying to buy health insurance individually on your own. But if you are self employed or if your employer does not offer group health insurance then you may need to be a little creative in finding ways to lower the cost of your monthly health insurance premium.

Look at plans that have a higher co-pay for things like doctor's visits. The co-pay is the amount that you pay from your own pocket each time you visit a doctor; the more you can pay for each visit (and so the less your insurance company needs to pay) the lower your monthly premiums will be.

Many people may have to take even more drastic steps in their quest to get affordable health insurance in Maryland. Many people may have to completely rethink their entire concept about health care coverage.

In the past health insurance has been looked on as something that pays (or helps to pay) for all of your health care needs ? each doctor's visit, each clinic visit, each hospital or ER visit, in short, you expected your health insurance to pay for most, if not all, of virtually all of your health care costs.

Today many people are finding that kind of health care beyond their means ? yet they know that one accident or one catastrophic illness can easily wipe out a lifetime of savings and even take their home, all in the blink of an eye.

The answer for many is to buy health insurance that has an extremely high deductible. As high as $2,000 or even $3,000. You buy such a policy with the expectation that you will pay for all of your routine health care needs ? you will pay 100% of every doctor's office visit, every clinic visit and every ER visit.

The purpose of a high-deductible health insurance policy is to act as a safety net in case you should suffer a catastrophic illness or need long-term hospitalization due to accident or illness. In such cases your high-deductible insurance would insure that your savings and your assets were left intact.

Once you've decided on the basic type of policy that you and your family need, your final step is to get online and find several of the sites that permit you to make quick and easy side-by-side comparisons of health insurance policies and their prices from different insurance companies. Even though it means taking extra time, you are much better off filling out all of the forms on at least 3 different websites ? it is only in this way that you can be assured that you will actually be comparing all of the health insurance companies offering policies in Maryland.

Thanks to the internet everyone can now make simple comparisons and know that they have gotten the most affordable health care possible in Maryland.