Recently, with guidance from the State of Florida, a number of private health insurance carriers released a series of new limited benefit health insurance plans for Florida residents.

Unfortunately, the plans fell far short of what was required. Those individuals who are trying to pay for expensive prescriptions, surgical procedures or who might be faced with costly illnesses such as cancer, kidney and heart disease, will have virtually no coverage at all.

Truth be known, since the carriers were forced to take literally anyone regardless of their medical condition, there was no way possible that they were going to provide a full coverage, major medical plan. It just cannot be done.

But, the bright side is that the plan is a start in the right direction and you can fix some of the shortcomings with supplemental plans.

For example, there does not seem to be any provision of chemotherapy, radiation treatments of any cancer therapy at all. The same can be said for dialysis or surgical treatment for heart disease.

This can be partially remedied with a Critical Illness plan. One carrier offers a guaranteed issue Critical Illness plan with $25,000 of coverage for about eighty dollars. The plans will also pay you and additional $500 a day if you are hospitalized. Considering the limited hospital coverage offered on the Cover Florida plans, this is a welcome feature.

You can also dental, vision, reimbursement for your office visit co-pays and a unique feature where you have telephone access to a physician 24 hours a day at no cost. The physician can even call in prescriptions to your local pharmacy. We have seen this page available for about sixty dollars a month.

The lack of coverage for the more expensive, non-generic prescriptions is something that is nearly impossible to remedy. But the aforementioned package does include a multi-tier drug card that will cover some brand name prescriptions and give you very deep discounts on others.

Of course, there are other alternatives to the Cover Florida plans. A number of carriers have been offering guaranteed issue limited benefit plans for quite some time. Many of them have features that are far superior to what is offered by these limited Florida plans.