insurance premium
Insurance Dictionary -> insurance premium
In the insurance industry, an insurance premium is the regular payment that is paid in to the policy by the policy holder. This can be annual, monthly or by another time period. At the end of every year it is common for an insurance company to reassess the policy and alter the insurance premium accordingly.
When taking out an insurance policy you will be assessed by several factors, mainly your risk of cashing out a payment. In a ratio correlated with this risk, the insurance company will determine the premium amount. The higher your risk, the higher the insurance premium, to the point where it may not be financially feasible to take on the policy.
An example of how risk might give you a high insurance premium is if you take out property insurance on your home, when located in a natural disaster prone region, such as on or nearby the San Andreas Fault line. Because your property is more likely to sustain structural damage from earthquakes your premium house insurance will be a lot higher than in a New York suburb.
If you work a dangerous job it may also be difficult to get medical insurance or health insurance. A perk of many jobs is the utilization of group insurance, where everybody falls under the same umbrella, instead of being individually risk assessed. Even if you fall ill before the annual premium reassessment, you will still get the same deal under the group terms, which would not happen with a private policy.
For those that cannot afford insurance premiums, even at the lowest form, various government run benefits programs exist, such as social security, unemployment benefits or benefits for military veterans.