We have group coverage through my husband's employer. I've only ever had group health coverage and it probably works differently than individual coverage. With group coverage, the plan is set for everyone in the group. That includes premiums, deductibles, what is covered, what is excluded, etc. The safety in that is they have to coverage everyone on the plan according to their preset rules -- they can't change the rules just for one person midstream. That also means you have to know what those rules are from the beginning (I think many people never read their plans in detail and then are surprised when they bump into exclusions that were already in the plan). With the new federal rules, insurance companies cannot exclude pre-existing conditions which was a huge improvement for us personally because my husband has a serious pre-existing condition that is expensive to treat. For many years we felt trapped in our jobs because we could not afford to risk losing insurance coverage if we changed jobs; that is no longer a factor.