In general, the biggest difference between PPO vs. POS plans is flexibility. A PPO, or Preferred Provider Organization, offers a lot of flexibility to see the doctors you want, at a higher cost. POS, or Point of Service plans , have lower costs, but with fewer choices.
What is a disadvantage of a POS plan?
POS plans have higher monthly premiums than HMO plans. POS plans impose a deductible that must be met before coverage is provided for care from out-of-network providers. With a POS, you need to prepare and submit paperwork for claims with out-of-network providers.
Why is POS more expensive than PPO?
PPO strikes a balance between ease of implementation, sample complexity, and ease of tuning, trying to compute an update at each step that minimizes the cost function while ensuring the deviation from the previous policy is relatively small.