A Health Plan is a contract between an benefits provider (e.g. an insurance company or a government agency) and an individual or his/her sponsor (e.g. an employer or union). The type and amount of health care costs that will be covered by the health insurance provider are specified in writing, in a member contract or "Evidence of Coverage" booklet for private insurance, or in a national health policy for public insurance. For example, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) annually publishes the "Federal Benefits for Veterans and Dependents," describing the benefits available during that year. An insurance company will often offer multiple Health Plans. This class represents the contract, or the defined set of benefits that are promised by the benefits provider. It is noted that we had difficulty finding a single generic term for the concept defined by this class, as many commonly used terms have specific meanings in different settings. In some settings, this might be called an Insurance Plan, but that term doesn't fit government benefit programs, or Health Mainenance Organizations (HMOs). While the set of benefits may be very closely associated with the organization that offers it (e.g., "Medicare"), the organization is a separate concept (for which we have chosen the generic term, "Payer"). The term Health Plan includes not only Private Insurance Plans, but also Public Health Plans, Military Health Programs, and State Health Insurance Programs. Note that Private Insurance Plan, Public Health Plan, Military Health Program, and State Health Insurance Program were once modeled as subclasses of Health Plan, but were removed as these might be better represented by a type code instead. "Details of a Health Insurance product/plan provided by an organization." - HL7 FHIR, InsurancePlan "Details about an insurance plan." - HL7 FHIR, InsurancePlan.plan Note that FHIR uses two classes to represent a generic plan and various flavors of it (e.g., Acme's "Total Health Plan" and the Gold, Siver, and Bronze version of it), while the FHIM uses one class to handle both. The practical implication is that FHIM would have three instances of this class (one each for Acme's "Gold Total Health Plan", "Silver Total Health Plan", and "Bronze Total Health Plan", while FHIR would have one instance of this class and three instances of the FHIR "Plan" class. The information conveyed is identical, the merely the structures are different.