Posts Tagged ‘Affordable’

Will Reforms Lead to Affordable Health Insurance?

February 11th, 2011

Health insurance is taken by people because they expect the health care costs to rise significantly in future which might become out of reach for them. They expect that health insurance will cover them for the most likely and emergency medical expenses without overburdening their pockets. But, with increasing costs of the medical health care, the insurance companies are themselves hiking their premiums. This makes one wonder whether the insurance itself will become expensive enough to be availed of. Or, will the authorities take steps for providing the affordable health insurance?

The insurance reforms are on the anvil. These are long overdue since the system has become accustomed to playing the way insurance companies want. Do the benefits of the insurance policies reach where they are require the most? Actually, it is the people with some disease or health condition, or the people in their old age, or the people in the risky occupations who require the health insurance more than any other person. And, ironically, these very people were denied the insurance benefits till the Supreme Court held that such an action on the part of a public company was arbitrary, illegal and unconstitutional. So, now the insurance companies cannot refuse insurance on grounds of past medical history but even in those situations, the companies raise the insurance premiums exorbitantly. This makes affordable health insurance a pipe dream for many.

Affordability of health insurance is related to the income status of the people as well as to the awareness of its benefits. Most of the insurance premiums come from people from their out-of-pocket expenses. The lower income strata cannot afford it. To make the benefits of affordable health insurance reach this segment of population, the government has adopted the Community Based Health Insurance (CBHI) approach. The private hospitals may be providing the best medical facilities but they are increasingly becoming very expensive. To make health insurance affordable it is also imperative that the risings costs of medical care are curtailed. This will happen with larger participation of the government and robustness of the health care infrastructure in other parts of the country.

Comments Off »

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags:

Find an Affordable Provider for Massachusetts Health Insurance

February 9th, 2011

Investing in Massachusetts health insurance, if you are well off, healthy and young, may seem like a luxury, although the reality is far from it. Consider twisting an ankle on a hike, or a broken arm in a soccer match, or bronchial problems becoming pneumonia. There are thousands of dollars that may be required for treatment. Given below is a list of conditions that describes those who require insurance. Check them out as you might just fall into any of these categories:

Are you moving from High School to Work? Your parents may have employer coverage, and if this is the case, you should try and be a part of their Massachusetts health insurance plan. This is actually less expensive than getting individual medical insurance as employers usually bear a considerable part of their employees’ insurance premiums, if it is a group plan. A large number of states require the insurers to expand parental insurance to their adult kids below 25 or 30 years.

Are you entering college? Private and public colleges in Massachusetts offer Massachusetts insurance plans for students who are not enrolled in their parents’ insurance coverage. In this case, the amount of premiums that you are required to pay amount to $850 for a single year. This is about 80% cheaper than the premiums that are paid by group sponsored employee health insurance plans. However, you may not be eligible as a part time student.

Has your parent just been downsized? If the company that has laid-off your parent is still in business, you get to enjoy the COBRA benefits. This federal legislation allows you to enjoy the advantages of the health insurance plan in Massachusetts for up to 18 months after being laid off. For certain students, the plan may sound expensive, but under the Obama government, measures have been taken to stimulate the package with a 65% knock down on the premium.

Are you without job? If you are jobless, your parents can carry on to include you in their health insurance Massachusetts policy. As a graduate, you may be offered a plan by an alumni member for covering you for a period of 6 months or even longer. Fresh graduates are eligible for discounts. However, if you have reached the age of 25 years, you may not be eligible to qualify for being covered under your parents’ health plan. Short term insurance plans come dear and offer limited coverage.

Are you a self employed entrepreneur? A lot of insurance agents in Massachusetts target young adults with insurance policies that may cost somewhere between $40 and $70, like Tonik plans from WellPoint or BodyGuard from Aetna. The representative of the Massachusetts insurance department can tell you about the availability of the plans. Remember, if the premiums are low, the coverage is limited and you may require paying more out of your pocket. Instead of incurring the initial thousand dollars of your health policy, it is best to locate a plan with the lowest co pay, even if that means a higher premium.

Comments Off »

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags:

Could Hawaii Prove Affordable Health Insurance Mandate Supporters Right?

February 2nd, 2011

One of the most controversial aspects of healthcare reform is the inclusion of an individual and employer health insurance mandate. Proponents of the mandate claim that it will help defray the increased cost of bringing millions of uninsured Americans into the fold. Affordable health insurance is most easily achieved when insurers are able to spread the cost of coverage among the largest pool possible. Without a mandate, there is the possibility that younger, healthier individuals will not buy insurance–leaving only the sickest individuals in most need of medical care insured. That will make the cost of coverage more expensive. Congress has provided for subsidies that seek to make health insurance policies more affordable, which serve as the carrot to motivate that demographic. However, the government also needs a stick: hence the mandates, which levy fines against individuals making over a certain annual income that refuse to buy insurance.

Detractors believe that such mandates are unconscionable infringements on the free market and will hurt young adults. Some even think that a national health insurance mandate is unconstitutional, and a group of Republican attorney generals from several states plans to ramp up a legal challenge on that portion of the bill. The individual mandate in Massachusetts has seen mixed results; there have been some improvements in affordability, but some people have chosen to pay up to a thousand dollars in fines annually instead of buying coverage–believing it to be cheaper, and not thinking they will need health insurance anytime soon.

Despite those concerns, a mandate of some type is necessary to get health insurance companies on board; their cooperation is essential with the death of a public option. Since increased regulation will prevent them from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions, they do not want people to delay buying coverage until they are already sick and need expensive medical care. Their business model is dependent on the majority of people paying years’ worth of premiums into the system while they are not using much care.

Hawaii has taken a different path. Since 1974, the state has mandated that all employers over a certain size provide their employees with health insurance. The House of Representatives and the Senate have proposed similar mandates, with tax credits and exceptions for small businesses. In fact, the Clinton administration’s healthcare reform efforts were inspired by the Hawaiian system. As a result, most residents have health insurance.

How has Hawaii’s system worked? It has been surprisingly successful. Health insurance is one of the least expensive purchases on the islands, although costs are generally higher for everything else because of shipping expenses. Premiums and co-payments are some of the lowest in the United States. Supporters of their system point to the mandate, which results in a higher rate of insured, as the cause of their affordable health insurance. Emergency rooms are left for true emergencies, as opposed to being destinations of last resort where uninsured Americans cannot be denied care. Instead, non-emergency conditions are dealt with at earlier stages and a lower cost by primary care doctors.

The cost of covering a larger population has not been passed on to the federal government, either. When it comes to Medicare, Hawaii is the state with the least costly Medicare beneficiaries on an individual basis, even though their lifespans are longer than the national average. This is partially due to better comprehensive care for their population prior to their Medicare eligibility. Affordable health insurance policies drive insurance companies to have a greater focus on preventative care and promote wellness among patients. Therefore, Hawaiians may enter old age healthier, with fewer chronic medical conditions. On the mainland, Medicare must often play catch-up.

Most importantly, the affordable health insurance mandate does not appear to have hurt the quality of health care. None other than famed conservative commentator (and healthcare reform opponent) Rush Limbaugh recently praised the care he recieved in a Hawaiian hospital after being rushed there with chest pains. While his fortune and celebrity status may have had an impact on the attention paid to him, that wouldn’t have mattered if they had old, outdated equipment and inferior physicians. Moreover, Limbaugh did not note any lengthy waiting lists; even if he had bypassed them himself due to his fame, surely he would have noticed if others had been waiting in the emergency room for a long time. It is possible that once the dust settles, the Hawaii system may be the best method for nationwide healthcare reform.

(Image: NJ Scott under CC 2.0)

Comments Off »

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags:

After Reform, Millions Will Still Lack Affordable Health Insurance

January 13th, 2011

A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office highlights the continual struggle of providing affordable health insurance to all Americans. Healthcare reform legislation recently passed by the Senate will cost over $800 billion while making significant regulatory and structural changes to the current health insurance system. While the goal of proponents is to extend coverage to the entire U.S. population, it appears that they will fall short in enacting universal health care.

Shockingly, only about 92% of people under 65% years of age will be insured by 2018. Many of the most drastic changes, such as a highly-regulated federal health insurance market with subsidies for low- and middle-income individuals, will not take effect for several years. Moreover, the nonpartisan office estimates that approximately 31 million currently uninsured Americans will have access to affordable health insurance due to the bill. Still, the estimates are sobering to Democrats; they are simultaneously providing ammunition to Republican politicians who claim that the costs are far too high to undertake a strategy that will not even work effectively. The White House points the finger at conservatives in Congress for blocking further expansions of coverage, while touting the Senate bill as a striking improvement from the status quo.

The primary question many have is this: how did so many uninsured individuals and families fall through the cracks? Despite the Senate’s bill clocking in at over 2,000 pages long, some groups are left out, either by accident or on purpose. The former group mainly consists of younger individuals–considered to be those under 30–in good health, a demographic which often chooses to forgo coverage even if affordable health insurance is available to them. Healthcare reform legislation includes a mandate that will soon make that choice more costly. As of 2014, individuals over a certain income level who refuse to buy health insurance will be fined. The goal is to have them become insured; not only is it necessary to avoid possible financial ruin in the event of a catastrophic medical emergency, but their inclusion is also needed in the health insurance pool to reduce medical costs.

Massachusetts has had a similar law for several years, which has reduced the percentage of uninsured in this population. There are about 13 million in this group nationwide, so just making a dent will be helpful. However, some individuals prefer to pay the annual fines (which range from several hundred to over one thousand dollars) in lieu of purchasing insurance. This accounts for some of these Americans who will remain uninsured after reform. It does not even include those people for whom health insurance would cost over eight percent of their annual income; they will be exempt from the health insurance mandate entirely.

Another group already has access to affordable health insurance, but is not taking advantage of it. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are eligible for Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for the poor. With the new Senate bill, individuals and families living in households making under $30,000 per year can qualify for the plan. For various reasons, they have not signed up. Explanations for this range from difficulty filling out forms to embarrassment and lack of publicity. More households will be covered under the existing program, which some experts predict will further decrease the population of the uninsured. Reform supporters claim that there are always a handful of stragglers–even European nations with free universal, socialized health care fall just short of the 100% mark.

On the other hand, illegal immigrants were purposely excluded from the legislation. Coverage for the millions of individuals in America without legal status has been a very controversial issue among both politicians and the public. The bill was expensive and complicated enough to pass with solely U.S. citizens and legal residents. While some liberal Democrats and activists fought the exclusion, it remained intact in the Senate, as well as the House of Representatives. Illegal immigrants are already forbidden from using Medicaid or any other type of public health insurance, but are commonly seen in hospital emergency rooms. They are often treated for conditions that could be handled far more cost-effectively in a doctor’s office, yet resort to the ER at a high cost to state and local governments.

Neither party is willing to offer affordable health insurance subsidies to illegal immigrants, or allow them on an existing program such as Medicaid. The Senate’s bill goes farther to keep them out, however: it will forbid them from using the discounted health insurance exchange markets the legislation will create. In contrast, the House version will allow illegal immigrants to buy coverage in those markets, as long as they only use their money. The future of this provision must be negotiated in committee, so it is unknown whether the ban will become law. There is another prominent concern; the Latino population, whether or not they have legal status, skews younger than the general American population–which puts many of them in the younger age groups shown to be less willing to buy insurance. Therefore, the amount of illegal immigrants who would actually take advantage of their increased access to affordable health insurance remains in doubt.

Comments Off »

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: