Perhaps you've been thinking that to businesses across, the recession has been nothing but bad news. Trust them though to see a silver lining in anything. There is a lot of evidence to be had that employers across the country for years have looked for an excuse to trim the fat. The recession was the answer to their prayers: they picked the opportunity to cut jobs once and for all, jobs they intend never to replace. If you are like me or any of my friends, or if you ever saw the Michael Moore film Sicko about what it is like living in America without medical health insurance, you know how life lived like this, is skating on thin ice, or living on a tightrope, or any of several picturesque ways of saying that you are a step away from disaster all the time. When I turned 30, and turned single after a five-year marriage ended, I thought I would be quite able to take care of myself - I worked freelance, and I make about $3000 a month. My first stop was at the insurance brokers - I needed medical health insurance now that I was not on my former husband's plan anymore, and I was pretty sure I could swing it. It turned out that the cheapest full coverage they could find for me cost about $900 a month - almost a third of what I am able to make. And this is for a 30-year-old who is in great health, and works out the Y all the time.
In the end, I knew I couldn't afford it; I took the limited bare-bones medical health insurance plan that charged only $200 a month. If I need to visit the dentist, to get my eyes looked at her anything that's not catastrophically serious, I have to pay myself. When I got a bad sprain last month, I had to spend $300 on it myself. And I know that I'm lucky; if I had some kind of a pre-existing condition, I would probably have to do without food to be able to afford insurance. Why on earth is insurance getting so expensive? Even when you have employer- sponsored insurance, costs have jumped up about by $2000 a year. Let's look at the top reasons why medical insurance is turning so expensive these days.
1. America is all about the litigation; and doctors get a disproportionately large share of all that litigious energy people have. So if doctors find themselves in the witness box and asked to defend a treatment plan that went wrong, they want to show that they were extra careful, and that they ordered every test under the sun before they ordered any kind of treatment. All those expensive tests that they order for no reason just on the off chance that you might sue them, the insurance company has to pay for. And at the end, you have to pay for the insurance company's costs.
2. Medical health insurance is a bankrupt concept in America. It's bankrupt because just running the system takes about one dollar out of every three dollars you pay. That's 33% all costs for the American health insurance system - as opposed to say, 10% in neighboring Canada. It's expensive hiring so many people to staff the organization, printing every form in triplicate, hiring lawyers when you sue, and so on.
3. And then there are just ways in which health insurance companies are bloody-minded (that's what the new health bill is seeking to correct. For instance, insurance companies believe that if you are a woman, that they are justified in charging you may be 50% more for coverage. They argue that they have found that women are more likely to visit doctors, and get reproductive system and pregnancy-related medical needs more often. But if you think about it, men are far more likely after the age of 50 get heart attacks and the like. It's a good thing that the law is now on our side though. And how about the way doctors are paid for how much they prescribe you - the more drugs they prescribe, the more tests they give you, the more money they make. They don't get paid for results.
5. There is less and less competition in the market for health insurance companies. In half of all states in the nation, they have no more than two insurers per market
Here are a few ways in which you can get medical health insurance for less. You could for instance consider COBRA. If you work for a company for a number of years that was at least average-sized, you get to make use of your employer's insurance plan for a year and a half after you leave. When your insurance company denies you treatment because it feels that your treatment would be unnecessary, you shouldn't just shrug your shoulders and pay yourself. What you need is to sue the company for breach of trust. In half of all states in the country, there are just two insurers battling it out. At some point they do share their plans with each other more often, and decide to not lower their prices. Getting the right medical health insurance is all about knowing the system, and sometimes, negotiating. The company has some discretion in lowering prices to help win a customer. You just need to make sure that you take advantage of it.
Pages
▼