Types of Insurance and
Alternatives
for Paying Health Care Costs
Now is a good time to review all
your health care coverage. In addition to Medicare, you may
already have or be eligible for other health care coverage such as
employer or retiree coverage.
You also might be able to lower
your out-of-pocket costs by buying other supplemental health
insurance. The coverage you have will affect how much you pay, what
benefits you may have, which doctors you can see, and other things that
may be important to you.
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Other
health insurance and ways to pay health care costs include:
-
Employer and Union health
coverage
-
Veteran's Benefits
-
Military Retiree Benefits (TRICARE)
-
Federal Employee Health
Benefits Program (FEHB)
Why Does Health
Insurance Cost So Much?
By: Michael Ertel
Why does health insurance cost so much? Year after year, many of
the articles that appear in print detail the specific factors driving
the cost of healthcare.
These factors include: general inflation, advances in drugs and other
medical devices, rising hospital and doctor expenses, government
mandates, increased consumer demand, litigation, fraud, and cost
shifting.
The basic answer is that a magic bullet to solve the cost of insurance
does not exist because the real difficulty is controlling the cost of
healthcare. A simple way to dramatically decrease the dollars spent on
healthcare is to reduce the demand for healthcare.
I have seen estimates that up to 40% of all healthcare related
expenses result from preventable conditions. These preventable
conditions are caused by lifestyle choices such as tobacco, obesity,
stress, lack of exercise and poor diet.
Most of us, myself included, make lifestyle choices everyday that
eventually increase our demand for healthcare. We are never going to be
able to totally eliminate all lifestyle related healthcare costs.
However, improved lifestyle choices would cause a dramatic reduction in
demand. This would then result in a similar reduction in the dollars
spent on healthcare.
Lower demand for healthcare would result in lower health
insurance costs, increased productivity, and reduced absenteeism. If
your organization has not done so already, your organizational leaders
need to seriously consider the benefits of health promotion and disease
prevention programs. Your return on investment will most likely be as
high as 2:1 in the first year. |
