Health Insurance Blog

If you have health insurance, either through an employer or one of the many individual health plans, it’s possible that you still don’t have enough coverage! Roxanne Patel Sheplavy exposes the new health trend in the February 2009 issue of Fitness magazine: more Americans than ever are underinsured. The Commonwealth Fund defines being “underinsured” as spending 5-10% of your income on out-of-pocket expenses, including skyrocketing deductibles and extremely expensive co-payments that may prevent individuals from recieving essential medications or care. One in seven adults in 2007 fell in this category, and in this economy even more employers and insurers are cutting back on what their health insurance policies cover.

Fortunately, Roxanne stresses that there are resources available to help the underinsured before they are burdened by medical debt (believe it or not, three-quarters of medical bankruptcies involve individuals and families that had insurance!). These organizations may be able to assist you in paying your bills, renegotiating payments, or whatever else you need to handle your medical expenses.

Where To Go If You Are Underinsured:

• Co-Pay Relief
• Healthwell Foundation
• Patient Services Incorporated
• Patient Access Network Foundation
• CancerCare

While COBRA is helpful as individual health insurance to those who have been laid off, it is temporary and far more expensive than employer-sponsored health insurance, says Enhanced Online News. Even though the economic stimulus package proposes to pay up to half the cost of COBRA premiums for one year, one of several alternatives may be better suited to your health care needs. All of these options will ensure that you don’t experience a long gap in coverage.

If you expect to find a job with health benefits in the relatively near future, short term health insurance might be your best bet.

If you are generally healthy, high-deductible plans can help you save money on insurance while unemployed. They offer catastrophic coverage with lower premiums and few fringe benefits.

If you had family health insurance at your last employer, buying individual health plans for each member could actually be cheaper than buying a family plan on the open market. Children may also be eligible for enrollment in government-funded health programs like SCHIP.

No matter your situation, get health insurance quotes from various insurers; you may find a better deal than COBRA from another company.

(Photo credit: erik! under CC 2.0)

Judith Graham from the Chicago Tribune recently wrote about the Illinois Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan, and its coverage for those individuals unable to buy Illinois health insurance elsewhere. There is a cap on the number of people that can enroll (currently almost 6,000) in order to ensure that its costs are fully covered by state funding and its premiums, which can’t be higher than 150% of what a regular insurance premium costs in the market. This program is reserved for U.S. citizens and legal residents, and has a $2.5 million cap on lifetime benefits, according to Judith.

Currently, Illinois has about a thousand slots remaining in ICHIP’s traditional pool, so it’s worth looking into if you have unsuccessfully attempted to buy individual health coverage or suffer from certain chronic, uninsurable conditions including:

• Juvenile diabetes
• AIDS
• leukemia
• Parkinson’s disease
• multiple sclerosis
• cystic fibrosis

This program is different from the HIPAA plan, which is intended for those who have lost their employer-sponsored health insurance and exhausted their COBRA unemployment insurance.

The baby boomer generation (ages 45 to 64) is worried about losing their health insurance, and the current economy is even more cause for concern. Many baby boomers have been either laid off or forced to retire early, and with that comes the loss of their employer sponsored health insurance plan. Meanwhile, they’re not yet old enough to enroll in Medicare.

There are still several options available to people in this age group, says Emily Brandon of U.S. News and World Report. They include:

1. Continuing your former employer’s coverage through COBRA, which they are required to offer unless they go out of business. However, you will have to cover the entire cost of the plan, plus a 2% administrative fee, yourself.
2. Getting on your spouse’s health insurance, if they have continued to work and their employer allows it.
3. Finding another job and continuing to work until you turn 65. Some companies even offer health insurance benefits to part-time employees working as little as 20 hours per week.
4. If you’re lucky to have worked for a firm that offers health insurance coverage to retirees (a steadily declining percentage), take advantage of it. Don’t rest easy, though; many companies are failing to keep their promises and are shifting a higher portion of health care costs onto retired workers.
5. Buy yourself individual insurance. Individual health insurance policies can be expensive, with premiums of over $300 per month according to the Commonwealth Fund. It also may not cover you if you have a chronic, pre-existing condition (and will be even more costly if it does), but if you are relatively healthy it may be your only option. A high-deductible plan could save you money on premiums, although you run the risk of catastrophic out-of-pocket costs. If you go down this route, make sure to research the most affordable health insurance quotes.

There is also the option of forgoing health insurance, but it’s not recommended. You’d either have to cover all of your medical expenses out-of-pocket, or go without some needed medical care.

Several new Georgia state laws become law as we ring in the new year today.  Among these new laws is one which will eliminate both state and local taxes for Georgia health insurers who offer high-deductible health insurance plans.  The tax break will save insurance companies an estimated $146 Million over 5 years.  The idea behind the law is that it will ultimately save the Georgia Government money as a proliferation of high-deductible health plans will provide coverage for the estimated 1.7million Georgia residents who lack health insurance and end up costing the state money, however critics of the plan question whether this law will do anything to reduce the number of uninsured.

More information about Georgia health insurance.

(Lisa Girion, Los Angeles Times)

Individuals with employer-provided health insurance now pay, on average, over $1,000 in deductibles. That is an increase of over 17% from last year, when they paid $859. Employees with preferred provider organizations (PPOs) are primarily affected, as well as those working for small businesses.

Employers are increasing deductibles in order to reduce costs without changing premiums. Medical costs for a worker are currently $8,482 per year (an increase of 6.3%), and are expected to increase further in the coming years. As a result, many people are forgoing preventative care such as checkups, which could end up causing even higher costs in the long run.

If you are paying too much in deductibles, get free health insurance quotes from multiple providers.

Things you should consider when shopping for a health insurance plan for you and your family.

Make sure your family doctor or any specialists that you typically use or plan to use in the future are in the network.  Co-pays and co-insurance percentages will be higher to utilize service from out of network doctors.  Some health plans may not provide any out of network benefits.

If possible, research your health care spending done in previous years and figure out what you might need going forward (i.e. if you see that you rarely if ever require prescription drugs, it might not make sense to enroll in a health plan that includes prescription drug benefits if the additional expense is high.)

If your health care utilization is typically low, and your family is in good health, a high-deductible health plan might be a good option.

If your spouse has health insurance coverage through his or her employer, check to see if the portion on the monthly premium that the employee pays is more or less than what you would pay with your employer sponsored plan or individual health insurance plan.

Does the health insurance plan offer a wellness plan, or alternative medicine discounts which could save you money.

You can shop and compare individual health insurance plans here at healthinsurancesort.com.   Some other resources that might be useful include your state department of insurance, or if age 65 or older, www.medicare.gov.

In an interview with Scott Serota, President of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA), discussed the recently adopted 4-point health care proposal that was adopted by the BCBSA board of directors.

Serota said that one of the goals that the BCBSA is seeking to achieve is to ensure that health care costs do not rise any faster than the costs of other goods and services.  He went on to say that in order to do achieve that goal, the delivery system must be improved, and unneccesary procedures eliminated (as much as 30% of procedures rendered today).  In addition, Serota expressed the importance in getting people who are eligible for government programs enrolled, and developing new health plans to supplement high-deductible health plans for the “young invincables”.

Serota also discussed a rule under under the McCain health care proposal in which Medicare no longer would reimburse hospitals for 10 preventable conditions and the effect that it would have on employer-sponsored health care.

Members of Wisconsin’s Health Insurance Risk Sharing Plan (HIRSP) will experience either no rate increase or a single-digit increase to their health insurance rates in 2009 as a result of changes made to the plan, such as offering high-deductible health plan options.

Founded almost 30 years ago (1979), HIRSP has been Wisconsin’s health insurer of last resort since that date.  HIRSP offers health insurance to Wisconsin residents who, for one reason or another, can’t enroll in adequate and affordable health insurance coverage, from private health insurance companies due to their medical conditions, or because they have become unemployed and no longer have access to health insurance coverage through their employer.

More Information about Wisconsin health insurance options.

In article written by Joan Mazzolini of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio health insurance rates have increased 9 times faster than the rate at which wages have risen.

From 2000 through 2007 the average cost to insure a family in Ohio through employer sponsored health coverage increased over 80% while wages rose less than 9% over that same time period.  Individual health insurance rates in Ohio increases just over 60% over the same time frame.

According to Ron Pollack of Families USA

Rising health care costs were a problem in Ohio before the current economic downturn emerged, and slow wage growth combined with significant job losses have made matters worse.

The only state that showed a larger disparity between the increase in health insurance premiums and wage growth was Michigan.

As health insurance becomes more expensive relative to earnings, many people have difficult decisions to make in order to make ends meet.  Going uninsured is never a good idea, as a serious injury or illness can leave you financially crippled.  One way to lower your monthly health insurance premiums is to change your health coverage to a plan with a higher deductible, such as an high deductible health plan combined with an HSA.