Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Health Insurance, Capitol Hill & Blogs, Pt.12 – Who pays 80% of the time?

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So, wrapping up blogger “insurance-free doc’s” intriguing observations, all these seem to add up to the point that routine office visits should be removed from health insurance policies. The reasons are: Because they hike health insurance premium rates, are still paid mostly out of pocket and are circumvented by frequenting ER’s, which put wrongful costs on others while not providing a ‘medical home’ for the patient. The obvious problem here is that, most doctors are not like our good 'insurance-free doc’ and can charge rates of around $200 per visit. This is out of reach for the millions and millions living from paycheck to credit card and are already paying for health insurance. Perhaps we just need more compassionate doctors without Bentleys or yachts in Greece. Still, it’s certainly worthy of more exploration.

Another blog comes from Mr. ‘Keith Sarpolis’, which adds some very constructive concepts that actually contribute to the solution of having no health insurance, rather than leaving a pile of rubble. He starts by assessing the problems first, so essential to any meaningful resolution. He notes the inevitability of the occasions when people with no health insurance do experience ‘a catastrophic illness’. While there are cases where it happens to the ‘independently wealthy’ and they can bear the brunt of paying the full costs (except whey run in the $ millions) out of pocket, these are rare. In about 80% of the cases, however, people are unable to bear the brunt of covering the expenses out of pocket. In nearly all of those cases, the patient must either beg for a ‘hardship exclusion’ or file for bankruptcy (this is the largest cause of personal bankruptcy in our nation today). In either case, the problem doesn’t ‘just go away’. The expense must be brunt by the rest of us in many forms.

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