Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Hidden Dangers of Inadequate Health Insurance, Pt.4 – The great discovery.

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The Zanesville Times Recorder has posted an article on zanesvilletimesrecorder.com exposing this widespread hidden trap. They mention the myth that ‘only those with no health insurance have anything to worry about’. Then they speak of the 25 million Americans who do have health insurance, but have already been surprised to find it to be inadequate. They have become the victims of the squeeze between of the soaring, out-of-control medical costs and the scaling down of the health insurance policies they could afford.

Most of the time they learn the hard way. For many the very first time there is a serious injury or serious illness in the family, they become confronted with out-of-pockets and other fine-print exclusions that threaten to drive them to extreme life-changing financial duress, immediate bankruptcy, loss of home or sometimes, even loss of life. . “They thought they had decent health insurance, but find out they don't,” as the Zanesville article puts it. They are not sheltered by the minimal protections offered only to those who have no health insurance.

This “25 million adult Americans with inadequate health insurance” figure kind of snuck up on our public. When the Commonwealth Fund discovered in a study that the size of this segment had jumped by 60% since 2003, they published their findings in a Health Affairs journal. The criteria they used to form this segment was, “A middle-class family [spending] 10 percent or more of their income on out-of-pocket medical expenses." For a household listed in the ‘poor’ category, the income percentage spent on ‘out-of-pocket’s was lowered to 5%. The ‘poor segment’ is defined as those households having annual income within 200% of the Federal ‘poverty line’.

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