Has anyone heard about the State of New York and the recent law regarding health insurance that taxes directly and indirectly consumers?

How is that being implemented and what effect will it have on the already crippled economy of New York?

I am not an economist, but I do know that taxing the masses hurts growth. That’s pretty simple to understand, right?

Well, taxing health insurance consumption whether through the insurers or directly to consumers doesn’t make much sense. With healthcare costs being high enough already and the system being inefficient additional burdens will only increase the number of uninsureds. New York needs to find a different way and manner in which to address its deficit. The consumer, the average consumer seems to carry too much of the burden of the inefficiencies built in by our state and federal governments.

Health insurance is not the conduit by which states should be recouping its deficits. It is then the consumer who actually purchases health insurance who carries the burden for the rest of us and for the uninsureds.

For someone who cares enough about their health, and is responsible enough to be covered, it seems very unfair that they have to pay an additional tax to support everyone else who may not be responsible enough to carry health insurance.

I am not putting down anyone who can’t purchase health insurance due to not being able to afford it, but to make those of us who care enough to carry health insurance coverage pay an additional tax seems very unfair.

Just like in everything else in life, people that take the time to research, be educated, and be well informed, usually reap the benefits of their new knowledge. In order to get what you want, you must first find out what that is and know the difference. The same happens in individual health insurance. You must first do your homework so that you can identify your real needs and what you want from a health insurance policy. Once you know this, you can then evaluate from all of the different insurance carriers and insurance plans. There are definitely many choices and options available. There are deductibles to deal with, co-insurance to address, and maximums and minimums. Do you need prescription coverage, an HMO or a PPO?

It is a fact that this is not necessarily easy, but it is doable. It is also very necessary in order to get the coverage you want at the right price and with the right benefits. It is also a fact that there are licensed health insurance agents that can help you in this process. They can save you a lot of time and aggravation and just as important, money. A good experienced licensed health insurance agent is a valuable tool at your disposal in attaining the right health coverage. The problem is finding the right one that you can trust and count on to assist your needs and theirs or the carriers’ needs.

In conclusion, before finding the right health insurance plan, find the right health insurance agent.

The American public struggles to make decisions on buying individual health insurance policies, mainly because health insurance has been supplied by employers for decades. The average worker is told by the company they are working for if you want health insurance, this is the way it is. Because a large portion of the employee rate is paid by the employer and because it’s easy just to add your dependents, most people know very little about how health insurance works or the reason a lower deductible plan costs more. Not being knowledgeable about health insurance can cost you a lot of money. The time factor also makes purchasing health insurance an expensive venture. Because most people don’t have the knowledge on how health insurance works (the amount of time needed for underwriting), they wait to the last minute to purchase protection.

First, you need to know there are different types of health insurance plans available to purchase. Major medical PPO plans for an individual has different guidelines than the group Major medical plan you have had for years. There are also Short term Medical plans and Mini medicals to consider. And on top of different products to consider there is a time factor, depending on your current health status, to speed up your selection process or be penalized with preexisting clauses. In less than two paragraphs I’ve probably mentioned five phrases that have no meaning to you whatsoever. It doesn’t matter what your income is, with the price of everything going up, protecting your income needs to be a priority to survive in this economy.

Second, become familiar with your current policy. Understand the layers of protection in the group health insurance policy you have today. You may not be aware of your total liability only because you have been so healthy. When you look you’ll see you have co pays for doctor visits and for your prescriptions. Anything at the hospital is subject to an annual deductible and coinsurance and an additional deductible per occurrence on some procedures. These types of limits are common in all policies, these are ways to keep the premium low enough for everyone to afford. When selecting an Individual Policy these levels of protection are normally higher.

Last but most important, hire a professional licensed agent to help you understand your options; agents’ commission is already included in the premiums, this makes them part of buying a policy. Get in touch with a general agency on the internet; they represent multiple individual health insurance companies. They are not tied to one carrier; this will assure you are getting the best coverage for your needs. Once you have found an agent and an agency you are comfortable with, stay in contact with them, especially at renewal time. If you are not happy with what the insurance company is telling you about the increased costs at renewal, have your agent shop for a new carrier for you.

Washington State’s insurance commissioner, Mike Kreidler, has a plan to improve the health care situation in his state:guarantee citizens coverage during a health crisis.

Kreidler is currently running for a third term in his current post and even though he realizes his proposal would be a difficult sell to the state’s legislature he believes it’s an important step and a way for Washington to take a leading role in the country’s medical insurance debate.

Although the full details of his plan have not yet been released, Kreidler does want the state to provide “catastrophic” health insurance for all residents. This medical insurance would begin picking up costs once they hit $10,000 for the year. Some types of preventative care would also be included in the coverage. Anyone under the age of 65 (the age when Medicare eligibility begins) who has been a resident in the state for at least six months would be covered. Pre-existing conditions would not be covered for the first year.

To pay for the plan, Kreidler is hoping voters will approve an employment tax. Employees would pay a percentage (assumed to be about 1%) of their gross pay and businesses would pay between 2 to 5%.Although this type of coverage would not be comprehensive, it would allow consumers to purchase less expensive insurance because about 40% of all medical insurance premiums go towards this aspect of coverage.

The “it” is any type of usual and customary healthcare costs. Why should this be so difficult? I am not specifically talking about large catastrophic costs. A heart surgery is going to be expensive no matter what. Cancer treatment is also going to be expensive at any hospital. Also, these are conditions or ailments that need to be treated to a large extent regardless of the cost.

Yet, outside of catastrophic medical care, our basic healthcare services; primary care visits, specialist visits, diagnostic services, MRI’s, x-rays, blood tests, physicals, stress tests, EKG’s, etc. are a big mystery to really, most of us. We simply are not able to get from providers what these services cost as easily as we would any most other services in our economy.

Why? Why aren’t these services advertised and promoted freely so we can all know what they cost. As consumers we understand quality and cost. We just simply want to know ahead of time how much is it and for what?

Don’t attempt to sneak cost line items and services we did not receive into our bills.

We are American consumers that do not want things for free, but we want to make good decisions when it comes to our healthcare services. Some of us may want to go to a doctor who charges lower prices for their services than another doctor who also has more expensive magazines in their waiting area.

One doctor may bill you for 30 minutes worth of a visit even though they actually consulted with you for only ten minutes. Why?

All we want is clarity.

The result to all this confusion is part of the reason of why we tend to be so fixated on our health insurance plans covering for these services (co-pays, doctor visits, specialists, deductibles, etc., since we simply don’t understand these costs.

As Americans, we want our highly trained and specialized doctors to earn a good living. These individuals are highly respects and rightfully so for their hard work and intelligence. Yet, all we want to know is how much it costs?

While searching for a health insurance quote, I saw one of header tags for a website that read “Blue Cross & Blue Shield”. Thinking this was Blue Cross & Blue Shield and clicked on the link and landed on what looked to be a Blue Cross advertising form. I filled in the requested personal information as required to receive a quote. The website then generated various health insurance quotes for various different health insurance companies, but guess what, there was no Blue Cross & Blue Shield quote. The reality is that I was just looking to review their plans and premiums, but if I was a customer really looking for Blue Cross & Blue Shield I would be very concerned and disappointed.

Nevertheless, I then began to receive telephone call from many different people wanting to help me get health insurance. I did not know who was calling me, the companies they were from, or whether they were even licensed health insurance agents or not. I have not yet stopped receiving telephone calls.

The reason for this is simply that these websites are advertising with some other company’s branded name and then selling yours and my private information to as many buyers as possible. They do not bother to check whether these are legitimate enterprises, in compliance with state federal regulations, ethical, or even licensed.

This is very different from how other websites operate, such as VitalOne Health. The information you provide is secured and only used to provide you and only you with assistance in attaining health insurance. Our agents are licensed and managed for quality assurance and product knowledge, and compliance.

Well I hope she explains her comments a bit more clearly. One would think that the government’s focus should first be on reforming Medicare and Medicaid which are not just expensive programs, they are truly unaffordable and very out of control. These are the programs that our government runs today yet they now want to say that in order to be more efficient they want to do more! I don’t think that’s really a good idea. Yeah, let’s bring in someone who definitely knows how to run things inefficiently, very costly, and with low quality.

Our government needs to fix Medicare first and foremost, then worry about wanting to run anything else. Our country’s Medicare program is very expensive and begs for plenty of management improvement. Our healthcare industry is one of our largest industries and our government wants to come in and sell us in the illusion that they are better suited for running this industry. Are we kidding!?

If you remove Medicare and Medicaid, our statistics begin to look a bit better with respect to costs. In addition, one thing is clear, there has to be some reform to healthcare. Yet, the reform has to be intelligent healthcare reform, not just the government telling us that their business running skills are better than our private sector. One piece of reform that needs to be implemented is to create the incentive to be insured whether through tax credits or by enforcing a penalty for those without health insurance that earn above a certain threshold.

This would bring a fairer participation by consumers. Due to the fact that health insurance is not either mandatory, strongly encouraged through financial benefits or financial penalties, many consumers that are healthy do not get insured and assume the risk, which we all pay for later on anyway. The ones who actually want coverage more than not are the unhealthy. If only the unhealthy seek health insurance and the healthy do not get insured, it then fails to spread the risk appropriately and thus fails to be insurance.

Government insurance is not the answer…

It is important when searching for an individual health insurance policy to understand the health insurance company’s underwriting criteria and their process. The reason for this is more than just not to have wasted your time by applying to a carrier that is going to decline your application, but because of that very outcome, a declination of coverage.

This result serves then as a red flag to other insurance companies with respect to providing you coverage. There are even carriers that do not go one any further with an applicant once they learn that they have been declined for coverage in the past. The reason for the declination is not even looked into, for the worry that they might be providing coverage to high utilizer.

Yes, I agree this is unfair but it is the reality in which we live today. Therefore, it is important to understand a carriers process. It is better to not even apply for coverage if you along with your agent believe that due to your specific medical conditions, age, medical history, etc. will have a good chance of being declined.

There are many carriers available today and only a good experienced insurance agent can help you navigate these rough waters. The cost of the policy doesn’t change anyway. It remains the same, so why not utilize (no pun intended) their services to your benefit (again, no pun intended).

Here’s to your good health and coverage!

Co-Pay is the portion of the medical bill that you the policy holder is responsible for when medical services are rendered by a physician, these co-pays are pre-set dollar amounts.

Insurance companies offer unlimited, limited and no co-pay doctor office visit depending on the type of plan that you are purchasing. Typically a plan with limited or a pre-set number of office visits are lower priced when compared to plans that offer unlimited office visits. There are plans that do not require you to meet your deductible before using the co-pay benefit at the doctor.

When to purchase unlimited vs. limited or no co-pay plans? A healthy individual that visits a physician twice a year or less would save money by purchasing a plan that offers no co-pays or limited co-pay office visits, a family with children would benefit by purchasing a plan with unlimited doctor office visits, children are more prone to getting sick, injured and will visit doctors more often during the year. Adults with children will also be more prone to becoming sick so a plan with unlimited doctor office visits would be beneficial in the long run.

Yes, Florida has added new health insurance plans that leave out some benefits and do not cover certain mandates that were previously required.

Their goal is to allow for health insurance to be more affordable for basic healthcare needs and other various catastrophic illnesses. It is at least an attempt to begin to reach out to consumers who are uninsured and/or in transition from one employer plan to another. The State of Florida is not reinventing the wheel, but by removing these mandates, it is allowing for insurers not to have to actually include the risks associated therein.

As I see it, healthcare includes three pieces; (a) our responsibility individually to take care of our health, (b) our responsibility to manage our basic healthcare consumption and to do it through quality and economically affordable means, and (c) insurance for coverage for the unforeseen and large healthcare expenses that we should hope never to have to experience.

Managing risk is a combination of efforts, healthcare insurance companies and our government must do its part but so should we.

In any case, Florida, which includes six major metropolitan areas such as Miami Dade, Broward Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville, has a large uninsured population.

Carriers like United HealthCare, Blue Cross, Humana, Aetna, amongst others are running to hopefully reach these consumers.
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