1) Personal responsibility

This is simply our responsibility to each other to take care of ourselves and our overall health. Yes, eat right, exercise, be smart and have fun, but gauge your risks. This is our health responsibility.

2) Social responsibility

Our society has a responsibility to us for instituting and overseeing quality healthcare in the private sector. Businesses want, to provide and meet our needs, but it is government that acts as an overseer. In a country as rich, beautiful, and bountiful as our is, it is not acceptable that our government cannot implement a better system to encourage more efficient care for all of us.

3) Professional responsibility

This represents the responsibility of our caregivers, the doctors, nurses, surgeons, paramedics, and all others directly involved in providing for our care. They go through countless hours of education and training to do their very best, most actually do every single day; thank you.

While I state the obvious above, it is nevertheless a fact that many of us take our health for granted, do not get health insurance, and put our lives and health at risk without thinking of the repercussions to ourselves and our families.

Just as well, our government hasn’t been able to implement a better system and hinges at times on total failure and a true example of inefficiency. If you are one that thinks the government could do “better” if there was universal care, please look at the facts and inefficiencies in Medicare and any system that the government runs; Yet, they must play their role as overseer of the private sector.

Lastly, there are also practitioners that do not make the cut and lack professional responsibility.

Nothing is perfect, but we must work ever so hard and struggle to always continue to make us better.

What do you think?

Everyone is talking about the problem, the number of uninsureds and the rising costs of healthcare. It is something important, as it relates to our health. More so, not just ours, but our children’s and our families. Healthcare has a cost, there is no other way to state this fact than just that; healthcare has a cost. It is also not an inexpensive cost, but expensive and it will increase as a percentage of our overall nation’s income (our GDP). The reason for this is as simple as just saying that while our technologies improve with research and development over time; our wants for curing ills that were incurable before will rise.

We will develop new and better technologies to improve our lifes. We will develop new drugs and treatments to battle and cure diseases. All of this will have costs.

There is no shame in this. We are dedicating ourselves to improving our health and wellness.

Nevertheless, our system, our healthcare system and the way in which it operates lends itself to many inefficiencies that have nothing to do with improving our overall care. This must change in order to maintain some semblance of a balance. Many of these inefficiencies are politically motivated and they do not benefit our overall healthcare.

More government alone is not the answer. It never is the answer, but a combination of government allowing the private sector to provide more efficient healthcare and also proving some subsized assistance in some form will improve our system.

Universal healthcare can take on so many different definitions. Yet, I believe most everyone agrees that as a nation we believe that our citizens should be able to attain healthcare at an affordable price.

Remember this, healthcare is as much a personal responsibility as it is a right to have it be affordable in our country.

Health insurance is needed to inject fairness into the system. Private health insurance is the goal, just be efficient.

As our economy is heading south, many of us view our personal health as sometimes a secondary need. Although I can understand the many reasons and factors of why a decision like that would happen, health is important. I am stating a fact, but it merits explanation. Health is important and the management thereof just as important. It is important to be involved in the process, to be a good consumer. This means to be aware that you need care, but focus on the approach.

Does anyone remember the “Friends” episode when the character “Joey”, who a played an actor,  had a terrible pain in his abdomen but would refuse to go see a doctor because he had no insurance. He waited until the pain was just too much, but luckily he had gotten a job just in time. He finally was diagnosed with a hernia and cured.

The point is that his illness could have been much worse and much costlier. He should have acted (no pun intended) sooner and gone to the doctor to know his options. It could have been something very simple to treat. We need to know and be involved. Many times we simply view healthcare as inaccessible due to the fact that we do not have health insurance.

While some of this is true, healthcare, especially preventative and basic care is still accessible from an affordability point of view. There are clinics, doctors, and even hospitals that offer discounts and special rates.

Definitely, waiting and not treating and facing the problem won’t help and could make it worse.

Take care

Why get hung up on Copay’s only?

Many clients buy health insurance and rate insurance carriers by the doctor office copay amount offered rather than by what type of coverage the plan offers, what is the maximum amount covered, what coverage area the plan offers, what is excluded in the plan, what rating the carrier has and how much risk are you willing to accept.

The option to offer doctor office visit copay’s is not a benefit that is free of charge to you, the policy will have a monthly added cost to cover such benefits and the carrier knows that a healthy individual might visit a doctor one or two times a year, this option usually doesn’t benefit the policy holder.

Health insurance should be purchased based on the following:

1) Type of plan being offered (PPO / HMO / POS)

2) What is covered by the plan, what is not covered by the plan.

3) What is your maximum out of pocket expense with the plan.

4) How much money are you willing to risk if you become ill.

5) Are you covered outside of their network, do you need referrals for specialists.

6) What capacity does the carrier have to pay claims (A.M. Best Rating).

7) What premium can you afford on a monthly basis without having to lapse the policy.

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A question thousands more of us ask ourselves everyday.

Most of us have been used to getting our healthcare coverage provided through our employer, but this is changing. This is changing rapidly. More and more employers are either doing away with providing health insurance benefits or just simply providing some funds to employees and letting them choose for themselves what to do.

So this new reality in  health insurance has taken off our blanket of having our employer, usually through the human resources department, be our health insurance purchaser. They would do the research, analyze the carrier, weigh the options, and make the decisions. The decisions may or may not have been in our personal bests interest anyway, but they, the employer did the shopping for us. Who wants to deal with all that work of deciphering what to get, what to do.

Well, guess what? This  is now our job, we have to figure out what is the best health plan for us and our families. What is a fair price, how high of a deductible, co-insurance, prescriptions, maternity coverage, limitations, exclusions, etc., etc.

To begin this journey, many people have tried going online and requesting quotes, but 99 out of 100 times, all they get are aggressive telemarketers calling from a million different companies that are not even from the website that they submitted their personal information!

Yes, it is true!

Who knows who is calling them, from where, what company, and even if they are  licensed as health insurance agents anyway! This is happening today, everyday, to thousands of people.

Do I have your attention now?

Let me introduce you to VitalOne Health, our company is only responding to health inquiries for the clients that request it, period. Our company values the trust placed on us by the people that submit to us their private and confidential information. We do not use this information for anything else than to to provide you with assistance in attaining quality and affordable health insurance coverage. We are not a prospect marketing company.

We only represent the customer, the applicant, not the insurance companies. We are biased, yes! We are biased to our clients. We do not care what health plan our clients choose as long as it’s the one that is right for them. We are not a captive agency promoting only one health plan!

We have, do, and will, always represent our client!

You may have tried the rest, now do yourself a favor and try the best!

On the surface, I would say a definite yes.

Let’s examine and look further. When health insurance is not mandated and required by law, our citizens pick and choose when they want to be covered. This can be a decision based on affordability or just people rolling the dice with their healthcare. I would like to believe that everyone is careful, that everyone is conscientious about their own health and how their health impacts all of our lives directly or indirectly.

When one if us is sick, and it is a life threatening illness, our hospitals have to, by law, provide healthcare to stabilize their conditions. Providing healthcare in this manner is more expensive for all of us and more painful for the individual who may have waited until the conditioned worsened to the point of being life threatening.

This is not efficient, obviously. Our government going into business is not the answer to healthcare reform, yet we need them to implement laws to make health insurance mandatory for all those who can afford it. This is a tricky area, because what may be affordable to you, may not be for someone else who earns the same and has the same expenses, except that they decide that health insurance is not that necessary and they would rather spend their money on other things.

You are being responsible and others are not, yet we still all pay. This is not fair.

Therefore, our elected politicians have to implement fair income thresholds to make health insurance mandatory for those who earn above those levels and more importantly to assist financially those that do not.

Our President, Barrack Obama, is conducting summits around the country to identify and generate plausible solutions to the healthcare crisis. Is it a crisis? When there are 47 million plus Americans uninsured, I would say so. Yet, the answer is not more government, as many want to do. Government running business operations is not a good model. This will not improve things, it will make them worse. There is no doubt that change is needed to improve our healthcare industry by requiring citizens to all have health insurance. We all need to be responsible.

We cannot have the healthy not have insurance and the unhealthy be the ones that wanted. This is not then insurance. We need to spread risk amongst all of us. Therefore, we all need to have it.