As you may already know, VitalOne is all over the web now. We are participating heavily in Social Media and even now are on youtube!

The Twitter Project is dedicated toward the simplification of Healthcare Reform concepts and ideas. We believe that if its not Twitter worthy, it shouldn’t be part of the public option.

We are beginning this project with our health insurance Youtube channel, we want you to post your text comments and video replies to our agents and founders so that we can explain situations in as few words as possible. Our founders are experts in the Health Insurance field. We will try to come up with questions as a starter until things get rolling. Don’t be afraid to post a video reply! We will try to keep our answers as short, clear and concise as possible.

We are also taking questions on Twitter itself, you can find us @VitalOneHealth tweeting about health insurance. We will try to keep our responses to 140 words or less, one tweet. The same goes for Facebook. We are also actively monitoring our Twitter and Facebook activity. Join our VitalOne Health insurance fan page fan or join our Facebook health insurance discussion group.

How valuable is your health to you? I bet your thinking, “What kind of question is that?” Your health is invaluable, right? Now here’s a little insight, if you should ever experience any health problems there are doctors that will quickly put a price tag on how much your health is worth. If for any reason an illness or accident should send you straight to the hospital you could end up spending your lifetime savings on treatment. Luckily, for these types of situations there is health insurance. Although choosing the right one can be overwhelming.

There are several factors that have to be determined before you can choose the best insurance that meets your specific needs. When searching or even considering any type of health insurance take the time to consider you and your family’s current lifestyle first. Then take in account how much you can afford for monthly premiums and co-payments. Make sure you consider a premium that will not increase at least for 12 months just so when it does you can be prepared. Take your time and understand the basics of health insurance, you have to understand that every year you get older and as you get older more risks are taken by your insurance carrier that’s the reason for your premium increase.

There are also many other benefits from taking just a couple minutes out of your day to really sit down and think or speak to your spouse about. Always remember that there are hundreds of health insurance agencies, or at least that’s what they’ll call themselves these days. It’s always better to have an insurance agent, someone you can talk to if you don’t understand something about the policy you are considering to purchase. I know trusting someone that you deal with over the phone is very hard, but you always have to remember that by law you have 10 days from the receipt of your policy (meaning the day you receive it in the mail) to cancel any policy and get a full refund with no penalties attached. Last but not least take a look at the type of plan you are purchasing.

What type of plan are you purchasing?

Is it an HMO or a PPO? Take in to consideration that although an HMO can have low monthly premiums they do not cover as much and you are looking to spend more money out of pocket. Usually with an HMO you would have to stay in network and/or get a referral if you have to see a specialist. A PPO on the other hand sometimes has the same monthly premiums of an HMO but allows you more benefits and you don’t need to stay in network, and depending on which insurance carrier you are purchasing the plan with you won’t need a referral to go see a specialist. You may have heard the term “You get what you pay for!” So if you are searching for quality health insurance why settle for less.

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.

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.

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