Reader question:

What’s the deal with those discount health insurance cards?

Martha

Great question.

Discount medical health insurance cards claim to be a great alternative for people who don’t have the money to be able to afford insurance. For that very reason, they may be a little attractive at first, especially to any of the millions of uninsured who have no other option. It would be a great idea to offer low cost health insurance to those who fall through the gap between government aid and medical self sufficiency. However, upon closer look, this discount medical health insurance cards aren’t all that they’re cracked up to be.

The business of discount health cards is growing fast, and many health insurance companies are now offering them as an affordable alternative to full on health insurance plans. What they do is give the card holder discounts on things like doctor appointments, hospital visits, and prescriptions. In some cases, they may be the only option for someone who can’t afford health insurance, and thus it won’t matter that that person is still footing the whole medical bill, just with a slight discount. However, for those who feel the need to avail themselves of this option, an eye should be kept out for the many cards that are fraudulent.

Many sellers of these fraudulent discount cards make it look like the cards are actual health insurance, when they aren’t. They are not regulated, and there’s no way to protect yourself as a consumer if you get one of these cards. Even the more normally legitimate businesses that offer the cards tend to make it look like the savings and discounts that you get from them are much more than they actually are. If you fall for this, you could end up paying more for a card every month than it’s saving you money.

Even if the discounts they promise are technically on the card, a lot of times there will be a bunch of under the table fees that will take those away, so that in the end the only thing that this card you have will be is a piece of useless plastic. It can have the effect of making some people who can barely afford their health insurance plan exchange it for a card, convinced by the companies that it is an actual health insurance plan, only to find themselves paying all of their medical bills.

There are many of these companies out there who are trying to steal your money without actually giving you anything in return. One company has already charged unwilling customers for cards that they never wanted, fraudulently using their credit card numbers.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

If it weren’t for getting health insurance through your employer, more Americans would be uninsured than there already are. Its greatness, however, does not in any way make it any funner to sift through all of the different plans offered by your company to try to figure out which one best fits the needs of your family. Such tedious work is necessary, but for someone who already has a full time job, it can be a serious violation of the little free time that you have. Even so, if you want to do what’s right for you, research and time are basic necessities.

If you get group health insurance with your employer, usually you’ll get an option of what kind of plan you want, and the type you choose will determine both how much freedom you have in determining your health care path, and how much you will be paying for your monthly premium. Figuring out whether you should opt for more expense with freedom or cheaper premiums with lots of restrictions is difficult, so here’s some points to follow.

• Network. Deciding between a plan where you are required to stick to a network of physicians or going with a different plan can often be determined just by seeing what the selection offered by the plan’s network is. Research into a few of the doctors and make sure they give quality care, ask other patients about them, and so on. You may have a family doctor that you’re attached to and should choose a more flexible plan if you want to keep going to that doctor.
• Travel. Are the doctors in the network within good distance of your home and office? Do you have options if you have an emergency and have to go to the nearest place? What happens if you get sick or injured while you are traveling?
• Price. Lucky for you, as someone who has group health insurance through their employer, your boss will be picking up part of the tab. Still, you should find out the details about what exactly your company will pay and what will be left over to you, as well as asking questions about co pays and prescriptions and the like.
• Freedom. Do like to pick your doctor or save your money? Usually, employer sponsored health insurance will require you to stay within a network, but often there are more expensive options for going out of the network.
• Think ahead. You may be a healthy bachelor right now with a health care plan that fits you, but what about down the line? If you get married and start a family, will your insurance cover your spouse and children? Pregnancy? Retirement? What about huge things such as surgery or treatments if something happens in the future that you can’t foresee? If such things are covered, are they covered immediately, or do you have to wait until the end of the year for your company’s enrollment?
• Coverage. Does your health plan cover preventive care? What about physicals and dental appointments? Prescriptions? Ambulance and ER visits?
• Extras. These are the things that not all health care plans provide for, but you might need in the future. Lots of plans don’t cover mental health care, but do you need it? What about family planning, such as abortion or infertility treatments? Chiropractics?
• Pre existing conditions. This might be one of the biggest things that you need to worry about if you have one and need to get good health care coverage.
• Coverage caps. Health insurance plans do not provide you with infinite coverage. Often, they’ll set a certain amount that they can pay out through your plan over a year or a lifetime. You should make sure that this is a decent amount so that, even if you end up with some huge medical bills, you will come out okay. Many employers will offer health savings account to help their employees avoid problems with these caps.
• Claims and complaints. One of the most important things to getting a good experience out of your health insurance plan is being able to have a voice in your coverage. You should be able to complain and be listened to. You should be able to fight against claims being rejected or being reimbursed for too little.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Contrary to popular opinion, there are ways that you can save money on your health insurance coverage. There may never be plans that could be considered cheap, but if you know your needs, there is no problem getting low cost health insurance for yourself and your family, at least in comparison to other plans and, well, lacking health insurance altogether.

It is true that of the many Americans today that don’t have health insurance, many actually can’t afford any. However, there are also many of that number who don’t have health insurance because of misconceptions about insurance and the health care system. A lot of people don’t get health insurance because they think it costs too much, and, besides, they’re in perfect health. What they don’t realize is that some of the most expensive health care bills and some of the highest numbers in medical debt are billed to people who were otherwise in perfect health but were victims of bad luck or tragedy.

The first law of health insurance is that no matter what, it’s always more expensive to be uninsured. People who don’t have health insurance and then find themselves in something as simple as a small car accident can go through their savings, ruin their credit, and fall into huge debt. Even a minor ER visit can cost five hundred dollars.

If you can get insurance through your job, do it! It’s always cheaper, especially if you have previous medical problems that would make it hard for you to get medical insurance through anywhere else. Your employer foots part of the bill and you often get a choice of plans. And when you have a choice, compare, compare, compare. It’s frustrating and time consuming, but it’s the only way to save money and figure out what’s best for you.

Even when you find a plan that looks pretty cheap, cheap isn’t always best. The real deal breaker should be value. You don’t want simply the cheapest premium. You want the cheapest premium with the best coverage. This might be a little higher than that great quote you got, but it will save you more money down the line. Even if you do get a plan with great coverage though, remember that some expenses still fall through the gap. Things like mental health care and prescription drugs are the areas where even the best plans have little to no coverage.

As you were taught in history class, freedom ain’t free. The more flexibility that your health care plan gives you, the higher your premium will be. So it is up to you to decide what is more important to you: deciding who you go to for health care, or paying less on your premium. Less freedom of choice among health providers isn’t necessarily bad, so long as the physicians in the network are quality. And you can research a plan’s network before you sign up for it. Maybe not through the company itself, but there are a lot of sources online or off where you can find out about a certain plan’s track record.

One thing that might worry some people who are using employer based insurance is where they would be if they lost their job. Lucky for them, you don’t lose your health insurance when you lose your job. The government provides you with COBRA for a period of time after you lose your job. It can be more expensive, but it’s better than nothing and can ease a lot of minds.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Reader question:

I’m going on spring break this spring. Normally I’m insured through my school, but do I need a different health insurance for this?

July

Depends.

I think the first step for you would be to ask your school’s health insurance provider what their rules are for traveling while insured. Most school plans will at least cover you if you go home over break or during the summer. It depends on the school, but that might cover you regardless of where in the country you go. However, if you plan on traveling outside of the country for spring break, then that is a whole other story.

A lot of insurance companies for travel health insurance have certain plans for young people every year around the time for spring break. There’s nothing exactly for college and university students, usually, but a lot of times the plans are offered for people under thirty. One extremely cheap options is from Travel Guard Insurance, which has a program for people in their twenties and under which can cost from $29 on up for every trip. The cost of the insurance is dependent on the cost of the trip, but you only pay one time per trip.

One travel health insurance plan that might be particularly appealing to young people traveling during spring break, or even for any other break, is the Lifeguard plan offered by Champion health insurance. This costs about $47 for a trip averaging around fifteen days in length, and if you plan on doing anything risky, such as white water rafting or mountain climbing, you can add on a high risk provision for 15% more, averaging at $54. Champion’s CEO states that his company wants to raise awareness of the need for travel insurance when going on vacations or any other trek out of the country, because many people aren’t aware of not being covered while traveling.

There are a bunch of things that you will need from a travel insurance company that are usually offered. This things include provisions for if your trip ends up being cancelled midway, emergencies, delays in your travel plans, and losing your things through the airport. You might figure that coverage isn’t necessary, but you never know what you will need. Your insurance company should also have a all day all night help line which you can call from anywhere in the world to ask questions about your coverage.

If you get travel insurance, you should make sure that you are covered for being transported back to the U.S. in the case of your death. It’s not something you want to think about, but it’s always a possibility, and no one knows when they’re going to die. If you die in another country, they have no obligation to follow the traditions of your country or to send you back, and transporting a body can be expensive.

Most of all, just make sure that you make yourself safe for your trip, know where to go for medical help wherever you are at, and have fun!

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Reader question:

We’ve just started making enough money so that we can seriously think about taking vacations every year. We’re planning the first one now (way ahead of time), and we’re trying to make sure that we do everything right, because we want to travel internationally and we’ve never been out of the country before. What should we plan for with international health insurance?

Mike & Susanne

Great question.

Everybody knows that they should have health insurance at home just in case something happens, and it doesn’t make sense that there are people who don’t think the same for international travel health insurance. It’s much easier to get into trouble when you’re in a place that you’re completely unfamiliar with. What if you end up driving in England? Accidents would be more likely while you’re getting used to their different driving styles. Getting a travel health insurance plan is extremely important, even if you will only be gone for a short amount of time. Here are some tips.

• MEDICAL EVACUATION.

This is one of the most important features for your international health insurance plan to have. If you just stuck with your regular health insurance plan, then you might get at most $1k for medical transportation, which is great at home, considering that an ambulance usually costs around five hundred dollars. However, if you travel outside of the country, one thousand dollars won’t life light you home, so you’ll need a much higher cap for a travel plan.

There are so many cases where Americans will go to a country and get injured or sick, only to arrive at an out of the way local hospital where their needs might not be met. These customers will then have to be transported via helicopter to a hospital more up on Western medicine, and those costs can come up to as much as $50,000–just for the flight!

You might think insurance isn’t necessary when you go on a cruise, but it’s the most important time to get it, especially medical evac coverage. If you’re on a ship, it costs more to get a flight, and the distance will most likely be longer since in most cases you will be being transported back to the states.

• Expect the unexpected.

I think it’s wonderful that the two of you are planning your trip so thoroughly, but there may be one aspect of planning that you’re missing: the possibility of cancellation or delay of your vacation. You might have your insurance, have your bags packed, your tickets paid, your hotel room reserved and everything, only to come down extremely sick the night before you leave. No one wants to go on vacation with a fever, so this can throw all the plans down the drain, especially it comes during that short one week vacation that you only get one time a year.

That’s why you need trip cancellation or interruption insurance. If you get this, then if something comes up so that you don’t get to go on your vacation, the insurance company will pay for any of those tickets, reservations, and so on that you can’t get your money back for. Same goes for if you have to end up coming home early.

• Terrorism.

It’s no fun to think about all of this stuff when you’re planning an exciting trip, but terrorism is becoming more and more prevalent, even in what are considered the safest areas. There have been many acts of terrorism even in Switzerland, where the crime rates are incredibly low. So anywhere you go, there is the possibility, just as there is if you stay at home.

Normally you can get your expenses reimbursed if the U.S. State Department hands out a warning about your destination country due to terrorist activity. You can also usually get your money back if an act of terrorism has been perpetrated in your country or city (depending on the insurance company) of destination within thirty days of your trip.

• Have fun!

The most important thing about your trip is to have a good time. Having international health insurance will make this easier, making you more secure while you’re away from home and able to know that your health is in good hands. Getting with a company that has a twenty four hour customer service line is the best way to keep yourself happy and comfortable with your plan while you are enjoying your trip.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

In Illinois, all of those with aching backs and hurting muscles are about to get a big break. The Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance in Illinois is going to start covering chiropractic care, an area of medicine that many people want and need, but that most health insurance providers won’t touch because they deem it to be something elective, or not medically necessary. Those who have to deal with aches and pains everyday, and for whom pain pills aren’t enough or aren’t acceptable, they are very necessary, and Blue Cross has come to the light.

The program is called CAM, which stands for complementary and alternative medicine, and it is slated to start on the first of January. The problem that many consumers might find with it is that it is not an actual part of the coverage of their health insurance plan. Rather, it is separate, set up as a discount health insurance card. This does make things easier, as it means claims and referrals won’t be necessary like they usually are, though.

While the actual Blue Cross discount card is cheaper to begin with, it costs more than your usual health care plan if you have to end up using it. You pay the chiropractor or the practitioner of whatever type of alternative treatment you are getting, and the card is only responsible for giving you a discount. While it is a big discount, at twenty five percent, that is only the case if you work within the network that Blue Cross has chosen.

More and more people are becoming interested in alternative forms of health care, and Blue Cross is just the first health insurance company to have buckled under the weight of demands for coverage for this type of treatment. For those who cannot afford any other kind of health insurance, it might be a good start on getting some medical care, considering the lower costs.

Blue Cross is putting itself forward to help current and potential customers understand the program by providing them with a website called Healthy Roads. The website is still in its early stages, but it contains a load of information about different types of alternative health care. It also has a directory of alternative care providers who are part of Blue Cross’s program, and a bunch of products that might appeal to people interested in alternative health care. It’s a great source of information, even for those who do not have a Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance plan.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Infertility is a huge problem that many women in American society face, and it can be a difficult thing to deal with, especially for couples who desperately want children of their own. Finding a way around the infertility that they have can be an extremely difficult and expensive process, and many couples go through years of intensive treatments, implantations, and drugs to try to get their bodies to jive with fostering life. In many cases, the cost is simply too much, and in others it never works at all.

For those in the former category, New York is making it easier for them to reach their goals. According to the New York state legislature, having children is a “fundamental aspect of being a human”, essentially a human right. For many years, infertility treatment has been considered an elective procedure, and most health insurance companies did not cover it. With the passing of this bill, though, it will become clear that, while infertility treatment is not medially necessary for health, it is for many people’s lives.

The law will make it easier for health insurance companies to provide coverage for this type of treatment, having them insure women between the ages of twenty five and forty four for infertility treatment, with a $60,000 lifetime cap. For people who have put their entire savings into trying to conceive a child, this is welcome news. It also requires that prescription drug coverage include fertility drugs, although these will not be taken out of the sixty thousand dollar lifetime maximum.

Like any type of health insurance coverage, women with this plan will also have to make co pays and pay deductibles. The plan will cover the following methods of fertility treatment:

• in vitro fertilization
• intracytoplasmic sperm injection
• assisted hatching
• gamete donation
• embryo donation
• embryo transfer
• gamete intrafallopian tube transfer
• zygote intrafallopian tube transfer

Those are the most expensive types, although they are not the only ones covered. You are only allowed to get this type of treatment if other, less expensive types of treatment have not been successful in bringing about a pregnancy sustained to the point of childbirth.

In order to get this coverage, you must have had a health insurance plan with the company for at least a year, and there must be reasonable belief that the fertility treatment undergone will bring about the birth of a healthy baby. The treatment must be undergone in a facility that is up to the standards set by the medical community. It is even possible to continue getting treatments once one has resulted in the birth of a healthy child. If an embryo transfer works, then you are insured for two more.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

According to research, one out of every five Californian women are without health insurance coverage. That’s twenty percent, a disproportionate amount of the population, where the nationwide number is fourteen percent. The grade given to Cali by the study from The Women’s Foundation is only an average: in the category of access, it received in F; health status a C-; and health policy a C-.

That’s two million women in California who don’t have insurance, and sixty percent of them have full time jobs. There are certain types of women who are less likely to have health insurance in California, and those include younger women, women over 55, women of color, and immigrant women. There are adequate programs in place in California to cover the health care for children under the age of 19, but for their parents and for anybody else that is below the poverty line, there simply isn’t an option much of the time.

All of these women being without health insurance coverage has a big impact on the state’s overall women health statistics. California has one of the worst records for the prevention of cervical cancer through regular tests such as pap smears. It is in the bottom tenth percentile among the states when it comes to access to various forms of contraception, while at the same time having a less than normal access to abortion procedures. One of the areas where California has seen the least success is in the area of mental health care for women, which has gone down by eighty percent over the past ten years.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Good news is coming out of Michigan for people with Diabetes, who have to face so many medical costs every year just trying to keep up with their condition. As of January 10th, health insurance companies under the regulation of the Michigan Department of Insurance are going to have to start covering supplies needed for controlling Diabetes, such as insulin, within ninety days of that date.

It’s been a long time since there has been any kind of reform of health insurance in Michigan, longer than ten years, so many see this as a welcome expansion of the system. The types of supplies for patients with Diabetes that will be covered by the new requirement, will include such things as:

• insulin
• oral medications
• insulin pumps
• blood glucose testing supplies
• physician and diabetes educational opportunities
• anything else needed to manage the condition

The vice president of the American Diabetes Association states that in the past, many families who struggle with the problem of Diabetes have had to wait, have had their claims denied, have been forced to go without their medications and supplies for lack of money, and these are things that are necessary for them to continue living. Why, she wonders, do we save other lives that are more immediately in danger, while letting Diabetes patients slowly lose theirs? This new program will save thousands of lives across the state of Michigan.

Called the Diabetes Cost Reduction Act, similar things have gone into law across forty two other states in the country. In those other states, though, the covered products still come with required co pays, which may keep some patients from getting their necessary supplies. the DCRA is the first to not require this.

One of the things that brought this about was the huge increase in cases of Diabetes throughout the state of Michigan. Sixty seven percent more people have it now than did in 1997, says the Center for Disease Control. of the 660,000 Michigan residents that have Diabetes, one third of them are not aware of the fact. Considering the ramifications of not taking care of your self properly when you have Diabetes, raising awareness alone could save many lives.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Reader question:

I’m about to start my own business. What do I need to know about health insurance?

Abigail

Great question.

Having self employed health insurance is more important than even having health insurance while you are employed by a company. Consider the fact that all of your health insurance is funded by yourself, and if you don’t have it, should something happen to you that puts you in the hospital for a few days, you’ll be out of work. And if you’re self employed, you don’t get paid for things like sick days and vacation time, so not only will you have a huge hospital bill, but you will also be out several days of work with no recompense.

Getting health insurance if you are self employed is financially responsible even if nothing happens to you medically while you have it. The self employed are allowed to claim their health insurance costs on their tax returns as a business expense. For self employed people looking for a good health insurance plan, there are health savings account, which are tailored specifically for the self employed.

If you intend to be self employed, you need to find out what you will do about health insurance before leaving the job you’re at now. Looking for health insurance if you happen to have a pre existing condition, or your family does, can be difficult, and you might have to end up getting insured through your state’s high risk pool, which can be costly.

You might want to save costs and guard your personal information by not employing a health insurance broker. This is understandable, but if you choose to go this route, you will need to put much more effort and research into your search. You will need to understand the different terms and policy speak that come along with health insurance plans so that you can be sure that the plan will cover you and your family. Or you could choose to go with a broker. They cost, but they also know more about you, although they tend to be pushy.

As mentioned before, a good plan for the self employed is a health savings account. These are trusts with a bank or credit union which are tax exempt and are paid into by you, in the form of cash. In order to work, they have to come side by side with a health insurance plan with a high deductible. It gives you greater coverage than your average plan.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.