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.

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.

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.

Even if you do take a while to make a premium payment, but still pay it on or before the due date for the first payment, your child will still be covered during that time although you may have to be reimbursed and make the payment for their treatment initially. If your child gets approved, then his or her coverage begins that same day that you applied at the office, even if you weren’t approved yet. So if you had to take your kid to the doctor or hospital while waiting for approval, that is covered, too.

If you are sending the payment through mail, then you need to take precaution to send it at least a week ahead of time, so that the office has plenty of time to receive and process the payment before the due date. If you mail it on the due date, then your child will likely lose his or her coverage. The amount isn’t too much–every family pays twenty dollars a month, whether they have two kids or eight. If you don’t pay your premium, then you will have to pay twenty dollars more in order to apply again for coverage for your child.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

If you choose to cancel your insurance policy and get KCHIP, then your child may have to wait six months before they can receive child health insurance coverage through this state insurance plan. This will never be the case for families who make little enough to qualify for KCHIP and not be required to pay a premium. However, if you are trying to insure a previously covered infant and your income is at least 186% of the federal poverty level, then you will have to wait six months. The same applies to any child up to the age of eighteen whose family makes at least 156% of the federal poverty level. If you lost your insurance in circumstances that you could not take charge of, you can get this waiting period waived.

There are children who may have been previously insured but who do not need to wait, nor pay a premium, in order to receive KCHIP. They are able to be insured as soon as they are approved, regardless of how they came to be uninsured. These children include those between the ages of one and five whose parents make at least 134% of the federal poverty level, and at least 150%; and kids between six and eighteen whose parents make at least 101% and at most 150%.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

The month that falls before the last month of a twelve month period, the KCHIP office will send you a renewal form in the mail. You will have to fill out this renewal form with your family and your child’s current information, not the information used to apply in the first place. You will have to state and prove current income and any type of current insurance that is not KCHIP, even if it is not for the child.

You can’t just mail the renewal form in, though, sadly. You have to go up to a local DCBS office on or before the first day of the twelveth month of coverage. You will also be required to bring certain documents that you had to bring before, such as paycheck stubs for two months, in order to prove that the family is still at an income level where they need child health insurance coverage through KCHIP. If you don’t make it in by the first, that is not your last chance. A final notice will be mailed to you that will provide you with instructions of how you are still able to renew your child’s coverage. If you lose or ignore this final notice, your child will lose his or her coverage at the end of the twelveth month.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

I’m just been accepted as a student at Columbia University in New York, and I heard that you have to have health insurance to go there. Is that true?

Albert

Yep.

You could say that Columbia is looking out for its students by requiring every student who attends classes there full time to be covered by a decent health insurance plan. It’s both trying to make sure that it is not responsible for any student accidents and to make sure that its students are provided with proper health care. It can seem like a huge burden for many students to buy expensive health insurance after many are already putting forty thousand dollars a year into Colombia just for tuition and their dorm. It’s important as a student at CU, then, to compare health insurance quotes and determine which plan is best and cheapest for you.

Like most universities, Columbia University has clinicians on the campus who can help treat you if you fall ill or get injured and can prescribe you medication. However, there are many emergency situations that these clinicians are not qualified to deal with, and Columbia wants its students to be able to go get good health care from a hospital at these times.

Columbia doesn’t just leave its students hanging out to dry and having to find health insurance coverage on their own or else. Rather, it offers a program called the Student Medical Insurance Plan with which students can register for basic or comprehensive coverage. Whenever you register for classes full time at this school, your name is immediatly enrolled in this plan. If you already have health insurance and those don’t want to use the Columbia health insurance plan, then you can submit a waiver.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

I already have health insurance coverage, but my university, Columbia, automatically enrolls you in their insurance program when you register full time. How do I get out of that?

Alexis

Great question.

It can be a little annoying that your university doesn’t give you the option of enrolling or not enrolling in its Columbia health insurance program, but you have to understand that it is mostly in order to protect the interests of its own finances and those of its students. It also offers you health insurance at cheaper rates than you might receive it elsewhere. However, while it is compulsory to be insured while you are attending Columbia full time, it is not compulsory to be insured by Columbia.

If you have your own health insurance coverage, then you can get a waiver to get out of being automatically enrolled in that of your school. It’s not very hard to do. The main thing that you need is documents proving that you have other health insurance coverage. This shouldn’t be easy to get, since all you wil need is your insurance card, which you should already have on your person at all times.

The catch is that while you have to provide proof of insurance, it has to meet six criteria. To find out what these are, go to the Columbia University website. Luckily, once you have waived your coverage, you don’t have to hassle too much with it. Once you waive it for the first semester of the school year, it is automatically waived for the next one. You will, however, need to get it waived all over again for the new school year if you continue attending Columbia.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama

For those millions more Ohioans who are not included in that seven million number, Ohio also has several quick and comprehensive public assistance health insurance programs to make sure that they can keep covered. On one hand, it works side by side with such national programs as Medicare and Medicaid to provide assistance to its residents, or for those unable to qualify for those programs, it provides extra assistance from the state alone, always going the extra mile.

The health insurance companies in Ohio don’t stay locked up in their offices, either. In fact, many of the top companies, such as Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield have created programs that involve connecting with the community and helping to provide health insurance for those who both can’t get it through the state or federal programs but also are unable to afford it. Thirty million dollars will be spent for such programs over the next three years by private companies.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama

It’s old news that medical health insurance for many people really does sucks, as they talk about in this video I found on YouTube. It’s kind of funny, kind of weird (especially the constant shot of that guy wearing a mask, not sure why that’s there), but it’s also revealing of the way many Americans feel about their medical health insurance coverage. Many people who work for large companies get great deals on group health insurance, and people who have enough money can buy plenty of good health insurance for themselves.

One of the big issues about medical health insurance, other than why so many people either don’t have it or don’t have enough of it, is about elective health care. This doesn’t always have to do with health care necessarily, and often involves elective procedures such as botox, lasik surgery, and breast augmentation. It’s up for debate about whether other people covered by a health insurance company should be made to suffer higher payments because of someone doing something that isn’t necessary for their health. However, as you can see in the video where they talk about breast reduction, sometimes it’s hard to draw the line between what is elective surgery and what is really needed.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.