#health insurance
Obama Care v. The Affordable Care Act
Basics for Young People to Know About Health Insurance
Basics for Young People to Know About Health Insurance
Health insurance is essential in case you ever need medical attention. It prevents you from paying for expensive services, such as hospitalization and surgery. Many people are provided coverage through their work or others by the government. However, understanding how this system works can be confusing for younger adults. So, here are a few basics you should know.
1. How to Get Coverage
The…
Looking for catastrophic health insurance? Want to know how to get the best rate with a reputable company? Here’s how to do it. Catastrophic Health Insurance Catastrophic health insurance, sometimes called major medical insurance, is a type of health insurance that pays for major medical and hospital fees but does not pay for visits to your health care professional, prescription drugs, or maternity care. Virtually all plans cover hospital stays, surgeries, intensive care, Xrays, and other hospital fees. Catastrophic health insurance is the cheapest of all health insurance. Deductibles - the amount you pay for a claim before your insurance company will pay - start at $500 and go up to $5,000 . Virtually all plans have a lifetime maximum benefit, known as a cap, of $1 million to $3 million. Once you reach your cap you can no longer receive benefits and your insurance coverage will be canceled. Catastrophic health insurance may be a good health insurance plan if you happen to healthy, take few or no prescription drugs, and want to save money on your health insurance. This plan may also be a good choice when you’re retired and not yet eligible for Medicare . Questions To Consider Before you buy a catastrophic health insurance plan you need to ask yourself: - How much does the plan cost? - What does it cover and what is the lifetime maximum benefit? - Can I afford doctor visits plus prescription drugs myself? - How much is the deductible and can I afford to pay it? Getting Low Cost Catastrophic Health Insurance In order to get the best price on catastrophic health insurance you will have to compare rates. The easiest way to do that is to go online and visit an insurance comparison website. Once there you’ll be asked to fill out a simple questionnaire with your health history plus the type of insurance you want. After you fill out the questionnaire you’ll get health insurance quotes from a number of A-rated insurance companies all vying for your business. After you receive your quotes all you have to do is compare the quotes and the coverages, then choose the company that has the best quote and the best coverage for your particular needs. It will take you on average 5 to 10 minutes to do this, and by virtue of the fact that you could save hundreds of dollars a year in insurance costs, I think you’ll find this is time well spent.
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Gonna start a company where people pay me $400/month for access to pizza, and when they want pizza they can call me for preauthorization and I’ll tell them where they can go, how much they can buy, and what kind they can get. My company will pay for 50% after the first $250 spent.
~ @Progressive_RN
Health insurance companies shouldn’t be able to pick and choose which treatments they’ll cover. I just got diagnosed with a condition (Small Fiber Polyneuropathy) that can be effectively treated or even cured with IVIG. But because IVIG is expensive and my doctor has a hard time getting insurance companies to cover it, he’s putting me on other medications that are much less effective. Health insurance companies shouldn’t be allowed to prevent doctors from properly treating their patients all in the name of profit.
I’m waiting on my psychiatrist to call back. I’m out of my Vyvanse but so far I feel okay. I guess it’s because ten milligrams doesn’t really do anything anymore.
The first weeks or so I felt calmer, but after that it didn’t feel like much of anything at all. Is this normal ADHD medication shit? Other people talk about having to constantly adjust their meds. If that’s the case imma need to find a more responsive psychiatrist. And one that takes my insurance.
that feeling when you get kicked off of your parent’s insurance for the sin of turning 26 so you have to buy new insurance but literally no insurance provided by your pcp will cover your birth control so you have to pay for it out of pocket, which with your parent’s insurance was only $15 for a three month supply, but now with this new insurance it’s over $800 but you don’t find that out until you get to the pharmacy so naturally you break down crying right here in the CVS with a line of people behind you and you can’t even complain about it because if you even imply that you wish we had free healthcare you get labeled a fucking communist.
~*~✨ Just American Things ✨~*~
![The greatest wealth is health. ~Virgil [USA]: It’s LGBTQ Enrollment Week of Action - open enr](https://64.media.tumblr.com/ef3b0b7a0ccd1dbff19f402ec004e1f5/tumblr_ohst8uvo6w1tan22jo1_1280.jpg "The greatest wealth is health. ~Virgil [USA]: It’s LGBTQ Enrollment Week of Action - open enr")
The greatest wealth is health.~Virgil
[USA]:It’sLGBTQ Enrollment Week of Action-open enrollment means open for everyone, including ALL bisexuals+ their families and friends! So we are getting the word out to the Entire Bisexual Community this holiday season! Get Medical Coverage, then Get That Check-Up and Be Healthy!
And it helps that it’s cheaper and easier than ever before to get financial help and Get Covered for 2017. So CLICK THE LINK and give yourself and your loved ones the Gift of Health Care this Holiday Season.
Note:Bisexual+(Bi+ for short) is just *shorthand* for ALL Non-Monosexual people inclusive of but not limited to: Bisexual & Biromantic as well as Ambisexual, Flexisexual, Fluid, Heteroflexible & Homoflexible, Multisexual, No Labels, Omnisexual, Pansexual, Polysexual, Pomosexual, SGL (Same-gender Loving), Sapiosexual, Queer-identified, Questioning et al.
Additionally the Bisexual+ Community has always/will always include people of ALL genders/gender identification including but not limited to: Androgynous, Cis, Genderqueer, Gender-Nonconforming, Non-binary, Trans, et al.
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Just an FYI for those in the US with insurance issues
this sounds oddly plausible
a good doctor will pester the insurance company on your behalf. a couple times in my Back Pain Odyssey my insurance noped out on a procedure, and my doctor called them up and was like “no, really” and they gave in.
so if your insurance is in the habit of going “you don’t actually need TWO months of physical therapy, just walk it off,” tell the doctor who ordered it, and they may very well volunteer to, or agree to, call up the insurance people and go “simon says pay for the fucking therapy.”
For all my peeps out there fighting the good fight against Big Pharma Bureaucratic Bullshit.
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Alright, it’s been too long since I had a huge post (maybe 20 hours) so I thought I’d lay one out again. I’d like to talk about Health Care, and why I’m voting for Obama because of it.
Let me start by surprising everyone who hasn’t talked to me with the following:
I hate Obamacare - I think it violates our rights by forcing us to buy a product from private companies, and probably should be repealed.
“But why are you voting for Obama then Rob? Surely Romney’s repeated calls to end Obamacare appeal to you!” - GOP Supporter
Lets start by looking at our health care system before the Affordable Care Act went into effect.
- First - Every person could go to an ER, and that ER would be forced to give them basic life saving care, even if they didn’t have insurance. People still died of cancer and all sorts of nastiness, but hospitals were generally not allowed to turn people away.
- Second - Not everyone had health insurance. Some people had preexisting conditions and were denied coverage. Some were unemployed and couldn’t afford it. Some were students older than 24. Some had jobs that didn’t provide it. However, those people still sometimes went to the hospital.
- Third - Sometimes health insurance wouldn’t cover a procedure that a doctor recommended. Health insurance companies dictate medicine, not medical doctors.
Anyone with a job most likely has seen their health care costs rising slowly since they’ve ever worked ever. A little raise in their premiums there, an increased deductible there. A new service not covered.
Why you ask? Was this profiteering by insurance companies? Sure, maybe. Profiteering by doctors and hospitals? Maybe. Largely though, the problem was that you received treatment first and were billed second. If your insurance wouldn’t pay and you were stuck with the bill? You could simply declare bankruptcy or just not pay. Of course the hospital still incurred the cost of your surgery. You used medical supplies, Doctor’s time. Anesthesia and band aids. Electricity. All that stuff still had to get paid for.
Lets say you make minimum wage working at Walmart, 30 hours a week. You may have a child. You make too much to be on medicaid, but still can’t afford insurance. Then, you get a large kidney stone, require surgery, and get stuck with a $40,000 bill for surgery. Or you get shot in the face watching batman and incur a 2 million dollar hospital bill. What if you are unable to pay?
The hospitals - some public and some private - do the only thing they can do, which is passing those costs onto the paying customers. And the only ‘paying’ customers were people with insurance. Thus, the bill for any given procedure is largely automatically inflated, because it’s costs if paid must go towards costs of procedures that aren’t paid. That’s one of the reasons Americans spend almost 3x more on healthcare than countries that don’t have our 'system’.
The poorest Americans, the oldest Americans, were covered under Medicare and Medicaid. But there’s a group of people - lower middle class, upper lower class - that may slip through the cracks.
**Ok, so what did Obama care do for us?**
First, it made more people pay into the health care industry. The more people who are paying into the system, the more the health insurance industry can spread those costs across everyone. That means less people who are going to the hospital without health insurance.
Second, it capped the profits of the health insurance industry. It is forcing the insurance industry to pay for medical procedures with your insurance premiums, not advertising.
Third, it forces insurance companies to allow people with preexisting conditions onto health care plans.
This alleviates a lot of problems that our health care industry was facing. However, socialism is a government owned industry. Since the government isn’t owning anything, this definitely isn’t socialist.
So why is this not a point in the cards for Romney? Because Obamacare is demonstrably better than pre-Obamacare. And Romney’s only plan is to repeal Obamacare. He needs to have SOME plan to replace Obamacare - because going back to the way it was is untenable.
“So what are our options besides Obamacare? ” - GOP Supporter
Great question friend! There’s three things we can do (At least, that I can think of. Feel free to update me with your own).
- Alleviate the problem by forcing people to pay for health care before they receive it. That way, costs will come down because everyone who gets health care will be insured. Hospitals will know that they can charge the actual costs of the procedures because they’ve already been paid. Everyone will be forced to buy insurance, because without it they’ll simply die. (This is assuming we could convince hospitals not to treat people for free anyways) This is the system of health care that places like Somolia, Uganda, Ethiopia, and other heavily impoverished nations with terrible quality of life have. If you have money, you live long, if you don’t, you die young. In my opinion, this is completely fucking unacceptable for the United States.
- Socialized Medicine. *gasp*. This makes sure every single person pays into the system what they can, through taxes. And since every person is paying, every person can get health care. *THIS* is what we need, since every other country that is using it has a vastly better health care system. But that’s a different story. Read about the different types of socialized health care here.
- Continue with the pre-Obamacare status quo. I’m not an economist and I don’t have any formal training in health care administration, so this is entirely conjecture: Prices will continue to rise which will force more people out of the insurance pool. This will cause health care prices to go up faster. Employer prices will continue to rise, either forcing an increase in the costs of goods, or forcing down salaries to compensate. It’s an all around fuck fest.
- Quick Aside: I’ve been told that if we completely deregulate the health care industry and let the free market fairy sprinkle its magic all these problems will go away. Frankly this argument is full of shit. First, the problem of everyone being covered but not everyone paying still exists without another insurance mandate. Second - the free market decided that people with pre-existing conditions wouldn't be covered because it’s not profitable to cover them. That’s a whole group of people who don’t get health care - which in my opinion is equally untenable.
Of course, this is a simplistic view of the situation, and ignores a lot of important facts: Regular checkups and a relationship with the same physician is extremely beneficial for the health of the population, treating patients in a doctors office is cheaper than in the ER, access to vaccinations and health care earlier will result in healthier children, etc. Honestly I’m very lazy and want to go to bed, so I made this as simple as possible.
But it remains you *shouldn’t* vote for Romney while he advocates path 3 for our country. Obama really screwed the GOP hard by enacting Obamacare. By *compromising* and implementing the only possible solution that the right could come up with (a federal insurance mandate), he stole their only solution for health care. Once repealed, the only option the right has is to Re-implement Obamacare,
If you are a GOP supporter? Demand from your party a plan of action. Because without Obamacare, the health care industry is largely up shits creek. Moral arguments aside, it isn’t fiscally responsible to vote for Romney because of his lack of medical plan. As always I’m open to questions.
December 5, 2020
So I’m alittle overwhelmed with this pregnancy thing. My boyfriend still doesn’t want to keep the baby and I’ve been trying to look for resources to help me out. I don’t have health insurance so making my first appointment to check on my baby has become extremely frustrating. I’ve heard that there are programs for that, to help out with prenatal care, food stamps, free doctors visits, and free vitamims up until child birth but I can’t find ANYTHING! I… I feel like I’m suppose to have this baby but I’m so lost on what to do! I want to ask my parents for help but I know they’ll just ridicule me. Tell me I’m dumb for even wanting to keep my baby. I want to move out of moms house before I ask her for help, I know she’ll be upset at first but she’ll get over it and end up helping me. I just feel like I’m stuck right now. I feel like there’s nothing in my power that I can do! But I’ll pull through. I’ll find a way not only for me but for my child. Even if I have to pay for everything out of pocket I will! Well I just had to get that off my chest. If anyone who has seen has any advice please, please, please reach out to me.
(Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Let’s get real on health care
Suppose you have an unhinged neighbor who wants to burn down your house. You’d probably spend much of your time making sure that that doesn’t happen. Drafting plans for a megamansion you hope to build where your house once stood probably wouldn’t be a priority. But that seems to be the approach of some Democratic aspirants for the presidency, who spent big chunks of their recent debates arguing about details of costly “Medicare for All” plans that have no chance of becoming law. Our view.
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(Photo: relif/Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Surprise medical bills
Out-of-network doctors are purposefully being used to prey on unsuspecting patients. It is bad enough that hospitals would resort to this scam, now private equity groups are getting into the action as well. Our view.Opposing view.
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(Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)
Gig economy
Rideshare companies used technology to disrupt a hidebound industry that was sorely in need of disrupting. But they have an obligation to ensure that their success doesn’t come at the expense of either passengers’ safety or workers’ rights. Our view.Uber’s view.
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What happens when you treat health care like a soap opera
In theory, cable news should be the perfect venue for explaining a complicated issue like health care policy. 24-hour news networks have a ton of airtime to fill, access to a wide range of policy experts, and a roster of journalists who can find real-life examples that illustrate how abstract policy changes could impact people’s day-to-day lives.
But in the coverage of the Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare, cable news networks have largely fixated on the drama of trying to get the Republican’s bill through Congress: the vote whipping, the partisan infighting, and Trump’s efforts to make a “deal” with the more conservative members of his party.
That focus on the spectacle of a vote badly distorts audiences’ understanding of what’s at stake in the health care debate. It means entire interviews are spent asking politicians about vote counts and deal-making instead of talking to actual health care experts. It means countless segments debating Trump’s deal-making abilities and the “optics” of health care reform. And it means viewers at home end up getting less and less meaningful information about what the Republican health care bill actually does, much less whether or not it’s a good idea.
Treating the debate over health care like an episode of House of Cards might make for good television, but it fails to accomplish the basic goal of good political journalism: to explain why this stuff matters to people outside of DC. And if the angry town halls across the country reveal anything, it’s that you don’t need the drama of congressional politics to make people care about what’s happening to their health care.
Watch the video above to see how cable news’ focus on politics over policy warps the way we think about health care.
that feeling when you get kicked off of your parent’s insurance for the sin of turning 26 so you have to buy new insurance but literally no insurance provided by your pcp will cover your birth control so you have to pay for it out of pocket, which with your parent’s insurance was only $15 for a three month supply, but now with this new insurance it’s over $800 but you don’t find that out until you get to the pharmacy so naturally you break down crying right here in the CVS with a line of people behind you and you can’t even complain about it because if you even imply that you wish we had free healthcare you get labeled a fucking communist.
~*~✨ Just American Things ✨~*~
