Look to the Health Reform Law to restore respectability to our health insurance providers

Who hasn't heard a story of a health insurance provider who refused to pay on a legitimate claim just to increase the provider's profits? With every claim paid, their profits decrease. Yes, it happens, but then, bad apples are found in every industry, from Wall Street to Main Street, from City Hall to the Capital. The question is how widespread the practice is, and there's no telling. Still, we shouldn't paint the entire industry with the same brush. The health insurance industry has as many honest companies as any industry. Still, the U.S. Congress has put constraints on the industry in the new Health Reform Law of 2010 that should help alleviate this industry of some of its embarrassments.

The health industry accounts for fully one sixth of the United States economy! Americans spend $2 trillion a year on health care, most dollars coming from health insurance providers who, of course, collect their money as premiums on health insurance policies. Health insurance providers make 3 to 6 percent profit from their premiums; the rest goes to operations and claims payments. The new Health Reform Law of 2010 has now put providers on notice: by 2011, providers must allocate at least 80 percent of premium payments to treatment. They'll be forced to operate on 20 percent of their collections and extract their profit as well. This measure is intended to force providers to streamline their operations, control their expenses, and to reduce tendencies to deny claims. In the future, we can be assured, our providers will pay all legitimate claims without too much fuss. Good news indeed.

Health insurance providers have been saddled with additional burdens as a result of the passage of the Health Reform Law. After March 23, 2010, when President Obama signed the bill into law, providers were to immediately cease the practice of dropping a person's coverage just because they get sick. Neither are they to deny coverage to sick children. In 2010, they are also ordered to remove lifetime caps, enabling the elderly sick to continue receiving care. The first year insures the sick will be able to get treatment, and that no one covered by insurance be denied when they need it most. Following this law, the health care insurance industry will no longer be open to accusations of inhumanity.

As said above, 2011 will require health insurance providers to spend 80 percent of their premiums on medical treatment. It is in 2012 that the industry will experience the full force of the law, as then, no provider will be permitted to refuse insurance to any U.S. citizen. They'll have to make insurance available to everyone, sick or not. While this could prove an unfair burden as new claims from the sick will increase their payouts, the law has balanced this possibility with an equally binding force requiring all Americans to have medical insurance. Since insurance for the about 24 million poor Americans will be subsidized by $350 billion from the U.S. government, 2012 should see health insurance providers realize an increase in profits.

All of these measures are meant to control health care costs in the U.S., to provide all citizens access to insurance, and to assure the sick always have care. If all goes as planned, we can expect to see the reputation of health insurance providers at all time highs. Given what they do provide for society, that reputation should have always been high. Getting rid of those 'bad apples' should renew our confidence in them again, with heartfelt gratitude.

The Health Reform Law makes it easy to get health insurance for small businesses

During President Obama's campaign, as he went throughout the country extolling the virtues of health care reform, a plumber stood up and declared he could not possibly do business if he were forced to buy one of the packaged health insurance for small businesses then available. The plumber, who was actually an unlicensed plumber (in my state, if you're not licensed, you're not a plumber), said he had obtained funding to start his own plumbing business, but if he were required to buy health insurance for his employees, he couldn't afford to go into business after all. The Republicans latched on to this character's story to argue against Obama's proposals for universal health care coverage, but the argument went nowhere, Obama won, and by 2010, a health care reform bill was signed. As it turned out, unless Joe the plumber intended to have 50 or more employees, he would not have to provide health insurance for his employees.

Joe the plumber wasn't trying to deny the responsibility of business to supply health insurance plans to the employee. It's been an acceptable practice for decades and embraced by conservatives and liberals alike. Business itself has met their responsibility with exuberance and dignity all these decades, taking lesser profits in order to do it. Currently, 98 percent of companies with 200 or more employees provide health care insurance plans for their employees. About 150 million Americans are employer insured, and that number is expected to grow to 159 million by 2019. The new Health Reform Law continues to rely on business to provide working Americans with the health insurance they need.

Health insurance for small businesses is not as inexpensive as health insurance for businesses with 200 or more employees. This is because insurers give discounts based on the number of people to be insured. Naturally, a larger organization will be able to obtain those hefty discounts while smaller businesses can't. This gives something of a competitive advantage to larger business: because they can offer prospective employees health insurance as a benefit and the small businesses can't, the best talent goes to the bigger guys. The small business, unable to offer health insurance, also suffers a greater turnover of employees as they tend to leave the business for larger ones able to provide health insurance. Lacking what other workers of equal caliber get, small business employees are more demoralized. Being unable to afford health insurance for small businesses makes doing business as a small business a hard proposition indeed.

Now, small business is in luck. The Health Reform Law is enabling small businesses, with as few as 25 employees, to get health insurance for small businesses this year (2010) by providing taxes credits for those who do. In addition, the law provides for the building of medical insurance exchanges throughout the country. These exchanges will represent hundreds, thousands, or millions of individuals and small businesses as a group to insurers. It's the large numbers that have given large corporations leverage to get those lower premiums for their employees. Now, individuals and small business owners with their employees will be counted as a group under the exchange and be eligible for those nicely affordable group rates.

The exchanges are still in the initial stage of development - not ready yet. Expect to see them functioning by 2014. Then, small businesses with 50 or more employees will be required to provide insurance to their employees. Hopefully, these exchanges will make health insurance for small businesses as cheap as it is for the big guys, and give the small businesses an opportunity to attract those valuable, highly skilled employees. There's an answer for most social issues, Joe the Plumber. All you have to do is seek and you'll find.

Self-employed and medically uninsured? Health insurance for individuals is soon to be affordable for you!

Being a self-employed individual in the United States is sometimes a bigger pain than it is a blessing. At tax time, you feel it the most. You can see the discrimination between you and a corporate employee making the same hourly compensation as you by simply comparing your tax return amount to his or hers. They always seem to make out better than you. It's the same with health insurance. Work for a big company, and you'll get the best health insurance rates possible, but apply for health insurance for individuals and your wallet will surely wince! The exorbitant premiums you must pay will more than likely keep you from getting insured. This fact has been taken into account by the new Health Reform Law, and now the Feds are doing something to make health insurance affordable for you.

Health insurance for individuals is expensive simply because you aren't bringing any business to the insurer but yourself. Like other products for sale, the greater the amount you purchase, the cheaper the cost per item charged. Because large corporations can bring more business to insurers, they are given the best premium rates per employee. It's as simple as that. You can't blame the insurers. After all, health insurance is a business, not a humanitarian undertaking. Numbers are important to their bottom line, as it is for any business. The more they sell, the greater the profits. As a lone wolf, you've had to face the fact: alone, you'll pay the most.

In its Health Reform Law, the federal government undertook bringing affordable insurance to all Americans. Recognizing that many self—employed people were uninsured because of the price tag on health insurance for individuals (as well as for small businesses), the framers of the law saw fit to include a requirement that aims to bring insurance cost for the 'lone wolf' down to the same price as the corporate man or woman now pays. In the near future, health insurance for individuals will be available at group rates. This will be made possible by the proposed health insurance 'exchanges'.

The concept of health insurance exchanges is a brilliant solution to the inequity the self-employed individual now endures. These exchanges will be available throughout the country. Each exchange will represent a pool of many thousands, perhaps millions, of people up for health insurance. At each exchange, health insurance providers will make their products available, and the number of people in a given exchange will be treated as a group, just as the employees of a corporation are treated as a group. The people who will belong to the exchange will be owners of small businesses and the self-employed (or unemployed) individual. Being a part of a group, these individuals are no longer required to pay premiums at their highest rates. They'll get them at group or exchange discounts.

If you're a self-employed individual looking for medical insurance, you're in luck. Shortly you'll be able to purchase health insurance at attractive corporate rates. It makes you wonder if the government, having done this, might not soon turn to the inequities in the tax code that penalize self-employment. For now let's be happy we can finally get health insurance for individuals at affordable prices. We can be healthy and live!

The new Health Reform Law of 2010 extends health insurance for children covered under their parents plan

Until recently, March 23, 2010 precisely, when the Health Reform Law of 2010 was signed into law by President Obama, most health insurance plans provided by employers covered your children until they were 18 or 21. The logic was simple enough: your child is under your care until they become adults, at which time they are old enough to enter the work force and obtain health insurance for themselves. Until then, health insurance for children was covered under most employer-provided health insurance plans. This approach seemed fair enough, but recent events have left thousands of our children without health care coverage.

While this arrangement previously seemed just enough, its deficiencies became clear in the recent economic collapses we've endured since 2008. Children reaching the age of maturity, 18 to 21, depending on the state, are normally no longer covered by the health insurance for children portion of the insurance plan their parents have from their employers. If jobs were available for our children - they are always our children, no matter what their age - then they could simply find a job in which the employer offers health insurance coverage, and get their own. The fact is that today we are experiencing the highest level of unemployment among teens and first time job seekers in the history of our economy. Even adults are having trouble finding work. Without a job, there is no insurance for these children, and waiting until they find work is not always a viable alternative. Some of these children have ongoing diseases, such as diabetes 1, which doesn't go away just because you've turned 18. The inability of the economy to provide jobs for these fledgling adults is causing pain, debilitation, and death for many of our children, dropped from their parents health care plan, that had provided health insurance for children of the employee.

The framers of the Health Reform Law were well aware of this crisis when they wrote the legislation. In a stroke of utter brilliance, they stipulated in the law that children with pre-existing conditions cannot be automatically dropped from their parent's coverage when they turn 18 or 21. Its urgency won the stipulation first place among what portions of the law must be implemented immediately. In 2010, insurers may no longer drop a child from a policy that includes health insurance for children, not until they turn a whopping 26 years old. Countless children are being saved from misery and death by this act. If the child is 18, that child is being given 8 more years of coverage. Perhaps eight years from now, that child, then an adult, might be able to find a job and ease into an employer provided health care plan without any problem.

By the enactment of the Health Reform Law of 2010, health insurance for children has gotten the boost it needs for our times. Some believe this is still not enough. The urgent problem seems taken care of, but what of the millions of children who do not have some sort of health insurance for children because their parents cannot afford it? What is the law doing to assure they are not excluded?

The Health Reform Law is remarkable in that it has provisions for making insurance available even to the poor. Even families making up to $88 thousand a year will be able to receive help from the federal government, in the form of subsidies. The poor may select their own plan, which may include insurance coverage for children, and the feds will pay the insurer what the family cannot pay. 24 million Americans are expected to benefit by this provision, at a cost of about $350 billion a year. Remarkably, this provision, along with the others it contains, is expected to reduce the federal deficit by $124 billion over the next ten years.

This law is a powerful expression of America's love for their children. Changes are inevitable, so pay attention to what is going on with the law. We must never let the love of wealth replace the love of our children. If movement begins to go against any benefits to our children, oppose it. It's human nature to defend and die for their children if necessary. Let nature be your guide. Keep health insurance for children a top priority by urging your congressperson to stand for children first. It's only human.

Health insurance companies aren't gouging us - take a look at the numbers

The much-maligned health insurance industry has not always deserved the contempt it receives. These companies are usually accused of caring only for profits, but those profits are not as great as most of us imagine. There is room for some improvement in the industry, but such improvements will not reduce health costs significantly. A clear understanding of your policy will go far to reduce the hostility many feel towards this essential industry.

Most commercial health insurance companies have three objectives: collect dollars from premiums, pay off overhead with what's collected, pay off claims, and have about 3 to 6 percent of the total collected remaining as net profit. This profit goal is relatively modest. Americans pay $2 trillion dollars a year on health care, including the operating costs and profits of health insurance companies. This averages out to approximately $6,551 for each man, woman and child in the United states, or approximately $537 a month. At a 6 percent profit, the industry is earning $120 billion a year. This averages out to $387 a year, or $310 million in total from what Americans pay towards the insurance companies' profits, or $32 a month. A mere 5 percent of what you pay each month for health insurance goes to the profits of the insurer. You pay that percentage to a taxi cab driver as a tip. Obviously, the health insurance companies are not charging their customers an excessive percent of the total for health insurance. Yes, they are in it for the money, but they're not gouging us.

All organizations have some leakage of cash, and the health insurance industry is no exception. Their organizations spend a great deal on administrative costs, streamlining their operations, and increasing efficiency of operations. All this may go to reduce their operating expense and thus, the cost of insurance for us, but we can't expect significant savings here.

Yet the new Health Reform law is requiring health insurance companies to spend 80 percent of those $2 trillion on medical treatments. That means they'll have $400 billion left over. Subtracting their profits ($120 billion), they'll have $280 billion to cover overhead. If they are able to reduce operation costs by just 1 percent, or $2.8 billion, and turn that into premium reductions, the $537 each person now pays is then reduced to $528, a savings of $9 a month or a savings of $108 a year. Although every penny counts these days, these numbers aren't too significant to most of us.

Health insurance companies have been mandated by the new Health Reform Law to modify some of their policies, which may raise the cost of insurance. They are now prohibited from dropping people from insurance while they are sick. Now, they cannot deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. They can no longer impose a cap on the amount they will pay during a person's lifetime. In 2011 they have to start paying 80 percent of their earnings towards medical treatment. In 2014 they can no longer refuse to sell policies to anyone, with or without a pre-existing condition, and the price they set for policies can't be based on the customer's health condition. So, by 2014, no one will be excluded from obtaining health insurance in the United States.

These measures, particularly the provision that doesn't allow insurance companies to deny insurance based on a person's health status, will go a very long way in reducing our overall health care costs. With universal coverage, many illnesses can be cured in their early stages, thus avoiding the most expensive treatments, those in the emergency room.

All of us should pursue a clearer understanding of the purpose of health insurance companies. They are not humanitarian, non-profit organizations, but businesses with the objective of making a profit. Much of the misunderstanding is fostered when an ailing patient is told by the insurer that their medical requirements are not covered by their policy. It is therefore absolutely imperative that you're clear about what your policy will cover before you enter into an agreement for coverage. Nobody likes to spend money needlessly, but when it comes to spending money on your health, without an insurance company, you could do worse. Know your policy and expect health insurance companies to strictly abide by it. Whether we like it or not, we can't do without them, and they can't do without us. You'll appreciate them most when that $13 thousand dollar bill comes in following a brief visit to the emergency room, and you don't have to pay a dime. Then spend or save that $13 thousand for your future needs, such as college or retirement!

The Health Reform law promises affordable health insurance to all Americans!

For the vast majority of Americans, affordable health insurance is made possible through their employers. 98 percent of all companies with 200 employees or more provide health insurance to their employees. By 2019, another 9 million with employer-provided insurance will join their ranks. People employed by large companies, companies having 200 or more employees are fortunate, in that their employer is able to provide health insurance at a discount. The number of people enrolled gives them this leverage. Up until recently, if you weren't employed by a large company, health insurance was too expensive to obtain. That is now slated for change, big time!

The medically uninsured are so either because they are too poor and unemployed to purchase health insurance, or they are too poor, employed by a small business that can't afford to provide health insurance without severely impacting their bottom line, or are self-employed individuals who don't make enough money to purchase affordable basic health insurance.

Aside from being able to receive treatment for an illness when it occurs, those with medical insurance are able to get essential, early preventative treatment. Those who don't have medical insurance will wait until the illness is critical and then go with their crisis to a hospital emergency ward. Much of the high cost of health care is precisely because of this practice. Emergency room care is the most expensive treatment you can get. If these people, waiting until their disease is an emergency, had affordable health insurance, instead of lifting the cost of health care to all time highs, they can go to a physician while the condition is still easily, and relatively inexpensively, manageable. With health insurance, they can receive the many benefits of preventative medicine.

In addition to the practical consequences of not having affordable health insurance, there is the moral shame that so many people - 25 million at least - must suffer with no help from their communities or their country. Life takes second place to money, and when life is viewed as cheap, the moral integrity of a country sinks. Bitterness, hatred and envy rise. The security of a nation can be threatened when too many of its people are so alienated. More than once has a crime been committed to get funds to pay for a sick child that health insurance coverage could have paid. For a safer, more caring society, affordable health insurance is a must.

To take care of this problem, the people of the United States have just enacted a law, enabling all of its citizens to receive health insurance. $350 billion has been allocated to subsidize the poor who cannot afford health insurance. Self-employed people and small businesses are also being given an opportunity to obtain affordable health insurance, through the creation of health insurance exchanges. Using the power of numbers to bring quantity to health insurers, exchanges will be able to offer small businesses and self-employed individuals medical insurance at somewhat the same rate charged employees of large corporations. Provisions are also being made to help Medicare patients weather the ups and downs inherit in the various Medicare plans. One of the most admirable provisions of the new law prevents insurers from dropping a sick person and prevents refusals to sell a policy to those with pre-existing conditions. Rates for the sick will not be any greater than for the well. The new Health Reform Law has made the United States a more humane nation.

So available will health insurance be, the law is requiring all its citizens to be insured by the end of 2014 (with government subsidies for the poor), or pay a penalty if they are not. With such an opportunity, who wouldn't want affordable health insurance? Start looking into it today and keep abreast of the progress of the Health Reform Law. It is, after all, a matter for you of life and health, or illness or death. Live well, in this new era of affordable health insurance!

Student Health Insurance

Once you finally finish high school, you hit a point where you must begin adulthood. At least to some degree. After all, now it is time to move out of your folks' house and head off to a university. This typically means four years of growing up. Suddenly you are afflicted with bills like dorm fees or rent, food expenses, high gas prices, and don't forget about tuition and textbook costs. All of this can add up to a lot when you have no real job or career to pay the bills. This is why so many college students forget all about health insurance coverage. This is a terrible idea, and you should know that student health insurance is feasible.

Although many young men and women do not realize it, student health insurance is generally quite affordable. In fact, most students are only charged once each quarter or semester, as long as you acquire your insurance plan through the university. If you are a full-time student, you can likely obtain student health insurance coverage for the entire semester or quarter for around $50 or less. Many student health insurance plans are as low as $30. This even includes dental insurance coverage as well. You really can't beat that very low rate, regardless of what insurance plan you get. It is imperative to stay covered just in case.

Okay, so you may not have any idea where to turn for more information regarding student health insurance plans and programs. This is no big deal! Especially since there are simple and convenient website like Student-Health-Insurance.com, FreeQuotes.Vimo.com, and eHealthInsurance.com to check out for more details. The key is to acquire the type of coverage that suits you. If you are like most people between the ages of 18 and 25, you have no health conditions that you need to worry about. Therefore you can get the student health insurance coverage you need for very little money. Most universities offer this.

Like most health and dental coverage plans, student health insurance often covers a percentage. This means if you need to go see the doctor for any reason, you may have a small co-pay, or it may not cost you anything at all. Prescriptions drugs will also be less expensive if you need to acquire them for an illness. To give you an example, you may have to get a cavity filled. This might cost around $125. However, since you have a decent student coverage plan, it may only cost you around $30. This is certainly not bad in comparison. This is why it always pays to have a good health insurance coverage plan in place. You simply never know when you might need it.