Health Care Reform Coming Our Way

This is a time of waiting and hoping in our nation. With the future of a new President and a new party in control of the country, we are all anticipating the promises being told will be kept. Sadly, things can change once a President takes office and begins making changes. Read more

Democrats Not Pushing Children’s Health Insurance

Democrats in the House of Representatives have let down children’s health insurance advocates twice now. But the Congressional Democrats say this will not happen ever again. Read more

18,000 in Minnesota will Have Health Insurance Cut by Bush Admin.

The Bush Administration has been a long time opposer to using federal monies to insure adults using the State’s Children’s Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP). They showed their strength in this opposition by creating new guidelines that make it pretty much impossible for states to expand their children’s insurance programs. This is also die to this year’s debates on the matter. Read more

Long Term Care Insurance: Your Future Well-Being Could Depend On It

When you’re young, with a whole long life before you, long term care insurance probably isn’t foremost in your mind, probably because you don’t think you’ll be needing it at any time and statistically speaking, approximately fifty percent of these people will be right as they may never need the assistance of a nursing home or long term care.

Most people in need of long term care, can receive it without leaving their home. But the decision not to be covered by a long term care insurance coverage is a decision that could leave you in a predicament later on in life, which could prove to be costly and in some cases devastating.

The costs of nursing home care is increasing with an average annual cost of around the sixty to sixty five thousand euro - these rates, a modest estate would soon be used up, especially if both spouses need nursing home care.

Another reason many people don’t take out a long term care insurance is the expensive and as in general rates are based on age - they may be right. On the other hand, long term care comes with a lot of optional extras. These options may be nice to have but are not essential, the premium becomes lower when some or all are stripped away.

If you haven’t yet decided whether to take out long term care insurance, do some research before making your final decision - actually your well-being later in life could depend on it. There is are huge amounts of statistics and resources to be found on the Internet. Professional entities that are knowledgeable about this area of insurance and able to provide long term care insurance quotes that you can compare, enabling you to make the right decision that suits your needs best.

Insurance Companies Pay Doctors For Performance

Say you’ve just gone to the doctor and you’ve had your annual check-up. Maybe, you’ve had your blood pressure checked and had the once over from the nurse practitioner. Congratulations! Your blood pressure is back down to normal levels. Now, who gets credit for this great achievement? You guessed right! Your doctor will get a bonus for the accomplishment of lowering your blood pressure.

This is a controversial trend that is happening nowadays and more and more insurance are opting for a “pay for performance” plan when negotiating with health care providers. The insurance companies pay health care providers bonuses with certain criteria are met. For example, if your doctor has you undergo certain screenings or if your blood pressure has stabilized, your doctor will receive extra money for meeting those objectives.

The Integrated Health Association (IHA), a group that involved 7 health insurance companies, collaborated on an initiative that doled out more than $54 million in 2005 to medicals groups. This figure is up from $37.5 million in 2004.

Not everyone agrees that paying more to get quality care can work out financially or ethically. Naysayers dispute that paying doctors for patient outcomes is hard to track. Outcomes may be correlated with the physician but may also be attributed to the patient’s health and lifestyle. There is also concern that the funds will be directed to richer areas where patients are more likely to follow doctors’ admonitions.

Those who advocate for the program say that improved quality in health care providing can cut costs by preventing expensive procedures.

With that in mind, how much should insurance companies then pay physicians who reach these benchmarks? The IHA program does not give funds to individual doctors. They give bonuses to medical groups who then decide how to distribute funds. It was suggested that to encourage significant change, physicians needed to be compensated at least 5% of their salary. The IHA program, however, distributed much less than that. Their group paid between 1 - 2%.

IHA isn’t the only group to provide incentives to doctors. In 2006, Congress passed a bill that would pay doctors additional incentives if the doctors reports how often they provided quality care as defined by the federal government. The doctors qualified for a 1.5% bonus in the second half of 2007.

There are some ethical questions to ask. Shouldn’t physicians already have our best interests at heart? Is it wrong to compensate above and beyond salary to do what they should be doing already? Is it worth it if patient outcomes change dramatically? It seems like a lowest common denominator cure for a systemic problem.

 

About the Author:

Frank Abbott is a freelance writer and artist who has an avid interest in politics and especially health insurance reform. For more information regarding insurance, visithttp://www.nehealthinsurancetrek.com

Disease Prevention

With so-called “lifestyle” diseases on the rise, medical doctors and insurance companies are looking to find new ways to maintain health and prevent and control diseases. And now that obesity has reached epidemic proportions, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction to combat the trend. Health providers are now looking more closely at diet and exercise as a way to prevent disease.

Maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle is important for several reasons. Maintaining health through diet and exercise can help to prevent loss of bone mass and vitamin deficiency. A healthy diet also helps to prevent diseases such as heart attacks, strokes, osteoporosis, some cancers and obesity. A healthy diet can also help to treat and control diseases like lupus, high blood pressure, diabetes, celiac disease and mellitus.

The body runs on a cocktail of fats, carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and minerals to sustain healthy organ function. Vitamins and minerals are essential to the body and are necessary for proper growth and proper functioning of systems inside the body.

With obesity and heart disease on the rise, they are a major public health concern for the United States and other countries. Many of the dietary recommendations nowadays are aimed at the preventing these two diseases. Obesity occurs when a person eats more calories than the body is able to burn off. When obesity becomes constant, then other diseases start to develop such as heart disease, diabetes, liver disease, arthritis, high blood pressure, just to name a few.

Losing weight requires that people take in more low energy-dense foods. These foods include vegetables and fruits. Foods like this contain few calories per unit so a person can consume large volumes without taking in many calories. High energy-dense foods like sweets, fried foods and foods containing trans fats. These foods have high cholesterol and saturated fat content which has been linked to heart disease. Avoiding processed foods is also recommended.

In 2005, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a new guideline detailing changes in the dietary recommendations for Americans. The new guidelines emphasize more fruit, vegetable, whole grains and lean meats. There also should be close attention paid to saturated fats and added sugars.

Eating healthy nowadays is more complicated than ever. We are often victims of our own convenient society that we’ve forgotten how to listen to our bodies and our own instincts for health. In our highly industrialized and technical world we’ve gotten away from knowing where food comes from. These guidelines are one voice in the din of many. I hope that we may all choose to listen more carefully.

 

About the Author:

Frank Abbott is a freelance writer and is passionate about health and fitness. If you’d like more information on how insurance companies are able reduce premiums in conjunction with healthy lifestyle changes, go to http://www.webhealthinsuranceweb.org/

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