First Edition: August 31, 2009 – Kaiser Health News
Chris Denny, who runs a small marketing firm in Santa Rosa, Calif., buys his own health insurance for $117 a month. An avid gardener, Denny, 27, describes himself as healthy and fit. The same policy, from the same insurer, would cost a 60- year-old … Senator Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican who predicted that President Obama’s effort to overhaul the health care system would become his “Waterloo,” is doing his best to make that happen (The New York Times, 8/30). … read more…
Cheap Health Insurance Made Easy | Insider's Insurance Guide
Cheap health insurance has become the issue of the moment in South Carolina and across the country. More small businesses are increasingly unable to provide. read more…
Business Insurance Now Offers Professional Liability Insurance for …
Business Insurance Now Offers Professional Liability Insurance for Allied Health Care Providers New insurance option provides risk protection for audiologists dietitians nutritionists music therapists occupational therapists and speech pathologists therapists Dallas Texas … Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota … read more…
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A frequent question about South Carolina Medicare Supplement plans is where they can be used.
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Fighting Health Care Change, and Proud of It (New York Times)
Senator Jim DeMint, a first-term Republican from South Carolina, is gaining attention as he stokes anger over the health care. read more…
He says … You say you have health insurance? Not so fast (Bluffton Today)
By John David Rose Do you have health insurance from one of the for-profit insurance companies serving South Carolina? Are you confident your company will pay most if not all of the hospital and doctor charges if you come down with a serious illness? As the sergeant said, not so fast. read more…
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Resolved Question: So why are the Big Health insurers against Canadian style Health insurance?
The following story was posted in AP News today. My question is if insurers don’t want an Obama Healthcare System that is socialized and a far cry from the “Best medical system in the world”, then why are insurers content to send the insured overseas for “knee-replacements” and “heart by-pass” operations? I’m for Obama’s plan and KEEPING AMERICAN JOBS HERE !!! (i.e. doctors, nurses and support staff). Screw the insurance companies as they have us for so long !
Insurers aim to save from overseas medical tourism
Costa Rican Dr. Luis Obando prepares to perform a root canal on Bill Jones, of Dallas, Texas, at Meza Dental Care in San Jose, Costa Rica. Jones said he elected to have the surgery in Costa Rica because he was able to save substantially compared to what he would have had to pay in the USA.
Enlarge image Enlarge By Kent Gilbert, AP
Costa Rican Dr. Luis Obando prepares to perform a root canal on Bill Jones, of Dallas, Texas, at Meza Dental Care in San Jose, Costa Rica. Jones said he elected to have the surgery in Costa Rica because he was able to save substantially compared to what he would have had to pay in the USA.
COSTS, SAVINGS
Medical tourism trips offer steep savings, but they don’t pack enough financial might to play a key role in President Obama’s push to lower U.S. health care costs.
Medical travel cost U.S. health care providers about $5.1 billion in business in 2007, according to estimates by Paul Keckley, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. While significant, that amounts to less than 1% of the $2.36 trillion spent on health care in the United States that year.
Medical tourism can yield savings of as much as 80% on some procedures compared to care in the United States. But traveling isn’t for everyone and these trips are generally not an option for emergencies. A patient’s willingness to travel for non-emergency care often depends on the savings at stake. With a low deductible and no incentives from an insurer or employer to travel, a patient may have little motivation to make a trip.
Any result from the Washington reform push is unlikely to affect medical tourism, Keckley said, because it won’t lower costs enough to erase price gaps with foreign care providers.
By Tom Murphy, The Associated Press
Elizabeth Kunz left her dentist’s office this spring with a mouth full of problems and no way to pay for them.
The South Carolina resident went out of her way, literally, to find a solution, which turned out to be in Central America. Her trip to the tropics is part of a health insurance experiment for trimming medical costs: overseas care.
As Washington searches for ways to tame the country’s escalating health care costs, more insurers are offering networks of surgeons and dentists in places like India and Costa Rica, where costs can be as much as 80% less than in America.
Until recently, most Americans traveling abroad for cheaper non-emergency medical care were either uninsured or wealthy. But the profile of medical tourists is changing. Now, they are more likely to be people covered by private insurers, which are looking to keep costs from spiraling out of control.
The four largest commercial U.S. health insurers — with enrollments totaling nearly 100 million people — have either launched pilot programs offering overseas travel or explored it. Several smaller insurers and brokers also have introduced travel options for hundreds of employers around the country.
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Growth has been slow in part because some patients and employers have concerns about care quality and legal responsibility if something goes wrong. Plus, patients who have traditional plans with low deductibles may have little incentive to take a trip.
But a growing number of consumers with high-deductible plans, which make patients pay more out of pocket, could make these trips more inviting.
In the meantime, the insurance industry’s embrace of overseas care has had a pleasant side effect at home: some U.S. care providers are offering price breaks to counter the foreign competition.
This domestic competition and the slumping economy have led to slower growth for medical tourism over the past year, as patients put off elective procedures that involve big out of pocket costs, said Paul Keckley, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.
Last year, the center estimated that 6 million Americans would make medical tourism trips in 2010. But Keckley has since shaved that projection to about 1.6 million people. Still, that more than doubles the roughly 750,000 Americans who traveled abroad in 2007, the last year for which Deloitte had actual numbers.
Keckley expects the medical tourism industry to recover, as more health insur
Resolved Question: What do I do if I get pregnant and I don’t have health insurance?
Neither mine nor my husbands jobs provide health insurance, and I just found out I am pregnant. We live in South Carolina, and I’m unsure what to do. I was on the pill, but it turns out we were the exception. We wanted to get health insurance independently, but it’s way below our budget, as we only bring in about $1,800 a month. What do we do?
Resolved Question: Widower gets cancer and all her money is gone, she is Bankrupt. Is this what some Conservatives call lazy?
I notice that many Conservatives like the “personal responsibility” catch phrase yet fail to understand that most people who do not have Health Insurance work and are responsible. Those who are lazy and who are on welfare get health insurance already provided by Tax payers dollars.
I think that some form of welfare is OK if they TRULY are in need and only temporarily. I fully agree that Health care should not be for the lazy but for those who work and cannot afford it like most of the 46 million out there I am 100% for it.
I hear some Conservative say “well they need to get another job” or ” she should have saved better”,, the facts once again are not on their sides. Many Americans who went bankrupt due to Health Care costs had insurance just not enough to cover them. How does one know they will get Cancer or a Heart Attack?
Why can’t the people just be honest and say they are against it for ideology alone? If they think this is for the lazy then they are just ignorant and not educated to the facts. Unfortunately quite a few of the Republican party fit that category with many coming from the Conservative Southern States. Maybe it because of the education systems like they have in the South?
We cannot blame the people as you see most Conservative Governors refuse to spend money on education. Just looks at Mark Sanford of South Carolina. He refused the stimulus money and had the worst in the nation with schools averaging over 80 years old! Lack of education leads to ignorance and ignorance breeds hate and intolerance and most of these States are Republican!
Why do some people insist on things that are just not true?
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