Health Insurance is Weird
Consider first disability insurance. You buy disability insurance to cover yourself in case you are incapacitated and unable to work. In my case, it would have to be really bad, since my job entails sitting at a keyboard and typing or talking to people in meetings. So I could break my leg, be paralyzed from the neck down, or go deaf and I could still do my job fine. Basically, for me, it's brain insurance.
Anyway, you buy disability insurance for the worse possible scenario. Now, if I broke a finger, it might hurt my ability to type somewhat, or hold a hammer or whatever, but I wouldn't be concerned about my insurance covering that.
Okay, now to car insurance. My first question when buying car insurance is "what is the highest deductible you offer?" I think probably most people want really high deductibles on their car insurance because it just costs too much in premiums to keep "comprehensive" car insurance to cover every time a shopping cart hits your car in the parking lot.
Then health insurance. It seems like everyone I talk to wants to have health insurance to cover every doctor's visit, every prescription, every little thing. This seems weird to me. Why? To be more accurate, why would you pay a health insurance company to cover costs that you could cover yourself?
Is low-deductible health insurance a good deal? Are you likely to make out better by involving the health insurer in every little transaction? No way! If it was a good deal, the city center of most cities would be missing a few dozen buildings dedicated to the health insurance companies. They love the low deductible policies because they make a ton of money from them. It is comparable, I guess, to the slot machines in Las Vegas. If most people won as often as they say they do when they go to Vegas, the casinos would be a little less ostentatious than they are today, yes?
If you think you are likely to hit the jackpot with health insurance (i.e. get a horrible life-threatening disease) soon enough to make up for all your payments, you're wrong. By the time you get that sick, you'll have paid for your treatment already in monthly payments.
Our family "health insurance" scheme is this:
1. a high deductible health insurance plan (HDHP)
2. a Healthy Advantage discount card
3. a focus on using cost effective treatments, particularly those that are holistic and preventative
4. try to lead a healthy lifestyle in our diet, exercise, stress management and spirituality
The HDHP is available from any medical insurer. We had been subscribing to a plan from Medical Mutual Of Ohio but they recently raised our rate by 14%. Also, they issued a membership newsletter with an article that stated that "alternative treatments...have not been scientifically proven to be effective" among other negative statements, so we've decided to switch. We haven't picked a new provider yet.
The Healthy Advantage card is very useful. It is a discount card (not insurance!) for prescriptions, dental, vision, hearing, vitamins and complementary/alternative medicine. The networks that are involved are very large, so we had no trouble finding practitioners in our area (Ohio). The dental discounts on preventative work (cleanings, etc.) are excellent - 50% off. The other discounts are pretty good too. We have been quite disappointed in the coverage of the alternative/complementary practitioners, though. Of the 2-3 practitioners we've tried the card with so far, they tend to look at the card as if they've never seen it before. I think that the Healthy Advantage people negotiated a discount with the practitioners, without giving the practitioners any revenue to make up for the discount (you'll make up on volume!) so the practitioners would prefer not to have to deal with the cardholders if they can avoid it.
That aside, though, we have really begun searching out holistic practitioners in our area and have found a huge number of them (hundreds within 1 hour drive). But finding them was tough. There is not one universal directory on paper or on the Web. Maybe my company can help change that.
The holistic health treatments are so much more cost effective (often $40-80 per hour) and, of course, less invasive. So far, I haven't had an holistic health practitioner try to stick a tube in any orifice, and frankly, I don't think it's likely!
There is also something called a Medical Savings Account (MSA) that allows people to save for their medical expenses that come in under the HDHP. I think we will sign up for one of these, but unfortunately the government has set it up so it only covers medical procedures like MD visits, surgery, drugs, etc., and not most holistic treatments. It does include acupuncture, chiropractic, Christian Science practitioner (?), drug addiction treatment, health institutes (don't ask me), osteopathy, psychiatry, psychology, therapy (unclearly defined) and weight loss programs. Most of these need to be prescribed by an MD. Again, with a little searching, I've been able to find a number of MDs and DOs in our area who are very open-minded towards holistic health. A good place to start finding your open-minded physicians is to get a directory from the American Holistic Medical Association. . It is a worthwhile investment of $15.
We thought we were so smart when we came up with this solution, but it turns out that there is a book written about it already. By the title, you might think this is a book about multi-level marketing, but trust me, 90% of the information is excellent research and ideas about how to increase the wellness of yourself and the people around you, by making wellness your own business (and 10% is about icky multi-level marketing).
3:53:55 PM 
|
|
