- advice-
One way to save money is to get a "major medical" plan.
Essentially, it only covers things like surgery, hospital admissions, heart attacks, cancer, car crashes etc. Day-to-day piddly stuff like going to the doctor for hay-fever, jock-itch, or pink-eye, you pay out of pocket. The details vary, the insurance only kicks in depending on the severity of the injury or illness, after your out of pocket exceeds a pre set amount, or a combination of both.
It's not a great plan for covering children, but if you're twenty to forty-something, it's a good option, it protects you from the big expenses for major medical care that can otherwise wipe you out financially. If you're a relatively young/healthy person without any middle or low level chronic conditions that require frequent outpatient care, the occasional couple of hundred bucks for a sinus infection, walking pneumonia, or stitches at the ER, every year or so can often be cheaper than the premiums you'd pay for a comprehensive insurance plan, even if you've got an employer making contributions.
Just a thought.
- editorial -
Admittedly, this will be of limited comfort to those who are uninsured, or struggling with massive medical bills. It is however, an object lesson for those who advocate the Government "Do Something" to fix the problem, such as socialized medicine, or any other number of government schemes that have been promoted in the past. Here's a little story, plus commentary, about how the government "Doing Something" to fix other problems not even related to medicine, put us in the medical and insurance tailspin we see today.
The whole "healthcare crisis" in America really traces it's roots back to the Great Depression. As a control measure against inflation/deflation FDR instituted certain wage and price freezes. Because you can't stop the "invisible hand" of the market, and it's desire to compete and profit, like water flowing down through cracks, it just finds other outlets and loopholes. (Under complete prohibition like alcohol, or today, drugs, it just goes black market. Under communism, everything just goes black market, from an economic standpoint, the risks of criminal activity can simply be considered a cost that particular market is willing to assume.)
There were a few industries that were still competing for labor in the Great Depression, but they lost their ability to compete for the labor they desired by the usual means, raising wages or salaries. So they turned to "benefits", which before that time was a much less common concept than it is today. By offering the value of things like health insurance as a competitive inducement to work for them, they could get around the depression-era wage freezes.
Before WWII, the vast majority of Americans who needed medical care paid out of pocket. And comparatively, medical care was much more affordable, so many could pay it out of pocket. (Example: In adjusted 2005 dollars, my father's 1946 hospital bill for his non-complication birth was $930, the share of the 2004 bill for one of my twins, his granddaughters, non-complication birth was $11,000.)
Initially, offering benefits was a good way for an employer to get around what was otherwise a socialist imposition on a free market. Unfortunately, like most government action, it had an unintended consequence, by creating the precedent of employer benefits, it took the insured consumer out of the loop when it came to making healthcare decisions on a cost basis. That would ultimately have disastrous implications for anyone who finds themselves uninsured today.
A simple question. How many of you who are insured have ever once asked your doctor, a lab, or a hospital how much their services cost on a line-item basis? (I already know the answer, almost none of you, myself included.) To you, the "cost" of your medical care is a combination of your paycheck deduction, and your deductible. The grand total never enters your head when choosing doctors, hospitals, or even a pharmacy.
Ever notice how some frontier doctor's or dentist's sign from the 19th century, whether it's in a museum, or a prop in the "wild west town" section of a theme park, with prices listed up front, and by type of service, is perceived as a muddled combination of "quaint" and "barbaric"? Conversely, what else are you willing to buy without asking the price, or even seeing it posted? Tell me what it is, and I'm going to quit my job and start selling it!
The natural result of the consumer being almost completely divorced from price as a consideration when making medical decisions, is that few, if any, medical providers, whatever the type, truly compete on price. The natural result of any such unhinged market is that costs soar out of control. Granted, there's other factors. Insurers and HMO's contract with the providers who accept them to a set schedule of fees, but by trying to control costs at this second-tier level is still removing the actual consumer making the daily decisions, and the damage is already done.
Those who would argue that cost increasing medical advances, everything from X-Rays to MRI's, antibiotics, laser surgery, ultrasound, chemotherapy, angioplasty, pacemakers, insulin, etc. did not exist in the era of the Great Depression have a point. However, there is a greater counter-point, few, if any of these advances were run past the medical consumer from a cost standpoint. That's not to say we shouldn't enjoy these advances, but begs the question how inexpensive would they be if they had been subjected to consumers who were as price conscious as they are about homes, computers, or cars?
I'm certainly not advocating abolishing medical insurance, or some kind of massive de-regulation of the medical industry, throwing the American population into some kind of out-of-pocket free-for-all. Even if it were desirable, it's simply not politically feasible. A gradual transition that puts back some competitive price pressure from the actual end consumers would be a darn good start, though.
If you actually cared to read the whole thing, just a little case study as to why saying "This is awful! The Government should DO SOMETHING!" isn't always the best answer.
