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Lots of affordable health insurance plans offer a choice of many cheap schemes. To choose the best plan from all that are available, a general understanding about health insurance is important. For a detailed understanding of the plan, we need to find out how the insurance handles various medical processes such as physical examinations, health screenings, care by specialists, hospitalization, emergency care, prescription drugs, vision care, dental service, and services provided for drug and alcohol abuse. The cost of each plan depends on how much you have to pay for the health insurance premium and other costs.

There should not be any co-payments for the services provided by the health insurance company selected. Insurance holders should ensure whether the insurance plan covers all services and health care they need before taking the health insurance. Most affordable health insurance plans provide both individual and group health insurance. Individual health insurance plans may not offer as many benefits as group health insurance plans.

There are many affordable insurance plans provided by health insurance companies. Many aspects should be considered before comparing the plans such as service offered, choice of providers, location, and costs. The quality of the care provided by the insurance plan should be an important criterion. You can check out individual doctors and hospital facilities for all kinds of health insurance plans before purchasing the insurance. To ensure the quality of medical care, one needs to ask the health insurance company how it assures good medical care. The survey results of health insurance plans also help you measure the quality services. Many affordable health insurance plans produce report cards that include the satisfaction survey results and other information on quality.

Health Insurance for Self Employed - How to Find Affordable Health Care

Seems like the cost of health insurance is out of control these days. How do you afford to insure you and your family if you’re self employed? Where can you find affordable health insurance? Here’s a few ways to help you get affordable health insurance if you’re self-employed:

Self Employed Health Insurance Plans

There are numerous types of health insurance plans available to the self employed including the managed health care insurance plans. These plans go by the names of HMO, PPO, and POS medical care plans. Managed care plans help keep costs down by using a network of health care providers when you’re sick or injured.

As a member of a managed care plan, all you have to do is show your membership card to a doctor or hospital within your network of providers to obtain medical care. Most managed care health insurance plans cover doctor visits, hospital stays, emergency room, lab tests, therapy, and x-rays.

In order to keep costs down, managed health care plans usually have a copayment fee for doctor and hospital visits. This fee is typically $15 to $20 per visit. Copayments can also apply to prescription drugs, after which the insurance provider picks up the remainder of the tab.

Health Insurance Quotes for the Self Employed

One of the best ways to find affordable health insurance quotes is to go to a free insurance quote website. There you can get competitive quotes from up to 5 health insurance providers so you can compare plans and prices. After you have your quotes, you can look more closely at the policies and decide which one is the best for you.

The health sector of the United States is in profound disarray. Even though the United States spends more on health care (14 percent of its GNP) than any other country, we still have problems that no other developed capitalist country faces. Let me list some of them. The first and most overwhelming problem is that no less than forty-four million of our people have no form of health benefits coverage whatsoever. The majority of them are working people, and their children, who cannot afford to pay the health insurance premium that would enable them to get care in time of need. Many of them work for small companies that cannot or will not pay their part of the health insurance premium. Because these individuals cannot pay for insurance, they do not get needed care, and many die as a consequence. The most credible estimate of the number of people In the United States who have died because of lack of medical care was provided by a study carried out by Professors David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler (New England Journal of Medicine 336, no. 11 [1997]). They concluded that almost 100,000 people died in the United States each year because of lack of needed care–three times the number of people who died of AIDs. It is important to note here that while the media express concern about AIDs, they remain almost silent on the topic of deaths due to lack of medical care. Any decent person should be outraged by this situation. How can we call the United States a civilized nation when it denies the basic human fight of access to medical care in time of need? No other major capitalist country faces such a horrendous situation.

Would you be willing to pay $1,500 a year for guaranteed speedy access to your physician, lengthy preventive appointments and a sense of old-fashioned personalized care? MDVIP Inc. CEO Edward Goldman is banking on it.

The Boca Raton-based company is pushing a business model dubbed “concierge” or “boutique” medicine. The concept is simple: participating patients pay an annual fee to receive preventative care from a general practitioner, internist or family physician, and 24/7 access to their doctor. In return, physicians limit their practices to 600 patients (versus as many as 3,000), allowing them to offer services such as same- or next-day appointments, limited waiting-room time, home delivery of prescriptions and personal phone calls.

The $1,500 fee gets patients much more than an annual physical. They get tests rarely covered by health insurance, including an extensive risk factor assessment, a detailed physical examination, lab work, heart screenings, a mental health check, vision and hearing testing and exercise and nutrition assessment. They take home a wellness plan and a wallet-sized CDROM with their history, exam summary, lab results, EKG and other related information. If a patient is ill and needs to see the doctor, he or she pays the regular insurance co-pay, or cash, for the office visit.

Goldman says the personalized approach has already helped saved at least one life. One of MDVIP’s patients began to cough up blood while on a plane from Shanghai to Beijing. Her patient history CD contained all the information Chinese doctors needed to assess her medical history. Over the next few days, the MDVIP staff and the Chinese doctor collaborated to determine the best course of treatment for her.

“When we started MDVIP most doctors had never heard of concierge medicine and many skeptics told us patients would never value it,” says Goldman, a retired physician. “Our challenge was two-fold: educating patients about this new approach and finding physicians who want personal patient relationships.”

You’re not alone if you have concluded that you may need to rethink your company’s health care strategy. In anticipation of a second consecutive double-digit rise in annual health care costs next year, 56 percent of employers expect to raise employee contributions, according to consulting firm Watson Wyatt in Washington, D.C.

In addition, more than 70 percent of those surveyed are considering a reduction in benefits or increase in employee co-pays. The survey was based on responses of 200 companies representing 1.4 million employees.

Health care costs are expected to rise 13.6 percent on average in 2002, following increases of 12.2 percent in 2001 and 8.1 percent in 2000. And the cost of prescription drug coverage is expected to soar 17 percent in 2002–one reason employers expect an even higher average increase in the cost of retiree health plans.

In addition, increased layoffs are likely to hike employers’ costs under COBRA, which already is a problem for many industries, according to Edward Kaplan, head of the national health consulting practice of The Segal Co., a NewYork-based consulting firm. In 1999, the actual claim cost per beneficiary under COBRA was $6,051 compared to $3,936 per active enrollee, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C.

The Watson Wyatt survey also indicates that employers plan to help employees become better consumers of health care to help manage future costs. Of those surveyed, 75 percent said they are likely or somewhat likely to support employee education through web-based services.

STOCKS | Hailed as growth stocks, these companies have been BLINDSIDED instead.

AS MORE PEOPLE undergo laser surgery to improve their eyesight, some investors see a coming boom in the stocks of companies that offer laser vision correction. Is this a farsighted forecast, or myopic wishful thinking?

Correcting vision problems with laser surgery has become a mini industry In the most popular procedure, Lasik, an ophthalmologist cuts the patient’s cornea with a specially designed scalpel, lifts it back like a flap, and then applies a laser beam to reshape the underlying tissue. While the description of the procedure is enough to give most people the creeps, patients actually recover in a matter of hours or days and suffer drastically less discomfort than with old-style vision-correction surgery.

The promise of quick recovery, stellar results (about four out of five patients with low to moderate nearsightedness recover to 20-20 acuity) and applicability to a wide range of vision conditions are sparking an explosion in laser eye surgery, notes Advest analyst Ted Huber. The money spent on such surgery was expected to double in 1999 to almost $2 billion, and jump 45% more this year. Yet only 3% of the 57 million prospective patients in the U.S. underwent the procedure through the end of 1999. Analysts predict that the leading companies–surgery providers TLC Laser Eye Centers (symbol TLCV, Nasdaq, recent price $14) and Laser Vision Centers (LVCI, Nasdaq, $12), and laser maker Visx (VISX, Nasdaq, $52)–will see earnings rise 30% to 45% annually over the next three years.

The stocks, however, aren’t clear-cut investments. Concerns about profits at surgical centers have depressed prices. Shares of TLC recently fell 27% in a single day after the company missed analysts’ earnings estimates, thanks to increased administrative costs. An unfavorable ruling in a patent dispute sent shares of Visx, which makes the lasers used in about three-fourths of all Lasik operations, reeling 41% in one day.

Health plan premiums have increased 7.4 percent this year for large employers–far less than the expected 13 percent increase–according to a study that cites employer cost containment efforts and increased employee management of their health benefits for the surprising finding.

A report released March 17 by Boston-based Fidelity Investments, Changing Benefits, Critical Decisions: The Health Benefits and Behavior Study, said increased plan changes and educational efforts by employers and a more consumer-oriented approach by workers joined to blunt the impact of rapidly rising health care costs. Key employer cost containment strategies included shifting more of the expense of health care to workers and reducing coverage to avoid huge premium increases.

“Plan adjustments made by employers and changes in employee behavior positively contributed to an overall mitigation of health plan cost increases in 2004,” stated Brad Kimler, senior vice president of Fidelity Health and Welfare Consulting.

He noted that employees generally stayed with their health plans when their contributions were scheduled to increase less than 10 percent compared with last year. However, among employees facing increases of more than that, a significantly higher percentage changed health plans.

In addition, according to the study, more employees are using flexible spending accounts (FSAs) this year than last, and they are diverting more of their money into them. And employees are becoming increasingly savvy about using web-based tools for health care purposes.

“It’s becoming more apparent that employees are increasingly engaging and taking more responsibility when it comes to their health care benefits,” said Kimler.

Highlights of the Fidelity report include:

* The total premium cost to employers and employees combined this year is averaging $7,281 per employee, an increase of 7.4 percent from the $6,779 average in 2003.

* Employees are paying a greater share of the total cost of their employer-sponsored health care, covering 28.8 percent of the cost in 2004 compared with 26.5 percent last year.

* While most employees made no changes to their coverage for this year, about 11 percent chose new health plans.

The American Hospital Association (AHA) will honor six of the Nation’s hospitals and health systems with its NOVA Awards for their innovative and collaborative programs focused on community health status.

Receiving AHA’s NOVA Award during the association’s annual Health Forum Summit in San Diego on August 1, were Vista Health in Waukegan, Illinois; Memorial Health and St. Joseph’s/Candler Health System in Savannah, Georgia; Atlantic Health System in Florham Park, New Jersey; INTEGRIS Health in Oklahoma City; and Mercy Medical Center in Canton, Ohio.

In 1993, the AHA Board of Trustees established the NOVA Award to honor hospitals and health systems for their collaborative efforts toward improving community health. The award is cosponsored by Hospitals and Health Networks magazine.

With health care costs rising for more than 90 percent of employers, a recent survey suggests that a defined contribution-type health care plan may be one of the best ways to keep the cost increases in check. Arthur Andersen, CalPERS and Total Health Advocacy Partners worked together to research and publish a study, The Productive Workforce Survey, of private and public employers to find out the key business issues affecting day-to-day operations. CalPERS, which represents state employees in California, is the largest public pension fund in the United States.

According to the survey, almost all public agencies (96 percent) and private employers (90 percent) reported that general health care costs have risen significantly during the past year. Seventy-four percent of public agencies and 53 percent of private employers claimed that the top reason why labor costs are increasing is that premiums for group health coverage are climbing.

The survey also found that a majority of private employers have used several strategies to address rising health care costs, while less than half of the public agencies have tried to address this issue. Most of the survey respondents that have tried different cost control strategies stated that the two most successful techniques to reduce costs have been to institute defined contribution programs and to pass along some of the higher premium costs directly to their employees.

Bill Leonard is senior writer for HR Magazine.

Employer health care costs will continue to spiral upward, according to a national survey of more than 90 health insurers, health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and third-party administrators conducted and released by Buck Consultants. According to the survey results, employers can expect cost increases of between 11 percent and 16 percent over the next year for traditional health care plans. The survey projects an average cost increase of 16.2 percent for typical indemnity health care plans, while projections for cost increases of other types of plans such as preferred provider organizations (PPOs) or HMOs were slightly lower but still averaged between 11 percent and 14 percent.

“Insurers continue to be concerned about the increased utilization of services, the health care cost shifting from Medicare and Medicaid, and difficulties in preserving favorable reimbursement rates with hospitals and doctors,” says Harvey Sobel, a principal and consulting actuary for Buck and a co-author of the study.

Sobel adds that all the jittery attitudes among insurance providers and the current cost increases did not even take into account the effects of Congress passing a patients’ bill of rights.

“Since insurers and HMOs are being very conservative and really want to play it safe, employers may wish to consider self-funding,” Sobel suggests.