Marilynn Brown has outlived a group of her physicians. She's qualified for Medicare but few doctors in family observe in Santa Cruz County accept new patients. Brown traveled to San Francisco for cascade surgery, which was successful, but resorted to drugstore reading glasses because she hasn't establish an optician to fill her lens prescription. "It says right here that it's covered," she said, pointing to page 15 of a booklet allowed "Medicare and You"
At Pearle Vision, she was told the price would be $250-$300 "and that was 30 percent with my AARP coverage," she said. She was about to give up expect when, this week, she found a family practice doctor and an optician willing to believe Medicare as payment. "It took a lot of looking," she said. Jeanne Allen, 64, pays more then $700 a month for health insurance, which covers two doctor visit a year. "I am rationing my care," she said. "Basically you're telling people insurance is only for catastrophic situations."
Sickness or injury can leave people in grave financial jeopardy even when they have health insurance, according to a report free by The Access Project and Brandeis University. The Illusion of Coverage: How Health Insurance Fails People When They Get Sick, reports findings based on in-depth interviews with dozens of insure Americans in seven states.
"Widespread debt and access problems among insured people represent major product failure in our private health insurance market," stated Carol Pryor, Senior Policy Analyst at The Access Project and co-author of the account. "Confusing and complex insurance policies, routine denial of claims that should be paid, and poor customer service plague the insurance industry. These problems call for the establishment of clearer rules and standards of accountability for health insurers."
After land in bankruptcy court in 2004, Cynthia King was deluged with letters from companies contributing to help straighten out her finances so she wouldn't lose her comfortable St. Petersburg home. King went with a $143,250 loan from Resmae Mortgage of California. It paid off her original mortgage and gave her some additional cash, but it came with a hefty interest rate - 8.39 percent.
A certified nursing assistant, King struggled to make the $1,090 monthly payments, which didn't include ever-rising taxes and insurance. She destroys behind last fall, and now faces foreclosure for the second time in three years. "I'm going to lose the house," says King, a divorced mother of two. "I love being here, but now I wish I hadn't gotten into this."
Lenawee County government officials are to begin meeting this week with a health insurance envoy to look for ways to hold down costs that are planned to jump more than 14 percent on May 1. "It's a problem for not only the county but the nation," said Ralph Tillotson, R-Adrian Twp., chairman of the county commission’s ways and means group. Rising health care costs are the biggest subject in the United States after the Iraq War, he said.
Health insurance costs for Lenawee County government are going up at rate equivalent to $1,164 a year for each of the 512 county employees enclosed under its Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, he said. The increase will append a total of $250,000 to the budget from May 1 to Dec. 31 this year. With a quarter of Texans deficient health insurance, and Texas' share of Medicaid spending overwhelming about 25 percent of state spending, health care is on everyone's mind in Austin. The Senate's health guru, Flower Mound Republican Jane Nelson, just introduce a bill to deal with Medicaid. Gov. Rick Perry's plan is to sell the lottery and utilize the proceeds to help more Texans purchase insurance.
Points twisted to two experts to discuss what the Legislature should do. Dr. Ron Anderson, president and chief executive officer of Parkland Health and Hospital System, sees medical issues up slam every day. Dr. John Goodman, the president and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis is a national champion of market-driven health care. The pair newly engaged in an e-mail exchange moderate by editorial columnist William McKenzie.
The Detroit Pistons announced they have entered into a one-year finance agreement with Esurance, the direct-to-consumer auto insurance company. The partnership will include standard sponsorship elements of television and radio commercial, an interactive Web program, a computer mouse bargain for Pistons fans, and in-arena programming. The agreement also includes an additional generous component. Esurance will contribute $5 for every help the Pistons record this year to the Bikes for Kids program from Variety Children’s Charity. Further financial details of the accord were undisclosed.
“Esurance is quickly making a name for themselves with their commitment to simplifying the tedium of shopping for, buying and managing auto insurance, something we can all relate to in the Motor City,” said Tom Wilson, president and CEO of Palace Sports & activity. “Erin, Esurance’s animated pink-haired pop icon, represents the forward-thinking use of technology that is the Esurance brand. Erin was also the inspiration for this relationship.” With aging, it's become a routine truly endured by the Guffords. Each day starts with a blood sugar ensure and a shot of insulin. Then a couple of pills may be mashed into a bowl of tuna and canned carrots and Mixed with dry chow. Brownie takes more drugs than his human companions put jointly. He has been medicated in recent months for diabetes, infections, high blood pressure, and his fastidious gut that rebels at red meat. Since 2005, he has taken drugs for the whole thing from anemia to a spider bite.
"He's our baby, he's a family member, I would want somebody to do that for me," clarify Ann Gifford. She estimates spending $5,000 over the last two years on medicine for her baby, a combined beagle-cocker spaniel. He has lost a couple of steps on the squirrels outside their little home close to Goldsboro. Still, without some of the drugs, he'd possibly be gone.
Andrea Tarbet, 38, isn't concerned about dying. What most concerns her is that she might need hospitalization or expand cancer or another serious illness. "That's my biggest fear," said the Fort Wayne wife and mother. She has no health insurance for her. The very small company her husband works for offer only individual, not family, plans. Tarbet was working part time but quit that job so her children could be eligible for Hoosier Healthwise, the state's health insurance program for children. She just had a blind spot in her eye and went to an ophthalmologist.
"The first question I asked was, 'Do you give cash discounts?' " The doctor did, and he even wrote off the price of some testing. She looks into purchasing a health insurance plan for herself. "It was $600 a month." Even then, the company said the asthma drug she takes would not be enclosed because the asthma was a pre-existing condition. She couldn't pay for the health insurance and now orders the drug from Canada for $1.96 a pill compare with $3.55 a pill she pays at a local pharmacy. "What are you supposed to do?" she asked.
Private health insurance is generally more preventive in coverage of mental illness than in coverage for somatic illness. This was provoked by several concerns. Insurers feared that coverage of mental health services would result in high costs connected with long-term and intensive psychotherapy and comprehensive hospital stays. They also were unwilling to pay for long-term, often custodial, hospital stays that were certain by the public mental health system, the provider of "catastrophic care."
Some private insurers use to refuse to cover mental illness treatment and others simply limited payment to acute care services. Those who did suggest coverage chose to inflict various financial restrictions, such as divide and lower annual and lifetime limits on care, as well as separate deductibles and copayments. As a result, individuals paid out-of-pocket for a higher proportion of mental health services than general health services and faced catastrophic financial losses when the costs of their care exceeded the limits.
Governor Deval Patrick yesterday unveiled considerably lower prices for the health insurance plans that uninsured residents will be necessary to buy starting July 1. Patrick said six weeks of intense negotiations, in which he personally called the chief executives of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and Tufts. Health Plan resulted in lower prices that will make the plans more reasonable for uninsured residents.
Neighborhood Health Plan, a small Boston-based insurer that chiefly serves Medicaid patients, will suggest the lowest-priced plan for residents in the Boston area. Its basic plan for individuals between 35 and 39 years old, which covers defensive care, office visits, hospitalization, and prescription drugs, will cost $175.15 a month. As with other plans, the premium increased with age; individuals older than 56 would pay $347 a month. Penn State student Aaron Stidd, harshly injured in October when he was struck by a car while crossing Atherton Street, is not making enough development to justify continuing to pay $1,500 to $2,000 a day for rehabilitation, his insurance company told his parents. But Aaron Stidd's father, J. Stidd, refuses to shift his son from Bryn Mawr Rehabilitation Hospital, saying he still thinks the concentrated rehabilitation there offers his son the best chance of progressing to the point that he can eventually return home in his parents' care.
J. Stidd and his wife have been paying the tab for the treatment since Jan. 25 and are appealing the insurance company's decision. Aaron Stidd was walking across South Atherton Street at West Beaver Avenue with two other pedestrians on Oct. 18 when he was strike by a car driven by Anthony Torsell, 20, of Bellefonte, police said. |
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