Posts Tagged ‘health insurance costs’

Hawaii Health Insurance – Creative Ways To Reduce Your Rates

July 8th, 2011

1. If you take advantage of phone med services you’d have done a lot to lower your health insurance costs. A phone med service operates 24 hours everyday and gives free medical advice.

You can trust the advice you get because they are manned by qualified personnel (usually a minimum of a registered nurse with at least ten years experience). Your local clinic is also another place you can get free medical advice by phone.

This, hopefully, should reduce the number of visits you make to a doctor even though it’s not an alternative to doing so. The advice you get from them could also help you take precautions that will prevent a serious health condition.

For these and other reasons, take advantage of these free medical services.

2. You’ll spend less on health care if you take advantage of no-appointment ambulatory care centers or Emergi-centers. This is especially true if you’re generally healthy and find it a little difficult to pay for traditional health insurance. They cost far less than using an emergency room in a hospital.

Check to see if your community has a center like this.

3. You can reduce your Hawaii health insurance costs by taking advantage of free clinics. These are good opportunities for you to get professional medical advice and have routine check up. Some communities have such clinics and some may just be part of a group’s social responsibility program.

4. You’ll definitely get lower Hawaii health insurance rates if you take the time to get and compare quotes from up to five or more quotes sites. There is a huge disparity in the rates offered by insurance companies. If you don’t do this you may end up paying as much as 70% more than you should.

US Healthcare Reform to Affect Health Tourism

May 27th, 2011

Now that U.S. Healthcare Reform has passed it’s time to take a look at how it will affect insurance costs and ultimately health tourism. At its core, US Healthcare Reform was supposed to reduce medical costs, making health insurance more affordable to everyone, regardless of your health or age, and while no one will argue that this ideal doesn’t sound great, there are reasons to be concerned. In fact, many experts including Devon Herrick or the National Center for Policy Analysis in the U.S. suggest that the changes made may have the reverse affect.

Here are some statistics that come from a whitepaper recently released by the Medical Tourism Association…

  • By 2020, it is estimated that family health insurance costs be between $30,000 and $40,000 per year. If you’re self-insured or a small business this has got to be scary!
  • Baby Boomers will add a huge burden to the aging masses (no blame here… it’s just a fact). The over 65 set will nearly triple by 2030 with 6 of every 10 people suffering a chronic condition such as hip or knee pain. Half of the Boomers will be living with moderate to severe arthritis and the demand for knee replacement surgery will skyrocket 8 fold.
  • In 2014 pre-existing conditions will disappear, but the penalty for not having insurance will be far below the cost of insurance. This will allow people to drop and add insurance on the fly as their medical needs require creating a huge burden on health insurance companies, which will undoubtedly cause prices to increase.
  • Over the next 15 years it is expected that there will be a 150,000 doctor shortage in the U.S., creating longer waiting periods for almost all non-emergency procedures.

While these statistics are scary – and believe me they are – there are some alternative options for healthcare needs in the form of health tourism. People can have surgical procedures such as knee replacement surgery, hip replacement surgery, or hip resurfacing surgery performed overseas at prices that are 50% or more the cost of the same procedure in the U.S. And choosing a first-world country like New Zealand means that people don’t have to subject themselves to an environment that may be uncomfortable.