Holiday Medical Costs Add Up
Are you buying gifts for the holidays? You might want to budget for a few additional costs. During the holiday season, there is an estimated 80,000 injured people due to accidentally over-celebrating during the holiday season. From Thanksgiving to New Year’s, emergency room and hospital admissions increase each year. This is a common trend, but are you aware of the associated Holiday Medical Costs? (more…)
While the healthcare industry has made significant strides in decreasing the number of people who are uninsured, thousands of Americans remain underinsured, an estimate 31 million If you are underinsured, it means you are paying more for healthcare than you can afford, even if you are currently enrolled in a health insurance plan. (more…)
While having medical insurance is important; however, being underinsured is actually a larger problem. In 2014, 31 million Americans are underinsured, with the majority resulting from employer-based health plans. According to The Commonwealth Fund, the number of underinsured has remained unchanged, since 2014. Likely, this trend will continue.
What is Underinsured?
Underinsured people have health insurance, but cannot afford the out-of-pockets costs, such as deductible, co-payments, co-insurance, etc. It is financially detrimental to continue with health services under their health plan’s benefit structure.
Technically, underinsured is measured by meeting one of the following criteria:
The astonishing part is 13% of privately insured adults have deductibles equal to 5%+ of their income (The Commonwealth, 2015). If your income is $50,000, most likely your deductible is at least $2,500, which must be paid in full prior to using most healthcare services. Deductibles are designed to keep you from only using health services that are needed, but more often high deductible plans deter patients from obtaining critical or needed care.
Why do you pay a premium for health insurance that is too expensive to use? Based on 2014, half of Americans earning on average $50,000 to $95,000 stated it was difficult to afford their deductibles. Of this same group, 21% skipped prescriptions or delayed care due to healthcare expenses, even though they had health insurance.
Can you afford your healthcare costs? Find out in our next posting how to determine if you are underinsured?
Do you need health insurance for your company or maybe your current insurance isn’t cutting it? In this article, you will find the best health insurance plans for small businesses to suit any combination of employees’ benefit needs. Here at Healthcare Deciphered, we used our expertise to rank plans according to several criteria, which we believe to be most important: affordability, plan variety, member benefit selection, and wellness incentives. (more…)
Do you think you pay too much for health insurance? This might be the case. How can you know for sure? Below is a list of indicators that could be driving up how much you spend on healthcare each year. If yo
ur health plan includes any of the below “benefits”, it might be time to re-evaluate. These indicators could explain the overwhelming aggravation, expensive physician bills, and the confusion you feel while attempting to navigate the system. (more…)