Health insurance concerns are on the rise, with much attention being focused on the nationalization of the American health care system. Arguments flourish both on the left and right, all the while struggling families are stuck in the middle dealing with skyrocketing health costs and over-the-top insurance premiums. Family health insurance is no longer a benefit, but a necessity. Those that live without it gamble the potential of accidental medical bills bankrupting their futures.

The tragedy of health insurance is that if an employer does not provide insurance to employees, many families are left without it due to extremely high premiums. An employer provided health plan costs employees a fraction of what private market plans can cost. To make matters worse, many young families that are in this situation may be able to afford insurance premiums, but most likely do not have access to maternity insurance. The Urban Institute’s website states that, “Forty-five million nonelderly Americans were uninsured in 2007, and that was before the recession wiped out scores of jobs.”

Currently, a few government programs are set in place to help those who are unable to afford health insurance, though its stipulations are tight. COBRA is a program that allows employees to continue with company group insurance rates and plans after they have been released from a job. Medicare covers the elderly and those with kidney failure or disabilities. Medicaid is for low income individuals and covers pregnancies and other standard health care. CHIPS is another governmental program that covers children from low income families that do not qualify for Medicaid. It is beneficial with extremely low co-pays and deductibles.

Despite the range of government programs in place for health coverage, many Americans are still without family health insurance. Those with a lower middle-class income are generally unable to afford ten thousand dollars per year for good health insurance premiums, plus co-pays and high deductibles. Polls show that most Americans agree that there should be health care reform, but agreeing to the type of reform is quickly becoming a messy argument.

With twenty percent of families spending more than five percent of their income on health care, reform seems to be inevitable; without it, the country could go bankrupt. A public option has been discussed, but widely refuted by the general public as an attack on free market competition, and a move towards socialistic government independence. A new health care bill is expected to surface this fall that will allow for elimination of insurance denial based upon preexisting conditions. It will also likely allow people to purchase policies over statelines, a measure that seems to be a bipartisan endeavor. Many agree that eliminating state guidelines for health care will generate more competition, keeping health care from being a local option only.

In the mean time, many families are turning to health savings accounts to manage their health care needs. With a health savings account, a monthly premium is paid for a high deductible health insurance plan, with lower premiums. The savings on these lower premiums can be put into a tax deferred health plan that can be set up through various banks throughout the country. A certain amount of income can be placed into the accounts tax deferred to help pay for future co-pays and deductibles that may arise. Withdrawing money from this fund too for the wrong reason can result in costly penalties and taxes. However, if the money in the HSA is not used after a specified amount of time, it can be withdrawn, penalty-free, saving the insured policy holder a lot of costly premiums in the long run.

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Tags: Addiction Recovery Idaho, family, Health Insurance

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 12th, 2010 at 7:41 am and is filed under Insurance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.