Monday, January 9, 2012

Insurance (Rant)


I find it very interesting that my retiree insurance prefers to pay for diagnostic testing and cover illness rather than pay for preventative therapy. They cover twenty chiropractic/massage therapy visits a year end of story. Chiropractic has been proven to help keep you healthy, but my insurance would rather pay for when I am sick, than pay for keeping me healthy.
They pay for tests that my cardiologist runs to make sure my heart is functioning properly, x-rays to diagnose arthritis, medication, and the like, but not things that are designed to help keep me healthy and functioning.
I find if funny that it is cheaper for me to be sick than it is to be healthy, at least when it comes to what I have to pay out of my own pocket.
Insurance wants us to have to pay higher rates because they want to pay more, rather than pay to keep us healthy and thus not need to have them pay as much, so then our rates would not need to be increased.
It is interesting that they will pay more for one little pill, than they will pay for preventative medicine. I know that some medications cost upwards of $400 a pill, or a day and people have to take them several times a day or at least daily. Yet a chiropractic visit and or massage is only a couple hundred dollars a week, if you go once a week. It is less if you go twice a month.
Greed seems to keep insurance and doctors going. I mean have you ever really looked at what you pay for your 15 minutes with the doctor? Heaven forbid if that doctor is a specialist. The cost of those 15 minutes is more than some people make in a week, depending on their hourly rate. If they have insurance they usually only have to pay 20%, but that is still a days pay. It is ridiculous what medicare costs today.
I am sure that most medications cost less than a quarter of the price they charge make, maybe even an eighth, and yet they gouge the consumer.  I don't know what we can do as patients, citizens, people who need the medication to survive, but we need to find a way to reduce the cost of medical care for everyone. I don't mean socialized medicine, but there has to be a way to bring this country back to its roots and make sure everyone can afford medical care without having to mortgage their homes. 
If some one gets seriously ill their family can end up on the streets, just trying to pay their deductible to cover the cost of medicare with the high cost of some insurance premiums and the minimum care they cover.
I know I am on my soap box, but I really have an issue with the fact that insurance does not cover things that can help keep people healthy. Preventative medicine should be covered at 100%, then maybe more people would be willing to try to prevent illness and thus save themselves money in the long run.  

1 comment:

  1. Well said. I guess the people who run the insurance industry do not watch TV or read anything, cause if they did they would know that prevention and screening = more healthy people. SHESH

    ReplyDelete

It Is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to Pay Off Your College Loan

  There is a key point that the leftist are totally missing in their, asinine argument, saying that the government should pay off student lo...