Affordable Healthcare Solutions:
What Are Your Options?

Summary:

Are there affordable healthcare solutions for you and your family? Are there options for employers other than termination of employee benefits? Other than just dumping it on employees? Yes, absolutely! Let's look at the options.

Direct And Indirect Costs:

American enterprise created the greatest economic boom in history. High employee medical benefit costs are among the threats to destroy that boom. These out-of-control costs increased 88 percent from 2000 to 2008, almost twice the rate of inflation.

It's easy to focus on the obvious direct costs of health insurance and medical care. They get our attention because we regularly pay those bills. As the result of rising medical and insurance costs, it has been necessary for many individuals and families to reduce or discontinue health insurance coverage.

For employers, the reaction of many has been to alter or terminate employee health benefits. Less obvious factors for employers and employees are the indirect costs of higher employee absenteeism and a less-well workforce due to lifestyle issues. The indirect damage is reduced health quality, life quality and longevity.

There are better answers for all healthcare consumers- those with personal insurance plans and those with employee benefit plans.

You need solutions you can count on and control. Many people now look to the government for an answer. It may be so for the uninsured and the uninsurable. But, there are better alternatives for the vast majority of Americans.

What do you think is the best solution to decrease healthcare costs without reducing the quality of healthcare access or services? Tell us your choice and why by clicking here..

Better Options:

Larger firms, with 200 or more employees, have greater operating margins and more bargaining power. They can negotiate lower insurance rates and medical costs. Nearly all still offer employee health benefits in some form, but they are desperate for lower-cost alternatives.

Smaller firms are stretched to their survival limit. The number of smaller employers that offer benefits has fallen from 68 percent in 2000 to about half. Most are seeking to limit their medical expense or to drop it altogether. For more information on the traditional plan format, go to Traditional Health Insurance.

Many employers see two options as preferred resolutions to their dilemma.

The first is government-controlled national universal medical care. Many employers, large and small, are waiting to see if government will relieve them of the burden of medical expenses for their employees and retirees. They are almost frozen in place by the false hope that politicians and government bureaucrats will save them. Bailed out bankers and auto makers have experienced the fallacy of pinning their hopes on government aid. There is always a price too high.

For more information, see National Health Insurance.

The second option is incentive-based integrated health and fitness plans that emphasize consumer control. The core of such plans are known as high-deductible health plans (HDHP) or consumer directed plans. A survey by the Association of Health Underwriters revealed that 41 percent of employers rate HDHP’s as the best alternative for their high employee medical benefit costs.

Many large employers have offered the HDHP as an option. They were reluctant to impose it because of perceived employee resistance. In 2007, Wal-Mart, the largest US employer, began offering a $1,000 deductible HDHP as the only option for new employees. Wal-Mart has coupled its HDHP plan with a series of health reimbursement arrangements (HRA’s) to offset employee expenses.

As for employees, most would like to keep their health benefit as is. Who can blame them? They have enjoyed almost unlimited services at minimal cost to themselves. Someone else has attended to the administrative details and paid most of the bills. Ironically, those are the primary reasons the costs have gotten out of control.

A Harris survey of employees who have health benefits reported that 62 percent would relinquish their benefits in order to save their jobs if the employer would apply some of the savings to increased compensation or to reimburse employees for higher medical expense. In effect, employees are receptive to the HDHP option if it allows them to stay employed and to have some control.

Better Personal Options:

The HDHP’s that give more control to employees are also the best option for individual healthcare consumers and their families. For the same control reasons. No one will mind your business better than you will - if you know how.

For nearly seventy years, employers or medical professionals have managed healthcare affairs for most Americans through employer centered health benefit plans. But, the resulting high costs have made that third party control system more of a problem than a blessing.

Americans are astute and value-conscious consumers in virtually every other aspect of their lives. They can do the same in healthcare. Unquestionably, consumers have the most to gain, or to lose, in managing their healthcare affairs.

This premise is the foundation of our health insurance and fitness culture solutions. Our programs are designed to inform, advise and assist you, as our patient client, so that that you can better manage your personal or family healthcare affairs in less time and at lower cost.

Our assistive solution includes our Fitness Culture Plan, which can be utilized as a personal or family plan or as a workplace assistance program. Components include our Fitness Support Programs for Medical Self Care Prevention, for Medical Self Care Affairs Management and for our Patient Care Plan for healthcare system assistance.

What’s Future?

Americans are almost evenly split on the issue of national universal healthcare, like red states and blue states. Many experts think that the US government will adopt a compromise program, maybe some combination of a government medical care plan and a private health plan.

In the short term, government healthcare does not appear to be an option that you can rely on to reduce your medical expense or that employers can rely on to reduce their cost for employee benefits or to improve their productivity and profitability deficiencies. Long term, who knows. But, if you apply better short term solutions, you’re bound to be better positioned no matter what the government does or does not do.

For a more complete forecast on healthcare developments and how they could affect you, go to What's The Future? What Should You Do?

An existing government insurance program for children that may benefit you now is SCHIP. For details, go to “Childrens Health Insurance”.

What Should You Do?

Can you reduce and control the high costs for healthcare without just going uninsured? Yes. Almost always!

Are there affordable solutions for employers other than termination of employee benefits? Yes. Absolutely!

Can you overcome the sickness culture and rise to the healthy and quality lifestyle of the Fitness Culture? Yes.

Is there a short, easy answer? No. But, there are answers and solutions. To discover them, take a look at our Fitness Culture and our Medical Self Care Program for Prevention and for Affairs Management.

OK. There are good solutions – for you . . . for your family . . . for your business . . . for your employees. Let’s consider the options and how to put them together . . . .

To get information on traditional healthcare options that offer more affordable alternatives that can work for you and why, go to Personal Health Insurance Plans.

If you are ready to get a health plan quote, go to the appropriate quote guide page for individuals, or for families, or for groups.

What healthcare solution will
reduce costs but maintain quality?

What is the best healthcare solution to decrease costs without reducing medical quality or access to services? That's a key problem with universal governmental healthcare. When costs go too high, government officials always seek to cut the budget. That limits quality or delays access. Can you tell us a better way?