Articles from Umar Hafeez. All about Insurance.

If you’re looking to retire soon, it's good to look ahead and try to determine if your medical expenses will be adequately covered in retirement. Many Americans don't discover the gaps in their Medicare coverage until it's too late, and they are forced to pay out of their own pockets for medical expenses they assumed would be covered.

Medicare coverage requires that you meet certain deductibles before coverage begins, and you must pay significant co-payments for many types of medical treatment. In addition, traditional Medicare does not offer a prescription drug benefit.

Because of these deficiencies in Medicare coverage, you may wish to consider purchasing a supplemental medical insurance policy called Medigap. Medigap is specifically designed to fill the gaps in your Medicare coverage. Although Medigap policies are sold through private insurance companies, they are standardized and regulated by state and federal law.

Under federal law, there are ten standard Medigap plans, each of which must cover certain specified services. Medigap policies pay most, if not all, of your Medicare coinsurance amounts. Some also provide coverage for deductibles and services that are not covered by Medicare, such as prescription drugs and preventive care.

Because Medigap policies are standardized, there is no need to compare provisions of the policies offered by various insurance companies. However, you should still compare the insurance companies themselves, as an insurance policy is only as good as the company behind it. In addition, Medigap premiums will vary from one insurance company to another, so you may want to do some research to find the best rate.

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Articles from Umar Hafeez. All about Insurance.

In this uncertain economy, the need for—and importance of—better employee benefits is greater than ever.

Harris Interactive, on behalf of the Principal Financial Group, conducted the Principal Financial Well-Being Index℠ - Second Quarter 2008 survey online between April 30 and May 7, 2008. This quarterly survey polls employees over 18 working at a small or mid-sized business, and retirees, to identify concerns about finances, health and retirement benefits, as well as to examine workplace trends. The results are then compared to the same quarter from previous years.

Notable results

• Health insurance has been rated as the most important benefit for the past five years
• Health insurance is also the benefit that employees most want improved
• Health Savings Accounts are less well-known than before
• Respondents are concerned about the economy, rising prices, and job security
• Most respondents think the country is in a recession
• Fewer employees than previously believe that good benefits will result in harder work and better performance
• More employees than previously said that good benefits keep them at their current employer
• Females rated dental insurance and life insurance as important more often than males did
• Stock options are rated as more important than before, but still rank last

Benefit importance
As seen in the table below, health insurance and defined contribution plans are rated as the most important benefits to employees, while stock options are rated as the least important. This is an interesting statistic because many companies tend to offer stock options as a type of benefit, especially to those working in upper management.

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Articles from Umar Hafeez. All about Insurance.

By the time your children toss their high school graduation caps into the air, they'll probably have a good idea about their intended college and course of study, but is their health insurance something you've thought about?

Many times, a parent's medical plan will cover their children until they're 24 years old. If your health insurance plan does not cover college students, it would be beneficial to look into what college health plans are offered at your child's university.

College health insurance basics
College health insurance plans may be subsidized by tuition at some schools, and may ultimately save parents money. College health insurance plans are not free, and the benefits may vary from college to college. Health insurance companies meet with committees from different schools to design a plan, specifically tailored to that school's students. Free services may be offered at the health center.

If you choose to purchase the college health insurance plan for your student, office visits will usually be fully covered, but students may be charged a co-pay for lab work, x-rays, physical therapy, prescriptions, and procedures such as treatment for a wound. Other services that may be covered include mental health, newborn and infant care, routine pap and pelvic exams, routine AIDS/STD testing, as well as cholesterol screenings. Premiums and benefits vary from college to college, sometimes due to state laws.

Out-of-network problems
A key question-if you're considering keeping your student on your family plan-is whether doctors from your network will be easily available if your student is out-of-state. All HMO-only plans require referrals for visits to out-of-network providers and to specialists. And, PPO plans will reimburse less for visits to out-of-network physicians. If your child chooses a college out of state, and you want them to get prompt medical care without having to call home for a physician's referral, it would be a good idea to consider the college health plan offered by their school. What are health insurance networks, and what are the different types of plans? Learn more about HMO, PPO, and POS plans.

Things to consider when evaluating a college health insurance policy
Several factors can make a crucial difference in timely care. Be sure to find out:

• Are there restrictions on the providers a student can use?
• If the student is on vacation, what kind of coverage do they have?
• If the student is not enrolled in classes (during summer or winter break) do they still have health insurance coverage?
• Are the most efficient treatment facilities at the college easily accessible?
• What are the low-cost or free services that are offered through the campus health clinic?

Don't let your child's coverage lapse
If your child has a pre-existing medical condition, a lapse in health insurance coverage could cause problems later. Under HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), pre-existing conditions can only be subject to coverage exclusions for 12 months (or 18 months in the case of late plan enrollment). However, if qualifying coverage is maintained without a lapse of 63 days, the health insurance company must subtract the length of coverage from the exclusion period. For example, 8 months of prior coverage would result in a 4-month exclusion period, whereas 18 years of coverage would result in no exclusion period. Therefore, it's important to maintain continuous coverage of all conditions, even if it means buying new health insurance or enrolling in a high-priced plan for a short period.

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Articles from Umar Hafeez. All about Insurance.
Skyrocketing health insurance costs are heavily impacting employers in the United States. Now, for the first time, medical benefits to employees has become the most expensive benefit paid by employers, according to a new report issued by the Employment Policy Foundation. The cost of health care for employers has jumped 12.4% between 2002 and 2003. That's about 5 times higher than inflation, and it is threatening the competitiveness of American corporations and the private sector. The Foundation also reported that employers spent $331 billion last year for health insurance for employees. That's a 50% increase since 1998. This comes out to an average of $3.80 per hour for each worker who participated in health insurance coverage.

If these numbers aren't alarming to you, they should be. In America today, we're seeing a huge number of jobs moving offshore to countries like India, China, Russia and Mexico. Part of the reason there is so much offshoring going on is because U.S. businesses can no longer remain cost-competitive in the global marketplace due to these burdensome health care costs. To a person who lives in the United States, it often seems like the kind of money we pay for health insurance in this country must be similar to what's paid in other countries around the world, but in fact, this is a myth. Other countries around the world pay far less than we pay for health care, and they are able to deliver health care to their citizens even though they are spending only a fraction of what we are spending here in the United States.

Let me put some real figures to this so you can see an example of how it works. In the United States, and individual could easily pay $400-$500 a month for health insurance coverage. Even if they aren't paying it out of their pocket, their employer is picking up the tab and effectively paying that amount for them. If you look at a country like Taiwan, however, which has a national health care system, each individual pays an average of around $20 per month for full health care coverage. That $20 a month includes maternity, dental, vision, and all medical visits. It even helps cover prescription drug costs, which are dramatically lower in Taiwan than they are in the United States. Taiwan citizens receive care that's nearly as good as the care we receive in the United States, and yet they are paying 1/20th of the costs that we are paying here in the United States.

The myth that the United States has the best health care system in the world has long been shattered. We don't have the best health care in the world -- we have the most overpriced health care system in the world. And frankly, it's not even a health care system -- it's a disease care system. But the bigger question in all of this is: how can people in Taiwan receive full health care coverage for $20 a month, while in the United States, we are being charged $500 a month for similar coverage? The answer is rather complex, but here are the primary reasons why:

Number one, in the United States we are paying outrageous costs for prescription drugs due to the monopoly drug market. The pharmaceutical industry and the FDA are both working hard to limit Americans' access to prescription drugs from Canada and other countries that would be available at far lower cost. They want to make sure that Americans buy their prescription drugs from monopoly-controlled sources in the United States, where prices can be hiked up to practically any level in order to enrich the pockets and the profits of pharmaceutical companies. This is one of the biggest cons ever perpetrated on the American people, and it is fully supported by the Bush administration and federal regulators at the FDA. Many drugs are marked up 10,000% or more over the cost of their raw ingredients, and that's why people can buy such drugs at far lower prices by going to Canada or visiting online pharmacies where the very same drugs can be purchased at a fraction of the cost you might be charged at U.S. pharmacies like Walgreens.

The second reason health care costs are so high in the United States is because our system of health care is extremely inefficient. It has multiple levels of bureaucracy. There are mountains of paperwork that must be filled out by doctors in order to get paid for the work they've performed on patients. Likewise, patients have to fill out reams of paperwork to apply for programs like the Medicare discount drug cards or even private health insurance. Employers also have a tremendous burden here: they are filling out an endless stream of paperwork to apply for health insurance for their employees and then to maintain that health insurance each year.

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Articles from Umar Hafeez. All about Insurance.
A new study from the Washington, D.C. based Center for Studying Health System Change has revealed that 9 million Americans no longer have health insurance coverage through their employers compared to those who received coverage in 2001. In other words, employers' ability to provide health insurance coverage for their employees is in a rapid decline, leaving employees either without health insurance or needing to look elsewhere. It's a growing trend, and this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

The problem, by the way, is not that employers don't want to provide health insurance to employees, nor that employers are just skimming profits in order to lower their costs. The problem is that health insurance is unaffordable to both employees and their employers, and the root cause behind that is that insurance costs are being driven up by several things: outrageous profits in prescription drugs, the widespread pursuit of unnecessary surgical procedures that are extremely expensive, and the fact that even though western medicine is the most expensive form of medicine in the world, it is one of the least effective at actually preventing chronic disease.

In other words, as a nation, we are not investing in prevention, and as a result, health care costs are sharply rising and health insurance costs are following suit. The result of all of this is that if the trends don't change, we will soon be a nation without readily available health care coverage, but with skyrocketing rates of chronic disease and unaffordable health care costs.

The pharmaceutical companies, for their part, aren't helping the situation. They are continuing their attempts to work together with the FDA to monopolize the U.S. drug market by prohibiting drugs from Canada and other countries. They continue to sharply increase the prices of their drugs and promote them with distorted scientific studies, outright bribery to physicians, and highly misleading marketing and advertising that inevitably results in higher drug sales.

Health insurance companies aren't helping the situation either, but they can only do so much. When health care costs go up, health insurance companies must raise their rates accordingly. Over the last five years, we've seen alarming increases in health insurance rates, and employers can only absorb so much cost before they have to start cutting these benefits. The situation has gotten so bad that today, as the president of Arial Software, I've received resumes from people who said they would work for practically any pay whatsoever, as long as they could get guaranteed health insurance coverage. I view this as a sad situation, and an indication that our health care system is utterly broken. Western medicine is a complete failure in terms of enhancing the health of our nation and preventing chronic disease.

The only way out of all this is to invest in prevention and move to a national health care system that follows free market principles, and allows health care providers to purchase prescription drugs from around the world rather than limiting them to monopolized U.S. sources.

But prescription drugs are never the answer, anyway. The real answer to all this is prevention, and as a nation, we don't invest in prevention. We need a system that teaches people how to be healthy from the time they are a young child all the way through adulthood. We need a system that rewards and incentivizes healthy eating habits, healthy exercise, and healthy choices in daily life. We need a system that teaches and preaches self-care rather than care through chemicals and prescription drugs. We need to teach people how to regain strength and flexibility and cardiovascular fitness. We also need a system that supports the patient's own immune system rather than trying to destroy it through barbaric therapies like chemotherapy.

Obviously, we need a lot of changes in our health care system in order to make health care insurance affordable to both employees and employers. Until that happens, the situation is only going to get worse. You can expect more and more Americans to go without health insurance in the years ahead until this issue is addressed and we ultimately see a true revolution in modern medicine.
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Articles from Umar Hafeez. All about Insurance.
Health insurance costs for employers continue to climb at an outrageous pace. We all know that. But what's the cause? Although almost nobody will admit it, there are really three primary causes of spiraling health care costs.

1. Drug company profiteering. They're doing everything they can to squeeze profits out of U.S. consumers, including banning drugs from Canada, delaying the approval of generics and trying to monopolize the markets.

2. Paper pushers. Around 70% of all costs in a typical clinic or hospital is due to paper pushing. Armies of people sit around filing papers with various insurance companies and government agencies, trying to get paid. It's a huge waste, and doctors could deliver health care for pennies on the dollar if they didn't have to deal with health insurance companies.

3. Patients don't take care of themselves. Health care costs are high because patients refuse to exercise. They won't get off the couch and exercise even 5 minutes a day. They won't stop eating ice cream and chugging soft drinks. They won't follow the basic rules of good nutrition. They don't get much sunlight. The list goes on and on.

Put all this together and you have a health care crisis that's only going to get worse. But of course, nobody wants to admit these are the real problems. Patients, in particular, are quick to blame the government for not giving them enough free prescription drugs when the real problem is that patients have abused their own bodies from the very beginning.
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