Category Archives: Other

You’ve heard or seen the pitch.  You’re encouraged to get a full body scan or an ultrasound of different parts of your body to make sure that you are healthy.  The pain free procedure is touted as your way of taking charge of your health and finding problems before they start.  It seems simple enough.  So what’s the problem? The Problem With Full Body Scans Part of the problem is that our bodies are quite complex and there can be areas of abnormalities seen with these scanners.  The vast majority of the time these abnormalities are benign and nothing to worry about. They won’t cause a person any harm if left alone and had the individual not done a full body scan, he would have lived a normal life and died none the bit wiser. Unfortunately, once an abnormality is found and identified many people are disturbed and insist on […] Read More »

The fundamental challenge facing all countries to delivering healthcare is balancing these three aspects: cost of care, access to care, and the quality of care provided. This is known as the iron triangle of healthcare. Unfortunately, the truth is that only two of these three areas can be optimized. For example, if a nation chose to provide high quality care to all, then the costs must be high as well. If instead a healthcare system was designed to be low cost but give high quality care, access to care would need to be limited. Finally if a country wanted to have a low cost healthcare system with universal access, the quality delivered would not be high quality. The US Healthcare Crisis The healthcare crisis in America is particularly startling when you realize that the United States does the worst on all three aspects. We have the highest cost per capita, […] Read More »

The National Committee for Quality Assurance, NCQA, is a non-profit organization that recognizes health plans and doctors who perform high quality healthcare consistently. In conjunction with various large employers, NCQA is trying to improve the quality of care delivered. Healthcare quality varies so greatly that annually tens of thousands deaths could have been avoided if all health insurance plans provided the care done by the top 10 percent. Why You Should Care NCQA also lists doctors who give high quality care. These are doctors who consistently do the right things based on the latest research and recommendations in areas of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and back pain. Patients who patronize these doctors will be healthier and more likely to avoid premature death. Although healthcare has improved over the past decade that NCQA started its reporting, a large number of health insurance plans have not submitted any performance information. In a […] Read More »

A HSA, which stands for Health Savings Account, is a relatively new tool for individuals and families to pay for their ever-mounting health care expenses. HSA was signed into law by President Bush and became available in 2004.  HSAs, like many other accounts such as 401(k)s and dependent care expenses use pre-tax dollars to fund future expenses, which are retirement and day care costs respectively.  HSAs are used to cover high deductible health insurance costs and qualified healthcare expenses.  How high the deductible must be and what medical costs are considered qualified is defined by the IRS. HSA Health Insurance HSA insurance plans save both the employee and employer money as they must be linked to a high deductible insurance plan.  High deductible insurance plans have smaller premiums.  While many healthcare policy experts feel that HSA insurance will decrease medical costs as patients are more responsible for paying for their health, […] Read More »

The Kaiser Family Foundation reported that in 2007, the total cost for health insurance premiums for an individual cost about $4,400 and for a family of four exceeded $12,000.  Clearly finding affordable individual health insurance and affordable family health insurance is increasingly less likely as premiums continue to rise faster than wages and inflation. The report also found that fewer small businesses are offering health insurance.  Only 59% of employers with between 3 to 199 workers offer the benefit.  Of small businesses with 3 to 9 employees, only 45% offer it.  Companies are also restricting who is covered.  No longer are they willing to extend coverage to dependents whether spouses or children.  Many businesses no longer offer post-retirement health insurance to their retirees and seniors.  Companies, like individuals, are struggling to find affordable health insurance and have addressed the costs by cutting back on who is covered and how comprehensive […] Read More »