May 2010

Healthcare Continuing To Take A Larger Chunk Of Family Budgets

by Louise May 30, 2010

[...] Premiums for health insurance in the individual market are lower than those in the group market, but there’s no employer paying a portion of the premium. And the premiums alone amount to 10% of household income. When you add in the deductibles and other out of pocket expenses, it’s not surprising at all that nearly half of everyone buying insurance in the individual market was considered high-burden in 2006 (spending more than 10% of household income on health care). [...]

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Disability Insurance Awareness Month

by Louise May 26, 2010

[...] May is disability insurance awareness month, and it’s a good reminder to consider how well you’re protecting your greatest asset – your earning potential. Working adults are more likely to encounter a disability that prevents them from working for at least 90 days than they are to die, and yet people tend to be more proactive about securing life insurance than disability insurance. [...]

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Most Emergency Room Patients Have Health Insurance

by Louise May 23, 2010

[...] Finding a doctor who takes Medicaid is significantly more difficult than finding a doctor who takes private health insurance, and I wonder if that might be a contributing factor in the crowding of our emergency rooms. If a person with Medicaid is sick and unable to find a nearby doctor who accepts Medicaid, he might end up not seeing a doctor at all and his condition might worsen to the point of needing emergency room care. Maybe efforts to make Medicaid more attractive to doctors might help to alleviate some of the over-crowding in emergency rooms.

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Another Way Exercise Could Lower Health Care Costs

by Louise May 21, 2010

[...] Maybe if doctors and patients were all aware of the fact that exercise is more beneficial in the long term than anti-depressants, we could start to cut down on the number of anti-depressant prescriptions being written. Lower utilization of pharmaceutical products would be helpful in terms of limiting the overall cost of medical claims and thus the price of health insurance as time goes on. [...]

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Dentists Overprescribing Antibiotics and Avoiding Health Care Reform

by Jay May 20, 2010

[...] MD Whistleblower had a couple good observations:
- Dentists prescribe prophylactic antibiotics (ATBs) with routine recklessness… Many dentists irrationally prescribe ATBs before teeth cleanings and other procedures.
- Not a syllable in the ~2000 page health care reform law that affects dentists.

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Demand For HSAs Continuing To Grow

by Louise May 20, 2010

[...] A new report from AHIP notes that the number of Americans covered by HDHP/HSA policies reached 10 million in 2010, up from 8 million last year. In Colorado, 9.2% of the under-65, privately insured population has HSA qualified coverage, which is the third-highest percentage in the nation. A recent study by the Mountain States Employers Council reports that 27% of Colorado employers surveyed are offering consumer-driven health plans this year, up from 21% last year. [...]

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Focusing On Nutrition To Prevent Cancer

by Louise May 17, 2010

[...] Colorado ranks among the top of the list in terms of how many people eat the recommended amount of produce each day, and yet the vast majority of our adults are not getting the recommended amounts (we only rank near the top because so many other states are doing so much worse). Health care reform has focused largely on expanding access to health insurance for the millions of Americans who are currently uninsured, and that’s a good start. But eliminating tobacco use and increasing access to nutritious food could go a long way in terms of improving the health of the American people.

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Colorado Health Insurance Report By The DOI

by Louise May 13, 2010

Last month, the Colorado Division of Insurance released a report on health insurance in the state, and it is definitely be a good read for anyone interested in how health insurance works in Colorado. There are all sorts of interesting facts included. For example, only a third of Coloradans are covered by a health insurance policy that is regulated by the Division of Insurance. The rest are either covered by a self-insured employer plan or a government plan, or are uninsured. [...]

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Options For Maternity Coverage In Colorado Disappearing Fast

by Louise May 12, 2010

Getting individual health insurance with maternity benefits just got a lot harder for women in Colorado.  For the last few years, there have only been three major carriers that offered maternity coverage on individual policies: Golden Rule (United HealthOne), Assurant, and Rocky Mountain Health Plans.  As of the end of April 2010, both Golden Rule [...]

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