Georgia Health Insurance 411

Archive for April, 2009

Seems I was a bit hasty.

When I clicked to see who  Gov. Benefits was following I found an incestuous relationship. You can also find about about other government (taxpayer funded) issues from the following Twitterer’s.

Office of Personnel Management - Status and News of the Federal Government of the United States

Social Security

HUD – Information about the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s websites:

USA – USA.gov helps you find official U.S. government information and services on the Internet.

Homeland Security – The Department of Homeland Security’s overriding and urgent mission is to lead the unified national effort to secure the country and preserve our freedoms.

Health and Human Services – HHS is the United States government’s principal agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services.

Dept. of Education – News and information from the U.S Department of Education.

Dept. of Energy – A multidisciplinary design firm serving up ideas the size of double D’s (Note, the description is from the D.O.E.; I had nothing to do with their bio . . .)

Dept. of Labor – Jobs, employment, workforce, safety, labor, government 2.0 issues & regulations news and information from the US Department of Labor

I am pretty sure this is not the end of it . . .

Are you taking full advantage of government handouts? Is it possible you can get the taxpayers to fund more of your lifestyle?

Get up to the minute information about enttitlement programs on Twitter.

According to their bio:

Visit GovBenefits.gov and put your tax dollars to work! Connect with 1,000+ government benefit programs for your family, your job, your home, your health.

Step right up. Get your free stuff.

Are you a sexy housewife? Are you looking for health insurance? Forget Billy Blanks. You can get fit by ironing, dusting and vacuuming.

According to Consumer Reports, obesity and controlling your weight can be dealt with  if you are willing to clean house.

Generally, an exercise program to help control weight involves doing an activity that uses about 150 calories each day (or 1,000 calories a week). You don’t have to go running to use calories. Doing daily chores can also use calories.

How can you burn an extra 150 calories per day? Doing the following for 30 minutes will burn calories. Read the rest of this entry »

When COBRA expires what happens to your Georgia health insurance?

Most people will have the ability to pick from any number of Georgia health insurance plans, but a few who have serious health problems will find their choices limited. While the Georgia legislature has not seen fit to establish a risk pool for those who are rejected by health insurance carriers, you do have options.

Patient Charity is an excellent source of information for those who are uninsured. We recently added a new section specifically for Georgia residents.

The Georgia assignment system is a guaranteed acceptance program and works something like this. Once COBRA expires if you are unable to find health insurance in the open market you can contact the Georgia DOI Consumer Services division and ask to be assigned to a carrier. They will send you an application, or you can download it from their site.

You have a choice of two indemnity plans. If you have been covered under an HMO and live in the Atlanta area you can also pick from one of two HMO plans.

Rates and benefits are listed in the application as well as the rules for qualifying under the assignment system.

You should be aware the indemnity plans offered through assignment do not entitle the policyholder to PPO network discounts. The plan does not have any doctor or Rx copays so many times applicants will want to supplement their assignment policy with a Core Health insurance plan.

If you have questions about the Georgia health insurance assignment system you may refer to our Patient Charity resource page or contact us by phone or email.

Want to see a Georgia doctor?

Take a number.

This is especially so if you are a new patient, do not have health insurance, have Medicare, Medicaid or PeachCare. So if we are having problems now, what happens when it is free?

Obama administration officials, alarmed at doctor shortages, are looking for ways to increase the number of physicians to meet the needs of an aging population and millions of uninsured people who would gain coverage under legislation championed by the president.

You can’t just push a button and “poof” you have new doctors. It takes years to “grow” a new crop of docs.

One proposal — to increase Medicare payments to general practitioners, at the expense of high-paid specialists — has touched off a lobbying fight.

This is called squeezing the balloon.

Cut reimbursement to one sector to cover the cost of services for another sector. It is also known as robbing Peter to pay Paul.

That has never worked. Why would Obama-man think it will work now? Read the rest of this entry »

We do our best to enlighten those looking for affordable health insurance in Georgia about the difference in health care and health insurance.

Health care, health insurance. For most the terms are interchangeable.

But they are very different.

Medical care is medical care. Nothing more and nothing less.

This may not seem like a breakthrough on the frontiers of knowledge. But it completely contradicts what is being said by many of those who are urging “universal health care” because so many Americans lack health insurance.

Insurance is not medical care. Indeed, health care is not the same as medical care. Countries with universal health care do not have more or better medical care. Read the rest of this entry »

Georgia health insurance shoppers wonder if the Massachusetts experiment in universal health care is working.

Define working . . .

According to the WSJ, ER visits in Massachusetts rose by 7% from 2005 to 2007. (The Mass health care experiment began in 2006).

What they don’t know is this. Did ER visits increase because of  the expansion of health insurance or would visits have increased even without Romney Care?

While ER visits increased, the percentage of uninsured remained flat at 15%.

But there is this observation.

many of those in the ER are patients who can’t get in to see their primary-care doctor for a routine complaint. And, as we noted last fall, the increase in insurance coverage in Massachusetts has coincided with longer waits to see primary care doctors and a decline in the number of practices accepting new patients.

This has important implications for the national health-reform push. If you give everyone insurance, there are going to be more people trying to get in to see primary-care doctors – and, perhaps, heading to the emergency room when they can’t get an appointment.

Longer waits for PCP visits.

When something is free demand increases. And no one saw that one coming?

Georgia residents generally don’t have to worry about long waiting lists to schedule an appointment with a PCP . . . unless you have Medicaid or Peachcare. We have many carriers offering competitive rates which means affordable health insurance for most.

Finding affordable health insurance in Georgia is relatively easy for most folks. When you adopt a bare bones approach and only pay for coverage you actually need most people are surprised to see how much money they have wasted in the past and how much they can save going forward.

But when you are out of work and without a paycheck, even the employer subsidized COBRA premium can be beyond reach.

Danna Walker of Humble, Texas lost her job at DHL and along with it her health insurance. The bi-weekly unemployment check of $688 is not enough to cover the family’s COBRA premium of $1360 ($467 after the COBRA subsidy).

Like many others, the Walkers live on a knife’s edge of risk. Without insurance to cover her high blood pressure or his diabetes, they defer doctors’ visits when possible and obtain their prescriptions – nine between the two of them – for $4 apiece at Wal-Mart.

But their primary concern has been finding insurance for Jake, who, after four operations, two stem cell transplants and round after grueling round of chemotherapy, has been cancer-free for a year.

He continues to face a significant threat of recurrence and requires regular monitoring for at least two years. His twice-a-year CT scans cost $3,000 each, and quarterly blood tests and X-rays run more than $1,000.

When you lose your job and COBRA is an option, each family member has COBRA rights independent of the other. It is rare that all family members would face insurability options, and when possible, the healthy ones should be separated from those who need coverage from the group insurance plan. Read the rest of this entry »

Laura Vickers of Sandy Springs has cancer. Not just any cancer, but a rare form of breast cancer called IBC (Inflammatory Breast Cancer).

IBC accounts for 1 – 5% of all breast cancer cases and the survival rate is lower than for other forms of breast cancer.

You can follow Laura Vickers story on her blog. More information on IBC can be found at IBC Research, the Mayo Clinic, and the American Cancer Society.

Hank Stern is an Ohio agent, a good friend, and the guy who is responsible for getting me involved in (some might say addicted to) blogging. He usually takes the more cerebral approach to things while I am more the curmudgeon who has earned the nickname “Krusty”.

Personalities aside, he comes up with some really good stuff from time to time and I feel compelled to steal it. This is one of those times.

As we’ve repeatedly shown, adding mandated benefits to health plans increases premiums for everyone, while rarely addressing underlying costs. Touted by special interest groups, it’s sometimes difficult for politicians to say “no.” And insurance companies make attractive targets: easily portrayed as “the bad guys,” one almost imagines carrier CEOs twirling handlebar mustaches while grinning at how they’ve once again shortchanged their clients.

Which is why an email we recently received from For Grace is so disturbing and disingenuous:

“Chronic pain attacks 76.2 million Americans each day. When those people visit their physician in search of medicine or treatments to help alleviate their suffering, many find their health plans prevent them from getting the prescriptions their doctors have deemed best to treat their condition. Some of the ways this is done include little known practices such as “step therapy,” “fail first” and “therapeutic switching.”

For Grace is a nonprofit advocacy group which claims to be “devoted to ensuring the ethical and equal treatment of all women in pain.” While that sounds noble, their email betrays a rather twisted portrayal of how the system really works.
For starters, insurance companies have no power to dictate to providers how they treat their patients, nor can carriers prohibit their insureds “from getting the prescriptions their doctors have deemed best.” Insurance companies have the power only to decide how much (if any) they will pay toward the cost of those treatments.

The rest of his take is equally informative. InsureBlog is a fan favorite with a wide selection of readers.