What is your Leg worth to you? Health Insurance has got you covered !

If you think that health insurance is unnecessary and too cheap to find and fit into your lifestyle right now, think again. All too often people think that they don't need health insurance.

They think that they are healthy and will just get it "later". But what will they do in case of an accident? Imagine you are going on a snowboarding trip and break your leg; you go to the hospital and can't pay for the medical services. Do you pay for it out of pocket and go into debt? You have no choice because of you have no insurance. With medical insurance, you don't have to worry.

You just show your insurance card and pay the minimal co-payment fee at the emergency room and have nothing but a scary story to tell your friends about how you broke your leg. It pays to simply pay the monthly rates of your health insurance. While you may never have to use it for emergencies like a broken leg, there is always the possibility that you will have to use it and if you do, imagine the breath of fresh air you'll breathe knowing that you are paying the lowest possible rate you can for the medical benefits and costs you need.

Enjoy sleeping soundly knowing that you are covered with your medical insurance.

Pay more, get less! What’s going on ?

Just when it looks as though you can make ends meet, health insurance costs go up again. A growing percentage of every paycheck is going on health and, for the most part, you're getting less for your dollars. The result? Every month, more people give up on rising premiums and drop into the ranks of the uninsured. Worse, if big bills hit, people face personal bankruptcy. This was mostly affecting low-income working families and those with chronic conditions requiring more continuous treatment like diabetes or depression. Now, it's starting to bite the middle class. Employers are also feeling the pinch and more companies are dropping medical cover or reducing the benefits packages, and introducing wellness programs with teeth.

This combination is placing a growing burden on taxpayers who fund Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. Why is this happening? Well, let's come down to a short list. The economy is not in great shape. The population is ageing and, as people get older, more goes wrong with their bodies. New technology is producing new treatments but that is often more expensive. The pharmaceutical industry keeps raising prices to maintain its profitability. Put all the causes together and you have a broken system. The real problems start with the "entitlement" trap. Because people pay their health insurance premiums out of their own pockets, they feel they're entitled to get all the medical care they like.

This leads to a significant amount of waste as health providers supply expensive services on demand regardless whether those services are needed. Mostly, the providers are driven by the need to make profits to keep their investors happy, and not by the patients' needs. This makes general medical care unaffordable and shifts ever more of the costs on to the insurance companies and the tax payers. Health insurance premiums therefore go up.

The Republican approach is to reduce taxes which makes funding public health provision more difficult. If people are uninsured, they wait longer to see a physician or go to an emergency room when their conditions have worsened. What could have been treated early on for less money suddenly becomes a bigger bill as costs are higher in emergency rooms. Why are costs higher? Because a significant proportion of patients cannot pay. The hospitals costs therefore have to be recovered from those who have the money or still carry health insurance. The moral of this story is for political parties to have the will to fix the problems.