Group Health Insurance!

To hear proponents and opponents of the nation’s new health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act will either make the United States the utopia of medical care or give Americans medicine the equivalent of a third-world country. Likely, it won’t do either. Instead, availability and cost levels might improve while quality could decline. This realization is dawning on some medical experts who are beginning to focus on wasteful spending and practices as the most immediate way to cut into rising health care costs.

In a report appearing in the current issue of the Journal the American Medical Association, Dr. Donald Berwick, a former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Dr. And

Read more…

In the holiday season it’s important to wonder and think about what consumers would like to see change with health care and health insurance.

Here are just a few predictions of things consumers would like to see change in 2012:

Transparency.There is little transparency in how hospitals set rates for health care services and consumers are typically given a run-around when trying to seek that information. More transparency with health care costs will help consumers become well-informed.

Coordination. Health care reform works to create better coordination between health care providers with Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). B

Read more…

Everyone wants to save money on health care expenses. While the cost of health insurance continues to increase, consumers can work to take control of how much they are spending each month on some health care costs.

Here are a few quick things that consumers can do to immediately cut their out-of-pocket expenses:

1. Ask for generic medications over brand-name.

2. Get a flu shot at work or at a pharmacy to avoid a copayment at the doctor’s office.

3. For monthly medications, find out if the health insurance company uses mail-order prescriptions. Mail-order services are generally less expensive than a retail pharmacy.

4. Compare prescriptions costs between local pharmacies.

5. Check to see if a current health insurer offers reimbursements for gym memberships or wellness classes.