Latest On Health Care Reform
In it’s current form the Health Care Legislation includes several provisions that will disadvantage or threaten HSA health plans, including:
- A new premium tax that will cause premiums to rise for individuals, families and small businesses;
- Mandated benefit levels that could eliminate HSA health plans as an option for coverage;
- A rule against using money in your HSAs to buy any over-the-counter drugs, such as allergy medications, that you now get without a prescription; and
- An increased penalty for the use of HSA dollars for non-qualified medical expenses from 10% to 20% of the reimbursement.
The window of opportunity is closing, but there is still time to contact your elected representatives in Congress and to let them know how you depend on your HSA health plan for quality coverage and to save for medical expenses.
Call, email, write or visit your Representative and Senators today. Look up their contact information here.
Get quotes for individual/family health insurance in Arizona here. Contact us today at 602-510-7507 to find out how an HSA can benefit you.
IQ Financial Group, llc. is a licensed insurance agency in the state of Arizona. We offer a complete selection of health insurance, term life insurance, disability insurance, long term care insurance and supplement plans to individuals, families, self-employed and small businesses throughout Arizona. We offer the best in Arizona Health Insurance.
© IQ Financial Group, llc.
Two Questions For Anyone Debating Healthcare Reform
I have two questions for anyone considering the healthcare proposals currently being bantered in congress.
Q: Why have we not had one company step up and compete with Medicare in its 60+ years of existence?
A: Because it is impossible to compete with the government. The government does not need to ever earn a profit; they virtually have a never ending supply of capital (taxes). To believe the “public option” would compete with private insurance companies is simply naive.
Q: Name one government program that has been a success?
A: You cannot. Ex: Medicare and Social Security – bankrupt and heading towards a large percentage of the population ready to jump on board. Part of the reason why the government is pushing this new program is to get them out of their previous messes.
This is not a partisan issue, its common sense. Please wake up and consider this logically as opposed to emotionally. This whole debate has been like watching the herd of buffalo follow each other over the cliff.
Get quotes for individual/family health insurance in Arizona here. Contact us today at 602-510-7507 to find out how an HSA can benefit you.
IQ Financial Group, llc. is a licensed insurance agency in the state of Arizona. We offer a complete selection of health insurance, term life insurance, disability insurance, long term care insurance and supplement plans to individuals, families, self-employed and small businesses throughout Arizona. We offer the best in Arizona Health Insurance.
© IQ Financial Group, llc.
Health Care Reform Bills Impact HSA’s
Is your HSA being impacted?
Congress will soon vote on health care reform legislation that could harm the more than 8 million Americans who have a health savings account (HSA) and restrict those who want to purchase HSA coverage in the future.
Starting this week, the House of Representatives will begin debate on the Affordable Health Care for America Act, and the Senate is expected to finish work on its version of health care reform shortly.
Both the House and Senate bills make major changes that would impact people with HSAs:
- Both bills mandate benefit levels for most health plans that could eliminate HSAs as an option.
- Both bills prohibit you from using any money in your HSAs to buy over-the-counter drugs such as allergy medications that you now get without a prescription.
- The Senate bill may place a tax on high-value health plans, so-called “Cadillac” plans, by taxing the cost of such coverage, including employer contributions to your HSA.
- Both bills raise the penalty for the use of HSA dollars for non-qualified medical expenses from 10% to 20% of the reimbursement.
It is important that you take the time to contact your members of Congress and let them know that you depend on your HSA for affordable coverage and the flexibility to set aside tax-free dollars to pay for your health care expenses.
Click here and enter zip code.
Get quotes for individual/family health insurance in Arizona here. Contact us today at 602-510-7507 to find out how an HSA can benefit you.
IQ Financial Group, llc. is a licensed insurance agency in the state of Arizona. We offer a complete selection of health insurance, term life insurance, disability insurance, long term care insurance and supplement plans to individuals, families, self-employed and small businesses throughout Arizona. We offer the best in Arizona Health Insurance.
© IQ Financial Group, llc.
Two Steps To More Affordable Health Insurance
There’s no need to wait around on Uncle Sam-he can’t help you anyway. Only you know what’s best for you and your family.
Read entire article by Dave Ramsey.
Get quotes for individual/family health insurance in Arizona here. Contact us today at 602-510-7507 to find out how an HSA can benefit you.
IQ Financial Group, llc. is a licensed insurance agency in the state of Arizona. We offer a complete selection of health insurance, term life insurance, disability insurance, long term care insurance and supplement plans to individuals, families, self-employed and small businesses throughout Arizona. We offer the best in Arizona Health Insurance.
© IQ Financial Group, llc.
HSA Tool For Employers And Their Employees
STREETWISE HSA is a great tool for employers and their employees to maximize the benefits of Health Savings Accounts (HSA). Click on the logo above and check out all of the tools and information available.
Get quotes for individual/family health insurance in Arizona here. Contact us today at 602-510-7507 to find out how an HSA can benefit you.
IQ Financial Group, llc. is a licensed insurance agency in the state of Arizona. We offer a complete selection of health insurance, term life insurance, disability insurance, long term care insurance and supplement plans to individuals, families, self-employed and small businesses throughout Arizona. We offer the best in Arizona Health Insurance.
© IQ Financial Group, llc.
Customer-Driven Medicine: How To Create A New Health Care System
Darrell M. West, Vice President and Director, Governance Studies
The Brookings Institution
Executive Summary
Thursday, October 08, 2009
10:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Washington, DC
Health care today is dominated by physicians, hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry, insurance companies, and government agencies. Patients seek to navigate their health care by moving across a variety of providers, ordering prescription drugs from pharmacies, and seeking reimbursement from either public or private insurance plans. They spend hours connecting the dots and working out the best health care for themselves and their families. If they are fortunate to have good providers and effective follow-through, they receive high-quality health care.
Imagine a different system where, with the aid of the Internet, electronic medical records, cell phones, and personalized health care, the patient is in charge. People monitor their own weight, blood pressure, pulse, and sugar levels, and send test results via remote devices to health care providers. Patients store their medical records online and have access regardless of where they are in the United States or around the world. They get personalized feedback via e-mail and reminders when they gain weight, have an uptick on their cholesterol levels, don’t take their medicine, or have high blood pressure. Social networking sites provide discussion forums and the benefit of collective experience from other people suffering similar problems. Patients take responsibility for their routine health care and rely on physicians and hospitals for more serious medical conditions.
This system is not a futuristic vision, but is well within our grasp. It would cut costs by reducing professional responsibility for routine tasks and record-keeping, while also making it possible for patients to receive higher quality care and be more satisfied with the end-result. The technologies for this kind of system transformation currently are available through cell phones, remote monitoring devices, video conferencing, and the Internet.
In this paper, I outline a vision for a new health care system based on mobile Health (mHealth), remote monitors, electronic medical records, social networking sites, video conferencing, and Internet-based recordkeeping. It incorporates email reminders to take medicine, a NetFlix-style mechanism to rate experiences with doctors and hospitals, and websites that make ratings publicly available to employers and other patients. Today, there are nearly as many mobile phones (600 million) in existence that can browse the Internet and access email as there are personal computers (800 million).
In order to bring this system to fruition, though, several changes are needed to encourage customer-driven health care. There have to be shifts in public policy and private health care that get the incentives right for patients, physicians, insurers, and hospitals. If we make these changes, we can cut costs while also improving quality and public satisfaction with health care.
Among the specific changes that are required include:
- changes in public and private insurance coverage that reimburse health care providers for mHealth care, remote monitoring, electronic communications with physicians, e-prescribing, and downloading medical tests to cell phones and other mobile devices;
- rewarding physicians who provide positive health outcomes for their patients, as opposed to paying them for the quantity of tests they have ordered;
- greater patient encouragement for preventive health care, good diet, and regular exercise activities and creation of a Preventive Medicine Fund that covers gym memberships, exercise equipment, flu shots, diet advice, smoking cessation programs, and substance abuse treatment;
- development of a good health rewards program similar to good driver discounts that provides benefits to patients who lead healthy lifestyles.
Related Content
Digital Health and Participatory Medicine
Darrell M. West, The Kojo Nnamdi Show, August 12, 2009
Darrell M. West, Reuters, July 10, 2009
Private Lab Testing At A Significant Discount
MyMedLab, is introducing the public to the future of health care through private diagnostic lab work. This new solution brings the same comprehensive lab testing, once only available to doctors, directly to the public and at a cost that is as much as 80% less than what doctors and local hospital labs charge.
In addition to lower cost and direct access, consumers receive results that are completely confidential and never become part of their permanent medical records unless they provide them. This new approach is set to fundamentally change the way that wise consumers will educate themselves and their families about their health.
David Clymer, President/CEO, explains the MyMedLab concept: “Our mission is to remove the barriers keeping consumers from learning more about their health. The first and most obvious barrier was cost. Even routine testing for conditions like Diabetes and Heart Disease can cost consumers hundreds of dollars in lab fees. This is in addition to the cost of the office visit doctors require to order testing. MyMedLab allows consumers nationwide to order and purchase their testing as part of a group of thousands instead of a party of one. This negotiated group rate means the exact same tests costs 50%-80% less and eliminates the cost of the initial doctors office visit.”
Visit MyMedLab to begin saving today.
Get quotes for individual/family health insurance in Arizona here. Contact us today at 602-510-7507 to find out how an HSA can benefit you.
IQ Financial Group, llc. is a licensed insurance agency in the state of Arizona. We offer a complete selection of health insurance, term life insurance, disability insurance, long term care insurance and supplement plans to individuals, families, self-employed and small businesses throughout Arizona. We offer the best in Arizona Health Insurance.
© IQ Financial Group, llc.
Billionaire Doctor Puts His Money Where His Mind Is
Published: Monday, 5 Oct 2009 | 12:05 PM ET
By: Jane Wells
CNBC Correspondent
Patrick Soon-Shiong is a very smart guy who’s been told “no” all his life.
Ignoring that, he’s now worth billions. And he wants to turn healthcare on its head.
Oh really? I don’t think you can do that.
“That’s the most exciting time in life, when people tell me I can’t do that,” he says with a laugh. “I don’t know what it is about me, when you say, ‘You can’t do that,’ because then I say, ‘Well, that’s great, because then that’s exactly what I should do.’”
To achieve his goal, Dr. Soon-Shiong is spending $1 billion of a fortune he acquired building and selling drug firm APP Pharmaceuticals. With that money he is hiring the brightest minds in the world to create a smart grid for medical information. He describes it as a “Bell Labs of healthcare”, “a public utility”, and “a medical information superhighway.”
“The idea would be in my mind-and I know it sounds strange-is that the most important advances in medicine would be made not by new knowledge in molecular biology, because that’s exceeding what we can even use,” Dr. Soon-Shiong says. “It’ll be made by mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, figuring out a way to get all that information together.”
At heart, he wants to use the internet to create a way for all of your medical information to follow you portably, encrypted securely to give you control of access, which can then be combined through the right software with the most up to date medical information relevant to your situation. He points to the way the world responded to the H1N1 virus as a model of how transparency and communication can save lives. “We need to think of chronic disease, hypertension, cancer, like H1N1,” Dr. Soon-Shiong says. “In fact, there’s an epidemic of chronic disease.” Yet currently, if you go to the doctor, who then sends you to a specialist, who maybe sends you to the hospital, “that trail of the patient today is impossible to follow, even by the physicians.” He calls the myriad of proprietary systems of medical record-keeping “medical bridges to nowhere.” The system he wants to build would bring it all together, and you could access it on your iPhone. Oh yeah, he also wants the system to make costs transparent as well. So are the health insurance companies on board with his plan? “Not really.”
The other thing Dr. Soon-Shiong is pushing, which may be even more revolutionary, is to completely change the mindset about healthcare.
He says the industry is currently motivated by treating illness, not by maintaining health.
Doctors and drug companies only make money when you’re sick. There need to be incentives to keep people healthy. Certainly there are incentives for those paying insurance premiums, and some payers are proactively going down this road already. My company, GE [GE 16.26 0.43 (+2.72%) ] , is offering a new health plan starting next year which offers reduced premiums for employees who don’t smoke, as well as 100% coverage for wellness care, i.e., physicals and vaccines. Can we create enough incentives for drug companies and physicians to find profits in preventing illness?
Dr. Soon-Shiong and his wife, actress Michele Chan, recently donated $100 million to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica to help that facility become a major hub in his “Bell Labs”. He says his smart grid is already being used by several children’s hospitals, where specialists can immediately weigh in online about the best treatment for a sick child. Dr. Soon-Shiong remains chairman of Abraxis BioScience [ABII 38.18 0.94 (+2.52%) ] , which he founded, and he still plans to spin out subsidiary Abraxis Health at some point. Forbes has him as the third richest man in Los Angeles, at $4 billion (behind Eli Broad and David Geffen), but the Los Angeles Business Journal has him at #1 at $6 billion. I asked him which is right. “I have no idea,” he says with a laugh. “That’s not what I focus on.”
If you want to see how this scientist and surgeon sees a way out of what he calls a “mess”, listen here to a large portion of our interview. I keep trying to find weaknesses in Dr. Soon-Shiong’s plan, but he seems to have an answer for everything. Still, does he have enough money to make it happen? Can he convince the government-which he feels is a necessary partner to make the system work in terms of funding and regulations-sign on? Seems unlikely. But here’s a guy who ignored those who told him “no” when he became a doctor at the age of 23 in apartheid South Africa, where he had to work for half the wages of his white contemporaries. He was told “you can’t do that” when he went outside of the medical community, to places like JPL and NASA, to develop radical therapies-whether it was saving diabetics by transplanting pancreas cells encapsulated in seaweed to avoid rejection, or creating a less toxic treatment for breast cancer using nanoparticles, a technology he thinks can be used in treating melanoma and pancreatic cancer.
But change the entire way medical information is shared? Make costs transparent? Change the profit motive? Is he nuts? “I love doing a lot of things I’m told I can’t do,” he says. “I think that’s what drives me and keeps me awake every day.”
Get quotes for individual/family health insurance in Arizona here. Contact us today at 602-510-7507 to find out how an HSA can benefit you.
IQ Financial Group, llc. is a licensed insurance agency in the state of Arizona. We offer a complete selection of health insurance, term life insurance, disability insurance, long term care insurance and supplement plans to individuals, families, self-employed and small businesses throughout Arizona. We offer the best in Arizona Health Insurance.
© IQ Financial Group, llc.
Traditional PPO Plan Compared To HSA PPO Plan
The following comparison was done for a family of four who was currently covered by a traditional PPO plan with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona.
Blue Cross PPO plan
$2500 individual deductible
80/20% coinsurance
With this plan your family could have a maximum out of pocket of $17,000 not including any copays you incurred during the same year ($2500 deductible x 2/family members=$5000; 20% coinsurance with an individual maximum of $3000/member x 4 family members=$12000). Obviously this would be a worst case scenario if all of you maxed out the benefits in the same year.
United HealthOne/Golden Rule HSA 100 Plan
$5000 family deductible
100% coinsurance
With this plan your family could have a maximum out of pocket of $5,000 total because all of your expenses during the year count towards meeting your family deductible ($5000 family deductible=$5000; 100% coinsurance after that means your maximum out of pocket for the year cannot exceed the $5000 family deductible). With this plan the deductible can be met by one member of the family or by any combination of family members with claims totaling $5000.
As you can see from an out of pocket stand point there is no comparison between a traditional PPO plan with copays and an HSA plan. The next thing to compare would be the premium. Current plan with Blue Cross the premium is $850/month. The above HSA plan premium for your family would be $433/month saving you $417/month ($5004/year) of which you could contribute all or a part of to a health savings account to use for your out of pocket expenses.
In this example if you deposited all of the premium savings to a HSA you would have enough in the first year to cover your total out of pocket exposure on the HSA 100 plan.
In summary by making this change you would be reducing the out of pocket exposure by several thousand dollars per year ($12,000) and using the same dollars you are currently spending on premiums to not only pay premiums but also pay your out of pocket expenses for several years to come.
Get quotes for individual/family health insurance in Arizona here. Contact us today at 602-510-7507 to find out how an HSA can benefit you.
IQ Financial Group, llc. is a licensed insurance agency in the state of Arizona. We offer a complete selection of health insurance, term life insurance, disability insurance, long term care insurance and supplement plans to individuals, families, self-employed and small businesses throughout Arizona. We offer the best in Arizona Health Insurance.
© IQ Financial Group, llc.
Kneale: Save ObamaCare – By Killing It
Published: Monday, 21 Sep 2009 | 12:41 PM ET
President Obama’s health-care revolution is dying before it hits the House floor. Now killing Obamacare is key to saving any semblance of health-care reform.
Instead of whipping this dead horse, the Obama Posse should wage a broad retreat and return with a spare, stripped-down, less-is-more plan.
Especially worrisome for the rookie in the White House, this ailing health plan has ignited a far broader and higher-stakes fight over how much government we really want, and what kind.
Do you really want the feds forcing you to buy insurance and taxing your family almost $4,000 a year if you refuse or decide you can’t afford it?
That’s what happens when health coverage–a personal responsibility of each of us–is transformed into an obligation of government, which now supposedly must provide it for all of us.
We simply can’t afford it. Rather than aim at all 300 million of us, an ObamaLite overhaul should narrow the target to two groups:
First: The 15 million or so Americans who are the Truly Uninsured: they want coverage, can’t afford it and don’t qualify for government help. So let’s give them some help.
Second: the 12 million who buy individual freelance policies rather than get coverage on the job. They need easy online access to a newly formed marketplace with interstate competition among the nation’s 1,300 private insurers.
Wait a minute–we have 46 million uninsured, based on the latest U.S. Census data. Why help only that first one-third? Because, among all the uninsured, one-third are people who could afford insurance but elect to take the risk of going bare.
Which is their right–until Bam & Co. take it away as the Baucus bill would do.
Another one-third of the uninsured already qualify for government help a la Medicare (for the aged) or Medicaid (for the poor). They just haven’t signed up because they’re too proud, lazy or clueless–or they are illegal aliens.
This scandalizes Democrats, the notion that two-thirds of the uninsured are partially at fault for their own going-bare status.
The other night, two liberal Democratic congressmen, Anthony Weiner of New York and Robert Andrews of New Jersey, accused me of passing along bogus statistics on this score.
They called the figures “hearsay” and “made-up.” But it turns out the figures come from Congress’s own non-partisan Congressional Research Service. Take a look at how Rep. Andrews responded (in the video); suffice it to say he refused to apologize.
It would be one thing if Obamacare’s universal, mandatory coverage would actually lower health costs. But it won’t. Covering more people will simply result in higher costs for more drugs, more devices, more surgeries and more visits to the doctor and the hospital.
That’s why the less-is-more plan should hold sway.
After narrowing Obamacare at the start to just the Truly Uninsured–the 15 million lower-income folks who want coverage but don’t qualify for government help-we also should make them pay some portion from their own wallets.
For them, Obamacare could cover, free of charge, catastrophic care and chronic care (for five often preventable diseases that pose over half of all costs: cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and pulmonary disease).
That “doughnut” would leave recipients to cover the hole in the middle: regular doctor visits for routine ailments and maintenance.
One big cost problem we already have is a function of too much insurance.
Some 50% of all healthcare costs already are paid by government. Employer health plans cover the other biggest chunk. And only a sliver of the total cost is paid directly out of our own pockets.
If that personal portion went up, only then would we behave as tougher, smarter shoppers and worry more about keeping our own expenses down.
© 2009 CNBC.com
Get quotes for individual/family health insurance in Arizona here. Contact us today at 602-510-7507 to find out how an HSA can benefit you.
IQ Financial Group, llc. is a licensed insurance agency in the state of Arizona. We offer a complete selection of health insurance, term life insurance, disability insurance, long term care insurance and supplement plans to individuals, families, self-employed and small businesses throughout Arizona. We offer the best in Arizona Health Insurance.
© IQ Financial Group, llc.