Latest On Health Care Reform

Posted by IQ HSA on January 15, 2010 · Leave a Comment

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.

Filed under Health Care Reform · Tagged with affordable, Arizona, government healthcare, health insurance, health savings account, health-care, healthcare, HSA, legislation, Medicare, reform, Self employed

House And Senate Conferees Will Have To Reconcile Two Bills

Posted by IQ HSA on December 30, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Abortion: The House version includes stricter language designed to prohibit the use of federal funds for abortion coverage, except in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is in danger. That helped appease House conservatives, but abortion was even more of a make-or-break issue in the Senate, so that chamber’s slightly milder language could win out.
Taxes: The House and Senate bills would fund health reform in entirely different ways. The House bill would tax individuals making more than $500,000 a year and families making more than $1 million. The Senate bill would tax so-called “Cadillac” or high-cost health plans – an idea opposed by labor unions and many House Democrats. The Senate version would also impose annual fees on health insurers starting at $2 billion in 2011 and going up to $10 billion in 2017.
Public plan: The House bill includes a government-run plan that progressives fought hard to include. Instead of a government-run plan, the Senate version would instruct the federal Office of Personnel Management to contract with private insurers to offer at least two national health plans for individuals and small businesses. One of those plans would have to be nonprofit. Conventional wisdom says the final, combined bill will not include a public plan, but House leaders could seek other tweaks in exchange for dropping the idea. Possibilities include increasing federal subsidies to help low- and middle-income people afford coverage, creating a single, national insurance exchange instead of one in each state, or introducing those exchanges earlier – in 2013, a year earlier than the Senate bill stipulates.
Medicare Advantage:Each bill would cut funding for the Medicare Advantage program, but the amount differs substantially. The House bill includes cuts of $170 billion over ten years. The Senate bill would trim reimbursements by $118 billion over the same ten-year period. We didn’t mention the potential impact on Health Savings Accounts (HSA) because it is unclear what if anything will change with the final bill. As stated previously, two components of health care in this country that work are Medicare Advantage and Health Savings Accounts. Ironically these are two programs on the chopping block of both pieces of legislation. Very unfortunate how we have come to accept mediocrity in this Great Country.

For more, check out these side-by-side comparisons from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

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.

Filed under Featured Posts, Health Care Reform · Tagged with Arizona, Cheap Health Insurance For Students, employee benefits, government healthcare, health, health care cost, health insurance, health savings account, HSA, legislation, Medical Savings Account, Medicare, new york times, rate increase, reform, side by side comparison, single payor, value, Wall Street Journal

Health Care Reform Bills Impact HSA’s

Posted by IQ HSA on November 4, 2009 · Leave a Comment

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.

Filed under Featured Posts, Health Care Reform · Tagged with affordable, Arizona, catch up, Cheap Health Insurance For Students, contribution, employee benefits, government healthcare, health insurance, health savings account, health-care, healthcare, HSA, Individual Health Insurance, Insurance carrier, limits, low cost, Major medical, Medical Insurance, Medical Savings Account, prevention, reform, Self employed, value, wellness

Customer-Driven Medicine: How To Create A New Health Care System

Posted by IQ HSA on October 14, 2009 · Leave a Comment

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.

Read entire article

Wall Street Journal Side By Side Comparison Of Health Care Reform Proposals

Posted by IQ HSA on September 23, 2009 · Leave a Comment

In an effort to keep you informed on the health care debate we are providing a link to a side-by-side comparison recently published by the Wall Street Journal. The comparison illustrates the major health care proposals currently being debated in Congress and by President Barack Obama.

Access the comparison by clicking 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.

Filed under Health Care Reform · Tagged with affordable, Arizona, government healthcare, health care cost, health insurance, health savings account, health-care, HSA, IRS, Medicare, reform, single payor, value, Wall Street Journal

Kneale: Save ObamaCare – By Killing It

Posted by IQ HSA on September 22, 2009 · Leave a Comment

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.

Filed under Health Care Reform · Tagged with affordable, Arizona, cnbc, consumer, dennis kneale, employee benefits, government healthcare, health care cost, health insurance, health savings account, health-care, healthcare, HSA, Insurance carrier, low cost, Major medical, Medicare, reform, Self employed, value

Arizona Department Of Insurance

Posted by IQ HSA on September 22, 2009 · Leave a Comment

The mission of the Arizona Department of Insurance is to faithfully execute the state insurance laws in a manner that protects insurance consumers and encourages economic development. Click to be directed to AZDOI.

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.

Filed under Arizona Health Resources · Tagged with Aetna, affordable, AHCCCS, Arizona, Assurant, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Chandler, Cigna, claims, consumer, containment, department, Gilbert, Glendale, Golden Rule Insurance Company, health, health care cost, health insurance, health savings account, health-care, healthcare, Healthnet of Arizona, HSA, Humana, information, insurance, Insurance carrier, insurance premium, low cost, Major medical, Medical Savings Account, Medicare, Mesa, Peoria, Phoenix, rate increase, reform, Self employed, system, Tempe, Tucson, United Healthcare, value

WebMD Better Information. Better Health.

Posted by IQ HSA on September 18, 2009 · Leave a Comment

WebMD provides valuable health information, tools for managing your health, and support to those who seek information. Click here to begin accessing information.

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.

Filed under Manage Your Health - Consumer Tools · Tagged with affordable, Arizona, claims, consumer, government healthcare, health, health care cost, health insurance, health savings account, health-care, healthcare, HSA, information, insurance premium, low cost, Medicare, Phoenix, prevention, rate increase, reform, single payor, Tucson, value, Webmd, wellness