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2018 Medicare & Health Insurance
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The best insurance is being able to grow your own food. |
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What happened at the hospital? |
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I had a heart attack on June 30 after many months of getting weaker and weaker. After being told by all my doctors that I and my heart were very healthy I had a heart attack because the blood flow got reduced to almost zero in two of my smallest coronary arteries, Diagonal 1 and 2. Hard physical work caused terrible pain in my chest and made me extremely tired. Up until this point I was considered very healthy, albeit thirty pounds overweight.
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Now I have some steel in my heart and take a pile of pills every day, religiously. If it wasn’t for the good insurance we have through my wife’s work, my medications would cost $6,000 a year.
What could I have done to mitigate the struggle to regain my strength and stamina again? I could have exercised more so I had more muscle mass and was stronger. Even a little every day would help.
Meanwhile, millions of people are about to lose their health insurance. That is frightening.
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If you haven’t already, register on your insurer web site. You could call my office or company customer service when planning an expensive procedure to check to see if upcoming services are covered with an in-network provider, but your own web search will add other information including information about your treatment, additional resources and help, locations and even maps.
Almost all companies also have a smartphone app. |
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Tom Gibson Senior Market Services LLC 1700 NE EVERETT ST, CAMAS WA 98607
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AFFORDABLE CARE ACT UPDATE |
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Should I Worry?
Many states have very unregulated insurance industries. Many states refused to adapt the Medicaid expansion that was part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Those are the states where people are now paying the most, for the worst insurance. People that live in Washington already had most of the mandated 10 essential coverages enumerated in the ACA. Washington State has more regulation than many states but that regulation has kept prices lower and maintained a high quality of care. It’s unfortunate that so many states fought organizing health care for the benefit of the people. We spend over a trillion dollars a year more than we should, compared to all other industrialized free market countries, to have a crappy health care system that doesn’t even cover everybody.
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Association Health Plans
Association health plans are nothing new. Like any other state regulated organization, groups are allowed, by law, to create associations if the primary reason for doing so isn’t to get insurance. In fact, your association might have extremely high premiums because it is small and has very sick members. Unlike other forms of risk pools, they really don’t make much sense economically. The best thing imaginable would be to have just one big risk pool and one bureaucracy that needs to be fed. Little risk pools are high risk.
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Can I buy Insurance in Another State?
All health plans have restricted networks. Would you buy a cheap plan in Michigan and travel there every time you need to see a doctor? Insurance is regulated mostly by the states. Selling or buying across state lines would require changes to state laws and permission by each state’s insurance commissioner.
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Text block at your service. Replace this text with yours. |
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Votes: 0
Voting..
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