The future of healthcare and insurance is still uncertain. Nitin Chhoda imparts how major changes are needed to be made in order to help policy holders maximize the use of their insurance policies.
For a long time, the healthcare and insurance industry has been entirely unregulated.
Insurance companies have been allowed to drop paying customers who suddenly become ill or injured, based on technicalities.
People who are diagnosed with cancer are often suddenly reviewed by their healthcare and insurance providers and if anything is outside the policy, even if it is unrelated to the diagnosis of cancer and has an effective physical therapy documentation, the insurance company will drop the patient, leaving them with the responsibility of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for treatment.
Medical Care Is Unaffordable
Most people in the United States cannot afford the high cost healthcare and insurance of medical care. The option for most patients in this situation is very bleak.
On the one hand they can forego treatment and die from the disease, but nobody expects a patient to make that choice. On the other hand, if they go forward with treatment they will be committing to financial debt that will most likely cause them to declare medical bankruptcy.
Not only does diagnosis with a serious disease like cancer put you in a bad financial position, it can also cause you to miss work and even lose your job. Treatment is often very uncomfortable and has side effects that make patients unable to do their work.
Just because someone is diagnosed with cancer, they should be condemned to medical debt, job loss, and potential financial ruin. Cancer is bad enough on its own.
Even if a healthcare and insurance company does not drop a patient, the policy may only cover up to a certain amount. Most insurance plans have a cap, and most caps are too low to actually cover the costs of treatment for a disease like cancer.
How Will This Situation Improve?
There are many potential improvements that can be made to the current system. In the government’s role to protect the people, laws are being introduced that restrict the way healthcare and insurance companies can drop patients without cause.
There are also provisions which restrict insurance companies from putting unfair caps on their insurance pay-outs for healthcare and insurance plans. We have seen that without legal protections for consumers, healthcare and insurance companies will go to great lengths to save money, at the cost of their policy holders.
The Reality of Healthcare and Insurance
Even if someone pays their healthcare and insurance premiums for ten years, a health insurance company will not hesitate to find a loophole when the times comes to actually pay for some healthcare of their policy holder.
Some healthcare and insurance providers have simply changed the way they bill to adjust for people who need healthcare but don’t have insurance.
Or they do not assume they will collect any money from patients and increase prices so that the insurance company’s share of each bill is higher than it would have been otherwise.
These are desperate and unethical, if not completely illegal, ways to deal with the current situation. But the reality is that major changes will have to take place before healthcare and insurance become affordable for the average American.
