Pre-Paid Health Plans
Prepaid health plans can help pay for basic health care costs
Debate rages on what can be done to fix the healthcare system in this country. With the almost 50 million people without access to affordable medical insurance, and rising healthcare costs across the nation, there obviously is no quick fix in sight. While legislators on the federal and state level talk about what can be done, in communities across the nation healthcare providers are doing something about it.
In Clinics like the one run by Doctor Victor Wood in West Virginia, practitioners are trying to help patient’s cope with the high cost of healthcare by offering something new – prepaid health care plans. The doctor saw a growing need for his patients to have a better way to pay for basic healthcare. Many of his patients do not have health insurance, others have purchased affordable health insurance, but with high deductibles. His idea of prepaid healthcare helps health insurance do what it was designed to do, protect families in the case of catastrophic illness. For a flat fee of around $120 a month for a family and $80 for an individual, those who enroll receive unlimited access to basic and urgent healthcare, including office visits, lab work, X-rays, and dispensing of generic drugs.
The idea of prepaid healthcare is not only helping the patients, but it is helping the doctors maintain a steady income for the practice, which had been saddled by bad debt and low reimbursements from health insurance companies. More and more consumers are purchasing low-cost health insurance policies with high deductibles. Some of the top health insurance companies have been reacting to this demand by introducing more options of the so-called Consumer Driven High Deductible Health Plans. These plans have been one recent measure that is helping more people gain access to affordable health insurance. However such plans do require a high deductible. The plans are coupled with Health Savings Accounts (HSA) from which policy holders can draw funds in pre-tax dollars to help pay for qualified medical expenses, until such deductibles are met. Prepaid health plans like the one devised by Dr. Wood, and springing up by other practitioners across the country, are another great adjunct to such consumer driven health insurance plans. Prepaid healthcare programs make basic healthcare that much more affordable, and people with the high deductible health insurance plans, can use funds from their HSA to pay for the monthly fee.
Dr. Wood’s clinic is one of hundreds such facilities being operated by doctors nationwide that have begun to offer the flat-rate, pay-in-advance healthcare plans. Though still in their infancy, supporters of the idea say that the concept offers a solution to two sides of the growing healthcare crisis. One, the growing lack of general practitioners and primary care providers, and two, the expanding number of Americans without health insurance at all or without access to affordable medical insurance that provides coverage for basic healthcare.
No Comments
No comments yet.