Pre-Paid Health PlansPrepaid 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. 3 CommentsLeave a comment |
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Can you prepay for personal health insurance for a future period, say like 5 years? I am fed up with all the different rules and regulations and always having to think two steps ahead. I would like to just make one big single payment for all my insurance premiums for a period of maybe the next 5 years. I would accept that the company could even make some modifications to my coverage. I would even go along with letting them have the possibility to drop my insurance in case of some ‘outrageous’ claims or whatever they would call it. I suspect they already have the opportunity to do so. I realize that my money could earn interest and so on, but I really would just like to avoid the hassle, maybe I could even negotiate lower premiums like this? Do you know of any personal health insurance that offer this?
Comment by Philip — June 12, 2009 @ 10:49 am
Thanks for the article. As a follow up. My patients average 42 yrs old and one third have atleast one chronic disease. My system allows them to get their disease treated and gives them a medical home. The cost is affordable to most patients and it also pays my bills. Once primary care is removed from the insurance product, the catastrophic insurance becomes affordable also. Vic Wood
Comment by Vic Wood — July 21, 2009 @ 7:37 am
This and “membership plans” are a growing trend with primary care doctors fed up with the insurance companies’ treatment of them and their patients. On these membership plans, patients pre-pay a few hundred dollars a year for their office visits. There is even a national network that has been started of doctors offering a version of this–they call it the “no insurance club.” The biggest obstacle to doctors attempting to help solve the problems of access to primary care is actually state governments which want to define all of these attempts as “insurance policies” and regulate them as such.
Comment by wayne — August 24, 2009 @ 4:41 am