NASE health insurance

[Mick Haensler]

Great thread, thanks for all the responses. It’s interesting, I’ve posted about other insurance plans we’ve looked at in other forums with about the same response. It seems it really doesn’t matter who you go with, the consensus is “ALL INSURANCE PLANS EITHER SUCK OR COST A FORTUNE”.

I like the idea of the medical savings plan. The policy we chose with NASE has something similar built in that rolls over. We are also doing one ourselves through a money market. The main problem with going outside of a group plan like NASE or maybe a trade association is very limited catastrophic coverage. I couldn’t find any individual program that covered more than $50,000 for cancer or other catastrophic illness. And at the end of the day, we were able to put together a pretty high end plan for around $550 a month, which is less than what I was paying out of pocket at my old job.

Also keep in mind there are some new tax laws this year regarding medical deductions that make those large premiums a little more palatable.

Mick Haensler
Higher Ground Media

[Christopher Wright]

The system is completely broken.
I for one think every American should have a right to quality health care. This is supposed to be the most advanced country in the world. If even a fraction of our taxes went into a “health fund” and most of it wasn’t totally flushed away by bad decisions and bad governing like it is today, I feel a lot more people would be a little less reticent to see their hard earned dollars being torched in front of their eyes every April 15th. At least they would be guaranteed good health care.
There are many doctors who are VERY tired of dealing with all the paperwork, middlemen, and slow reimbursement due to all these HMOs, and insurance companies always trying to duck out of covering anyone truly needing the services they paid the companies to cover. And even if they do cover a procedure, they will then either cancel your coverage for being a “high risk,” or raise your rates through the roof so you can’t afford to keep with thme anyway.

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[Bob Cole]

[Christopher Wright] “There are many doctors who are VERY tired of dealing with all the paperwork, middlemen, and slow reimbursement due to all these HMOs,”

You got that right.

A tale of three doctors I know personally:

One wonderful young doc I knew from his childhood, a truly great person, recently had to devote a huge part of the budget of his medical practice to hiring an aggressive insurance wrangler, because his previous person almost killed the practice, by failing to harangue, harass, and pursue the insurance companies.

Another doctor I know went from a full-time independent practitioner to a part-time hospital doctor, when she realized that each new patient actually cost her money. I don’t understand that, but I have no reason to doubt her honesty. At any rate she makes more money for two days a week than she used to make full++ time.

My own doctor abandoned his practice and went to one of these “boutique medicine” deals — you pay $1500/year for the privilege of being his patient. He’s now my ex-doctor.

I would like to see the Congress stripped of all its medical insurance and special medical access until it straightens out the entire system.

Hurrumph.

bob

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[Tim Kolb]

The system is definitely broken…

However, I think the population of the US shares responsibility (there are many Cow users who aren’t from the US of course and don’t care, or would counter that their system, which some residents of the US may pine for, is differently, but perhaps equally broken).

The population of the US, somewhat uniformly, points to how the finances of the government are severely mismanaged, constantly elects or re-elects politicians who promise to lower taxes, and then demand that the government fix the system…which would require more government revenue and bring more service delivery under the management of the government…

The governments that distribute healthcare uniformly to entire populations collect the funds necessary to do that, and the citizens who make more money pay the healthcare bills for those who don’t make enough money to pay enough taxes to cover their share. It’s interesting to me, just in anecdotal encounters with people that I’ve known in my life that most citizens of the USA seem to be very altruistic until it means drawing money from their pockets.

It’s amazing how many people I’ve known that have been borderline communists in their political leanings in their “salad days” and as soon as their professional lives take off, they go into “horde my own wealth” mode and start voting republican and wearing 300 dollar shoes…

At the end of the day, it’s every man/woman for him/herself or it’s not…even our current administration whether you agree with them or not, can’t have as detrimental effect on our situation as we can over the long term…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

CPO, Digieffects

[Tawnia King]

Hi Mike!

I too just signed up with NASE and then was informed by a friend who used to work for them that she had to quit as she was bombarded with calls from clients who couldn’t get their claims paid. An Internet search turned up the same info. I’m curious to know how your experience has been so far?

Thank you!
Tawnia