(AP) It’s hard not to miss an increase in health insurance rates. It’s a fact that doesn’t make too many people happy about it either, most likely due to not understanding why they’re skyrocketing.
Facts are facts. Health insurance rates are going up because of us. People are the authors of their own misfortune. Very simply people don’t look after themselves and by doing that; send the price of health care rates sky high.
People drink to excess, smoke, the population is aging (can’t do anything about that) and no ones seems to want to work out and stay in shape. The obesity rate across the nation is abominable. The health care costs of treating alcoholics, smokers and obese patients are phenomenal.
It’s not just that people don’t take care of themselves either. The other factors that drive up the cost of health insurance rates are medical inflation and medical errors. Surely medical errors must cost a bundle. Actually, they’re declining – a good thing by any standards.
The biggest area of problems is medical inflation. Just try to find out what a surgery will cost. Let’s say an appendectomy was required. No hospital or doctor’s office will give a figure because they have no idea what they will bill for until they bill.
Surgery has almost become an a la carte menu where the doctor (and hospital) picks and chooses what items to bill out to a patient. From the cost of dispensing pills to the cost of the pill itself and from the cost of the extra pillow to the extra dressing required for an incision. Each item is billable. No wonder bills are so high and no one can guess what it costs.
It’s interesting that doctor’s offices are able to tell the biggest insurance companies paying the freight how much it costs to stay in hospital per day and what a certain surgery costs. The doctor gets paid a rate by the insurance company and then bills a patient extra for other things. Nasty, but it works.
Lower health care rates are only doable if people start taking care of themselves. Don’t smoke, don’t drink to excess and get moving and work out. The healthier people are, the less expensive health care costs tend to be.
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