Health Care Concerns

The main theme discussed in this post on The Healthcare Blog seems to be that consumers are more concerned about the cost of healthcare than the illness itself. Most Americans are often confused when given many choices of insurance providers to shop for. Consumers aren’t used to shopping for insurance, and so it can be quite troublesome.

A survey conducted by McKinsey also found that there are also differences in health concerns varying by age. Younger people aged 18-34 are far more concerned with dental and accidents, whereas older people are more worried about LTC and major medical events. There is still a long way to go in the health care system when fighting costs is a major concern over fighting diseases.

What’s the Real Cost of Healthcare?

Trisha Torrey brings up a good point in her latest post on the Patient Empowerment Blog, the true cost of healthcare remains a mystery still to many patients.

First is the copay, then the insurance takes the rest of the doctors charges if the patient is insured. If there is a balance after the insurance has paid their stated amount, the patient is responsible for remainder of the payment. Costs are sometimes negotiated between insurance companies and doctors, but for those who don’t have insurance, negotiations are made between the patient and the doctor. So here’s a solution that can possibly help patients make wiser decisions when it comes to costs.

Change Healthcare is an online service that finds average costs of doctor visits, services, and what insurance companies typically negotiate with doctors. You can upload information about your own costs to the website. By sharing information, it is possible to help people in your area discover the true costs of healthcare.

Destination Medical Care: The way of the future?

In a recent edition of the McKinsey Quarterly, they discuss the relatively growing phenomenon of destination surgery. The MKQ defined destination surgery as anyone who travels abroad in order to receive healthcare, which does not include emergency cases treated in foreign countries or residents living in foreign countries and receiving medical care there. Currently, the numbers are small, but there is a potential for this industry to grow for a variety of reasons.

Health services, the underinsured, and those luring in patients from other countries, and foreign health services providers are just some of the people that stand to be affected by this new, growing trend.

The majority of people going to other countries for medical services so do for better services. Forty percent have surgery in another country in order to be treated by the advanced technologies. This category mostly includes people from Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Canada traveling to the United States for specialists. In the second largest group, at 32%, those living in the developing world travel to other countries for better quality health care. The United States is 99% of patients in the fourth group. Nine percent of patients leave their own country for surgery in order to find lower costs for necessary procedures. For the most part, people leaving their home country for medical services in another are equally spread through out the developed and developing world.

With one of the best medical staffs in the world, it’s easy to see why the USA attracts patients from around the world for specialty procedures. But, with the expense of health care, should medical companies be afraid of loosing simple procedures to other doctors in other countries?

‘I Do’….For Insurance

While financial support has been an important criteria for many who marry, a study, from Kaiser Family Foundation, recently came out about the growing influence that healthcare has on the decision to marry. An astounding 7% of Americans within the past year have either married or know someone who has married for healthcare coverage. This post on the Wall Street Journal provides more detail, including highlighting some issues about how respondents perceived the survey question, resulting in the percentage of 4.5 million Americans who marry with cost of healthcare in mind. Even though the overall percentage is small, it is still a significant part of the population. Here is more information from the full story at the Houston Chronicle.