What has Obamacare Done To/For You Lately?

I have to come up with $635 this year to fund the 21% premium increase Humana is subjecting me to for the privilege of a $10,400 deductible and no drug plan.  I do receive well care and the benefit of Humana negotiated rates for my family’s doctor visits and lab work.  I still save a ton of $ over a traditional health insurance plan and still receive the tax and savings benefit of my Health Savings Account but no thanks to Humana for that.

If anything, the overall health of my family has improved over the past 3 years since I switched to a high deductible health plan so the premium increase is neither the result of higher utilization of the benefits nor a general decline in health.  And it certainly is not the result of a stratospheric increase in the cost of the care we have received.

Our insurance costs are increasing primarily due to uncertainty created by the chaos of Obama Care.  Insurance companies are in business to make $ for their shareholders and as the government creates a burden for them, they simply pass it right on to their customers.  In this case, that would be me.

Pretend for a moment you were in business for yourself making widgets.  You are a pretty good business person and for every widget you manufacture, you make 20% profit.  You compete in the market with other widget makers and through competition, your prices are held at a reasonable level.  One day the government decides that because your widgets serve the greater good of society, everyone should be able to buy them.  As a business person, this sounds pretty good right?  Because the size of your market just increased exponentially.  But here’s the rub, not everyone can afford your widgets and in some cases they don’t even want them.  Normally, if you had control over your business, you would simply refuse to sell widgets to those who could not pay, but the government has said you must sell widgets to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay.  Well, you are not in business to lose money so, maybe you do some things to enable you to produce your widgets for less money which is a good thing, but you were pretty efficient to begin with.  If you still want to make 20% profit, what do you do now??  You increase the price of widgets to those who can afford them to maintain your profit and offset the losses from sales to widgets to those who can not pay for them to begin with.

In a nutshell, you are Humana, and I just got a 21% premium increase.  Now I have to come up with $635 to cover basically the same benefits I already have.  Suffice it to say, my privates are frosted over this latest insult, but it could be worse.  What if I had a traditional insurance plan and was paying, say $1,000 per month for my insurance and was hit with a 21% increase?  Annualized, I would have to come up with an additional $2,500 just to cover the premium increase.   That’s a pretty big nut in my book.

So looking at your own situation, how big is your nut and what has Obama Care done for you lately?  Is it the panacea we were led to believe it would be?  In the land of purple frogs and leprechauns, perhaps it is.

What Is Consumer Driven Health Care?

The title of this article makes 99.9% of the citizens of our country’s eyes glaze and move to the back of their heads.  But, if you are reading this, chances are you might have a bit of interest in the topic.  You are also near brilliant.

Last Saturday, a local hospital sponsored a free skin cancer screening.  Three years ago, I would have never known about it, and if for some coincidental reason, I had, I wouldn’t have given a crap.

 But, when you have a high deductible health plan with a health savings account and then hear the words “free” combined with “health” your ears are likely to perk up like Mr. Spock’s.  Vulcan “A” man!  

 That was me last Saturday.  I went down there and just had a Vulcan great time having my moles inspected by the mole inspector general.  Actually, it was a very nice and competent PA from one of the local dermatology offices who somehow got enticed (maybe it was a Vulcan mind meld) along with about a half a dozen other qualified PAs as  to check out the moles and other skin irregularities of hundreds of total strangers. 

Not only did they check everyone out, but they gave away a ton of free sun screen samples; and I’m not talking the no-named stuff you get at the dollar store, this was the good stuff.  They were also giving away Braves baseball caps to help protect all those pretty faces.  Now who gets that kind of treatment at the normal doctor?  The last free thing my Doctor gave me was a stool sample kit.  It kind of stunk if you asked me.  

Because I have a very high deductible, the opportunity to take care of my health for the low low cost of nothing, is very appealing.  And that in short is a little bit about what consumer driven health care is all about.

It’s about becoming a smarter health care shopper.  It’s about tuning into one’s own body.  It’s about taking control of one’s well care and health care.   It’s about saving money smartly.  Consumer driven health, in my book, is a pretty Vulcan good idea.

The Power Of Pink and Juicy…

If you read this blog with any regularity, first, God Bless You.  While I’d like to think it is because you are sophisticated, self-aware and desire to be highly informed in issues related to health, health care and HSAs, more than likely it is due to a very specific need, that landed you here, and our appeal to quirky nature and sometimes lack of political correctness that caused you to come back. 

I was in mid-town Manhattan a few weeks ago and saw a woman in a bright yellow sweat suit walking up the sidewalk.  Plastered across her two bouncing butt cheeks was the word “Pink.”  The First Amendment allows for freedom of speech, so while I respect the woman’s right to draw attention to her caboose, I’m not sure why she was doing it.  I felt like I was looking directly into the sun itself.  My retinas burning, I had to squint in pain and turn away.  I wonder if that was her intent?

Then I saw another woman wearing a different sweat suit.  Hers had the word “Juicy” plastered across it back.  With all due respect, this woman was not “juicy.”  As a guy, when I think of the word “juicy,” generally it is the context of a nice piece of meat smoking on the grill and a cold beer in my hand.  Like the “Pink” lady; this woman was neither “juicy” nor was she a T-bone.  In fact she had a bad dye job, huge sparkly sunglasses, and fingernails that never stopped.  While her nails mayhave been good for back scratching, were she to read this article, she’d probably wouldn’t think twice about using them to scratch my eyeballs out. 

As I ruminate (imagine a cow chewing cud) about “Pink” and “Juicy” I can’t help but think; a sweat suit does not a healthy person make (the voice of Yoda in ringing in my head here).   Although putting on sweats, anticipates a little exercise, I’m pretty sure neither “Pink” nor “Juicy” had that on their agenda for that day.  I also doubt either one of them has ever heard of a Health Savings Account.  My point of all this is that good health requires action.  The action starts with some self-awareness, a little planning, and behavioral changes.

If your modus operandi is to draw attention to big cabooses and bad dye jobs, may the power of “pink” and “juicy” be with you. But (pun recognized) if you are looking to take control of your health in a more productive way, then read a few more posts.  Who knows, you might actually decide it’s ok to work up a little sweat in that suit you’re wearing.

Save 50% on Your Food Bill and Lose Weight in the Process. Where was I when Elvis Needed Me?

I am not a doctor.  I don’t play one on TV.  I’m just a normal, if not cheap, American citizen trying to be healthy, feel healthy and stay healthy.  

A few years back I cracked the scales at my doctor’s office at a prodigious two hundred and eight pounds.  For the past couple of years my weight has hovered between 173 and 178 pounds. 

Part of my motivation to shed the tire was that I had lived a Dilbertian existence in corporate America for 18 years.  The most exercise I got at work was walking too and from the parking lot to my office.  About the only running I did was running my big fat mouth.  I was tired of feeling tired.  One day in the fall before I stepped outside of corporate America, I was out raking leaves and I had to sit down because I thought I was going to drop dead.

Before I left my job, I bellied up to my employer’s smorgasbord health plan buffet and had a full blown physical.  The leaf raking thing scared the crap out of me and I wanted to be sure if I started exercising for real, I wouldn’t drop dead for real.  My doctor confirmed I was fat and lazy but the rest of me was in fine shape if not a little round.  Prior to any dramatic changes in your lifestyle, I highly recommend a visit to the doc, to make sure you are well enough to really take control of your health.

You can pay huge money for all kinds of diet advice, but let me tell you, advice won’t lose you an ounce of blubber.   But you will lose weight if you can wrap your brain around cutting your caloric intake in half. 

You don’t need to go out and buy and special calorie counting cards or gizmos.  You don’t need to go out and buy special foods (unless you want to).  You don’t need to read the calories on the side of every box and can at the supermarket.

What you do need to do is to cut every meal in half.  Fix half as much.  If you are dining out buy one meal and split it with a friend or significant other.  Not only will you cut your calories in half, but you will save 50% on your food bill.

That’s your starting point.  You won’t starve.  You won’t be forced to eat crappy stuff you don’t like.  You won’t have to keep a log.  You will know in your head, each time you sit down to eat if you are following the plan or not.   The other important advice to go along with this is drink lots of water.  Substitute it for anything with sugar in it when you can and you will cut down your calories even more.

Once you get into the habit of eating less, then you can begin to focus on eating better.  Eat a little fruit, a few vegetables.  They won’t kill, you and they beat the snot out of that stuff the dude on Man vs. Wild eats on the Discovery Channel.

Lastly if you want to really start feeling better, get some exercise.  Make that a habit too.

In summary Elvis, here were/are the benefits for me:

• I feel better
• I lost weight
• I look trimmer if not better (my face, sadly, is one only a mother could love, so losing weight did nothing for me in that department)
• I cut my food bill significantly
• I don’t crap as much which means I have more time to do other things (like exercise)
• I sleep better
• When I went to get life insurance, all of my vitals tests put me in a health range that lowered my insurance premium
• I became far more aware of what goes in my body and over time made some changes in what I ate in addition to how much I ate.
• I changed some bad habits into good ones

 If you read all of this, good for you.  Now go take the first step baby.

It’s Healthcare Crunch Time. Keep Your Eye On The Hairball

My sister-in-law, Miss Eugenia, up and got married the day after Christmas.  She’d been fixin’ to do this for over 6 months.  Why she felt compelled to try and trump Santa Claus and Jesus Christ was a little bit beyond me, but hey, I suppose when you’re in love, you’re in love.  And I am sure the 5^th time will be the charm. 

Anyway, Eugenia, her momma and her best friend Inelle have been working on this thing for months.  Tying rice all up, ordering cakes, cleaning the burger wrappers and soda cans out of the truck,  picking out dresses, frettin’ over the weather, the church, the guests, and pretty much everything else.  You’d think after having done this four times already, they’d ‘bout have this whole wedding thing figured out.

On Saturday morning, Eugenia and her Momma take all the “bridesmaids” out to have their hair “done.”  Being as how this is Eugenia’s 5^th wedding, she’s ‘bout brides maided out all her friends, so now she is using her daughter, our daughter, the two daughters of her new husband, her best friend’s daughter, the daughters of her sisters, brothers, and the new man’s sisters.  Nine bridesmaids ages 2 years old to 16.  The oldest one being my daughter.

For all you men out there and women not from the South, having your hair “done” down here is not like getting a hair cut, or a permanent or anything like that.  Having one’s hair “done” is kind of like frosting a wedding cake, or decorating the Christmas tree on top of Macys.  It involves largeness.  You might say, having your hair “done”, really involves having it overdone.  Anyway, when my daughter gets home Saturday morning from getting her hair done over at Queen Frostine’s Hairport   where apparently they will “do” young girls’ wedding hair for $15 a piece, she is looking like a Texas beauty queen.  We are talking high hair.  Big huge hair.  Don King nirvana.  

So where am I going with all this, and what the heck does it have to do with health care?  Not a damn thing.  The point of it is this is a very busy time of year and while you were running around like a chicken with its head cut off, then eating a big ‘ol holiday Who Feast and are now in a post holiday food coma, the U.S. Senate passed a nasty piece of health legislation that is going to reach into your pocket and a hairball of big hair proportions.  While the nation is coming out of its holiday food coma and hangover the Senate and House will be trying to cram their two pieces of legislation together in a process called reconciliation.  I would liken this to trying to put Kahlid Sheikh Muhammed in a dress.  Ugly to begin with, a nasty fight in between, and even uglier when completed.  Boys and girls, if this thing gets thing is done we are not going to be able to put a bag over its head and pretend it’s something it’s not.  We need to work together to send the whole ugly duck back to the drawing board.

Don’t Rush Out To Spend Your Health Savings Account (HSA) Bucks

It’s getting near the end of the year and you, especially if you are fairly new to HSAs, may be thinking you need to rush out and spend whatever you have saved in your Health Savings Account or risk losing it at the end of the year.  You may be thinking about buying a new pair of glasses, some saline solution or a big bag of Rolaids to deal with stomach ache you are going to get when your employer tells you how much your insurance rates are going to rise this year.  Or maybe you are about to change jobs and think you need to spend all your HSA bucks before punching out of your current job.

 DON’T DO IT!  You are not going to lose the money in your HSA.  Any contribution made into it by you, your employer from your My HSA Rewards, account or from your Fairy Godmother is yours.  There is no need to go out and blow it for any of the reasons stated above or for any reason.  It’s in the law that the money retained in a health savings account is yours and even if you do not have a qualifying high deductible health plan anymore, the money sitting in the account is yours…forever.   And here’s another little bonus some folk forget, and that is to save your receipts for all of your qualified medical expenses.  That way, if you can afford not to dip into it now but let it sit and grow tax free, you can go back and pay yourself back years down the road using the old receipts as substantiation.  It makes smart tax sense.

Anyway, don’t get yourself worked up into a bunch over those $s in your HSA.  They can sit there forever if you like saving for a rainy day, so there is no need to have that extra stress in your life here at the end of the year about how you are going to blow your HSA dollars to keep from losing them.

Dr. James G. Knight, Are We Really About To Be Stuck With Higher Premiums?

I was reading the AIS Health Daily Bulletin this morning and gnashing my teeth a bit.  In part because I would have rather been doing anything but reading any bulletin and in part because of what it was saying.

The good news is that CDHPs are projected to continue growing, especially those tied to HSAs (we like that).  What kind of chafed my goodies was a comment  by James G. Knight, M.D., CEO of Consumer Directed Health Care, Inc., that made me wonder if my HDHPmight be turning into an HPHDHP (that would be my own new acronym that stands for high premium high deductible health plan).  Specifically he said,

” …..I would expect little additional market penetration unless health plans begin to see the light and price these products in ways that reflect the reduced insured payout inherent to this kind of coverage. In that case, there could be a big increase. Unfortunately, I have only heard of large increases in HSA premiums, not reductions.

If insurance companies wonder why so many people in the U.S. want the government to regulate them out of business, actions like these (and others) are what have congress pissing napalm on the fire of the health care debate.

You gotta wonder; especially if you are living a healthy life, being responsible about your insurance, saving money to pay for yours and your family’s health care, and paying your taxes what the insurance companies are thinking.

Open enrollment is just around the corner.   I don’t think the, the current debate will result in the total destruction of Consumer Driven Health, but if closed and irrational minds prevail, it could be neutered to some degree (is partial neutering possible I wonder?).   On the other hand, if Consumer Driven Health Plans are given the opportunity to work harder for Americans their ultimate benefit would be healthier  and more savvy citizenry, greater competition, and ultimately lower costs.

Now what’s not to like about that?  It’s about as American baseball and a backyard barbeque.

Playing God With Health Care.

I went to church yesterday.  It was my first visit in awhile, which I suppose is a bit of a confessional.  A bit.

Anyway, besides being blown away by the minister, a 24-year old kid with the composure of Brett Favre and the delivery of seasoned pro, I couldn’t help but ponder the message, which in this case was entitled “American Dream.”  I’m not going to recite the sermon here but I was struck by the parallels to the debate swirling around health care in our country today.

Generally when folks pray (present company included) those prayers tend to be about what God can do for us.  How he can fulfill our dreams.  How we can bargain with him (or her if that’s your druthers) to satisfy our needs.  The preacher in the end, using Joshua, and the Jericho thing, reminded us in the congregation; that serving the Lord, in the end involves submission.  It’s not about bartering with God but about turning it over to him, listening, and then following.

Are there any bells going off in your head as you read this and think about the health care debate?  Man, they sure did for me.  I get the strong sense, there are many in Congress who would like us to submit.  To turn our health care needs over to the Government, listen to what it has to say, then follow.

Now don’t get me wrong; while I think this is a terrific strategy with God, I’m inclined to run like a flaming banshee in the opposite direction when it comes to the Government.   There are those in government who just don’t think we are smart enough to take responsibility for our own health care.  The would believe that tools like high deductible health plans (HDHPs) and health savings accounts (HSAs) in our hands is like giving a hand grenade to chimpanzee.

Now that’s something to pray about.

HSA Rules 2010

It continues to boggle my mind that our most read blog on this site is related to rules.  Pretty much any article related to rules is going to induce the kind of crust in ones eyes that one gets from a good case of pink eye.  We are talking Rip Van Winkle kind of sleep for sure.

That said, “HSA Rules” not only on this site but across the internet at this very moment, on this very day, it is one of the leading keyword searches related to Health Savings Accounts.  It’s possible, if you are reading this, I’m guessing you are being pulled toward the HSA revolution or maybe you’ve already been sucked in.  In the next couple of months, if you are fortunate enough to have employer subsidized health insurance, you may be pondering seriously high deductible health plans during your enrollment period.  If you are self insuring you could be looking at them now.

And since we are all about answering the question “what is an HSA”, it seems only fitting that if you blasted through cyberspace and somehow landed on this page reading this article, and this sentence specifically; it seems only fair that we get you to a place that can get your question answered.  If you will click right here you will be shot through cyberspace just a little bit further onto, what I believe is the best site to learn about and understand HSAs.  It is called HSAeducator.com, and unlike some other sites it is not trying to sell you something or confuse you.   You should be able to get most, if not all of your questions answered there.

It’s all pretty much laid out on one page to keep from inducing sleep, but as you read it, should you want to learn more about high deductible health plans or anything else HSA related just click through the next page and read ‘til you feel like an HSA expert.

Oh, and one more thing, there is a pretty good starter page of frequently asked questions about HSAs if you have a question.  If you can’t find the answer, just post your question on the HSAeducator forum (you will have to register) and one of the many HSA experts will try to answer it for you.

But wait…could there possibly be more???  If you have already set up your HSA and are looking for a great and free way to put more money into it, you should definitely check out www.myHSArewards.com  where you can save money into your HSA when you make everyday purchases.  It is a new program and represents a total no brainer way to save more $s for your health care.

AKA Dr. Feelgood

It seems to me, from the barrage of sound bites I hear of President Obama, that an underlying thread in the health care debate is this notion that everything he is trying to do is about making people feel good.

Need a knee replacement?  Take a pill.  Feel gooooood.

Got no insurance?  Jump on the new plan (whatever that is).  Feel good.

Got no money?  No problem.  Feeeeeeeel good.

Hear me speak.  Doesn’t it sound like gravy?  Feel gooooooood.

Worried about dying?  See a counselor.  Feel good.  Well, maybe not too good.

It seems like a lot of Obama’s messages have to do with him wanting us to feel good about what he is doing.

Maybe, besides donning him with the title of “Dr. Feelgood,” one of the best solutions for change in the way we think about our health is to take a play from the real Godfather’s playbook.  Get up offa that couch, and dance til you feel better.

In the meantime Dr. Feel good has been turned loose and let go.