Health Insurance
Ensure that you stay healthy
Health insurance is always a topic of contention. It is expensive but if you have a family, have a persistent medical condition, or are on prescription medication, you can't afford not to have it. The alternative which many countries have adopted is universal health care but this just means higher taxes to pay for it and puts the state in the position of making medical decisions.
In any case you never know if you will stay healthy in the years to come, so looking out for a heath insurance for you and your family is something that you should definitely do.
The History of Health Insurance
The original concept of a type of public health insurance was introduced by Chancellor Bismark in Germany in 1883 when he put two German health insurance laws in effect. Within the next thirty years, most of the other countries in Europe followed Germany's lead and adopted similar plans.
The United States, on the other hand, was not so quick to adopt similar legislation. The medical profession was not the lucrative market that it is today. Most medical care was rendered either at home or at public almshouses. Social reform movements swung back and forth so quickly that pro-insurance forces never had a good opportunity to get any plan firmly nailed down until the great depression of the 1920s.
At this point the bottom also dropped out of the medical field, and the doctors, who had been strongly anti-health insurance, were forced to change their stance. At this time the medical community itself created Blue Shield and Blue Cross. They did this mainly as a political move since the federal government was beginning to consider adopting a national health insurance plan.
Ever since then there has been an almost continuous debate over the current health insurance model. It is always a political campaign issue, not so much because the politicians are sincere about effecting changes but because like abortion, it is a social issue that allows them to connect with the voting publics' emotional side.
In one sense there is as aspect of socialized medicine built into the system. Poor citizens in many cases have free clinics provided for them on a local level. In addition, no one may be turned away from a hospital emergency room, notwithstanding their ability to pay for service.
Factors Affecting the Cost of Health Insurance
There is no doubt that the cost of health insurance continues to rise faster than wages. Many factors contribute to this escalation. One of the largest is the fact that technology that is incorporated into the health care and diagnostic tools and machines keeps improving and evolving at a rapid pace. As doctors and hospitals add the new tools to their arsenal the costs are folded into patient care expenses.
Malpractice law suits are also a contributing factor. Whether or not a doctor has ever been sued for a malpractice claim does not matter; just the threat of it mandates that he must carry malpractice insurance. These costs are also factored into patient care costs. Some relief for malpractice comes in the form of tort reform.
Individual health dictates how often illness occurs to a great extent. Genetic illnesses aside, health care recipients carry the responsibility for their general health. What affects this? Smoking tobacco products, obesity, high cholesterol due to consistently poor dietary choices, and lack of proper exercise. Ironically, those individuals who are proactive in managing a healthy lifestyle end up paying more than their fair share of insurance costs. This is because they pay the same insurance premiums (or taxes in a universal health care system) as unhealthy individuals.
Health Insurance Around the World
In the United States, health insurance falls into two broad categories – group health insurance and individual health insurance. With group insurance, the employer of the insured pays a portion of the premium as part of the employees' compensation package. The insurance benefits are generally more generous than with an individual insurance policy since the deal is negotiated from a point of strength in numbers.
The Canadian health insurance model is called Medicare and is a government run universal (or socialized) program based on the Canada Health Act.
Many countries in Europe, including the UK, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and others have adopted the social health insurance model. Since traveling between European countries is so common, many countries now honor the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) to provide relief for unexpected medical costs when out of one's home country.