Joann Bally CSCS
Here are a couple of things you may not know. Medicare is not free. You pay into the fund when you’re working, and there is still some cost when you become eligible at age 65. Medicare Part A, hospitalization, is free for most people, but there may be a cost if you have not worked enough. Part B, medical services, is optional, but most people choose to take it. It costs about $96 a month, deducted from your Social Security check. Part D is drug coverage, and I won’t try to explain that. Even with A and B, there are still deductibles and co-pays, and many people buy private Medicare supplement insurance to cover some of what Medicare doesn’t. Because of the high cost of medical treatment, Medicare is still a good deal for most people, but it’s not just a gift from the government.
Emergency room care is not free. You will be sent a bill. It’s not wise to count on emergency rooms for non-emergency care. You will wait a long time and may have to pay more than you would at a clinic.
Here are some numbers. Estimates are that 14,000 people lose their health insurance every day (mostly associated with job loss). Of the people who file bankruptcy because of health costs, ¾ have insurance. Health insurance is a strange sort of contract. Your obligation is to pay a fixed premium, but the insurer doesn’t have to pay your claim, if they decide it is not justified by their standards. Average family health insurance costs about $12,000 a year. Some think it may double by 2020. It has doubled in the last 10 years. Salaries have not. There are somewhere between 41 and 49 million Americans with no health insurance. About 44,000 die every year because of lack of health care.
Most everyone agrees that the cost of health care is too high, and that prevention is an important way to bring it down. It’s important to have health care when you’re sick, but it’s better yet to not get sick in the first place. (Of course, anyone can get sick or injured, but there’s no question most people can improve their overall health.) Some conventional medicine is preventative. If you bring down your blood pressure and cholesterol, you may prevent heart disease. But screening tests are not prevention. Mammograms and colonoscopies are not prevention; they are for early detection, which is important because it makes the disease easier to treat successfully. Real prevention comes from lifestyle changes.
Some organizations are promoting such lifestyle changes, but you don’t hear much about it. Stop smoking is no. 1. Exercise, eating right, avoiding dangerous behavior, and keeping your weight in a normal range will prevent a lot of chronic conditions. Don’t expect insurance companies to promote them, though. Why should they when they can make so much money by raising rates and denying payment? They haven’t done a good job of competing with each other, but a public insurance option might give them some incentive to compete by offering a better, or cheaper, product. Don’t you think there is enough creativity in these companies to come up with some good incentives for healthful behaviors?
Let’s not forget the drug companies and their contribution to high health costs. Besides the exorbitant cost of drugs, how much do you think they spend on those TV ads that try to convince you to take some drug you never heard of for a condition you didn’t know you had? There might be something else you could do to enhance your health. Why not ask your doctor if exercise is right for you?
HEALTHandFITNESS.com 
