Insurance World

Most Americans are struggling to afford health insurance. In just the past few years, the cost of buying health insurance for your family has skyrocketed. I was talking with an insurance agent recently, who told me it’s not unusual at all for his clients to be paying $1,000 to $1,400 per month for their family to be covered.

I don’t know many people who can easily afford those kinds of monthly insurance payments. Most who are paying them are making major sacrifices in other areas. The vast majority of Americans put health coverage very high on their list of priorities, so the other things that get left behind might surprise you. No question, the quality of life is far lower for many people now that they pay so much to be insured.

Meanwhile, many employers are cutting back their employees’ insurance coverage. Professions that once paid all their employees’ health insurance premiums — like teachers and firefighters — are finding the employee footing the bill for larger and larger portions of their insurance.

How are people coping? Many Americans simply don’t have health insurance anymore. That’s a big problem not only for families, who often put off going to the doctor, but also for society in general. People who hesitate buying medicine or seeing a doctor often end up very sick in hospital emergency rooms.

Others are simply reducing the amount of health insurance they have. They pay a larger portion of their doctor visits and prescription medicine costs. If you are a young adult, it may not make a lot of sense to pay huge insurance premiums to be covered for major illnesses that you are very unlikely to experience.

There are a growing number of health insurance plans that let you pick and choose the areas of coverage you want to pay for. While this practice was prohibited in many states, more and more places are seeing the wisdom and necessity of this approach.

Even more pressing than the cost of health insurance is the cost of buying prescription medicines. Many people simply can’t afford the spiraling cost of the medicines they need. Others might insist, willingly lowering their standard of living just to afford overpriced medicine. The solution to this problem increasingly has nothing to do with insurance. Organizations use their large pool of members to negotiate big discounts on prescription drugs at thousands of chain and independent pharmacies nationwide. Typically you can save up to 60% off generic drugs and up to 15% off name-brand drugs.

This is a big advantage for the elderly, families, businesses, organizations, and anyone who wants to lower their cost of medicine. Additionally, some programs also cover medicine for your pets. If you often care for an ill animal, this can save you a lot of money over time.

Unlike insurance, discount drug programs are often very low cost or free. Pharmacies participate in the discount programs to encourage you to buy from them. It’s a win-win for both you and the medical industry.

In the good old days (?) before the industrial revolution the economy of this country was largely based on agriculture, and so most of the working class employees spent long hours outside in the fields. Inevitably their skin would have been well bronzed, and in time it became a distinguishing mark of the lower classes.

To ensure that no one could possibly mistake them for working class, the fashion of the time for the upper classes, especially amongst the ladies, was for alabaster skin. This effect was accentuated by the application of white powder, which was very often lead based. The result was deadly.

This fashion would continue to a greater or lesser degree into the 19th Century. Then in the 20th century, the advent of at least 2 major wars and the inevitable loss of manpower had a large number of women taking to manual labour. This was honourable work, and it is likely that this was the time when a tan became more acceptable.

The connection between a tan and the outdoor life resulted in the former being regarded as a sign of good health, and this delusion continues (especially amongst the young) to this day. This is very unfortunate, because it is now understood that excessive exposure to tanning rays, whether sunshine or artificial, can be the first step on the road to skin cancer.

The problem has been exacerbated by the increase in the number of people taking holidays in hotter climates than they are used to. Whilst it should never be assumed that exposure to the sun is too limited in this country to have a serious effect, the problem increases vastly in areas where the sun is much nearer to overhead. Combine this with longer hours of sunshine and the danger becomes obvious.

The emphasis now is, as it should be, on prevention. Clothing cover and sun creams are recommended, especially for children, with reduced mid-day exposure a must. In case these precautions prove to be inadequate, good critical illness cover could prove to be a blessing.

However, it pays to read the small print. It is fairly certain that any policy will have some very clear definitions, and treatable conditions are not now regarded as critical illness. This would appear to be reasonable. Skin cancer can be deadly; 1800 deaths a year and rising are proof of this, with experts predicting that this figure will double within 10 years.

No one would expect fire insurance to cover them for just a piece of paper going up in flames, so why should they expect that critical illness cover should provide treatment for non-critical i.e. curable illness. A skin cancer melanoma found early enough can be dealt with and there is a good chance of success

So in the early stages it is up to you to protect yourself with high factor sunscreen, restricted exposure and clothing cover. Early checks of any moles of doubtful origin are important and can be obtained fairly easily. For a start ‘Superdrug’ who have a pharmacy on most high streets are opening ‘mole clinics’ for just such a purpose, and it is likely that other appropriate retail outlets will follow suit.

If you are one of the careless or unlucky ones and you have skin cancer which has advanced beyond the early stages without being discovered, then if you have Critical Illness Insurance you will at least have shed some worries. You will have enough to think about without also having to concern yourself with, for example, financial problems.

So you need to check the small print and make sure that you are absolutely clear as to what you are covered for – skin cancer (even if critical) could be on the ‘not covered’ list. You also need to be certain that you have provided the insurance company with a note detailing any conditions existing before the policy commences; this needs to cover every item which could have even the remotest connection with any insured condition. They are providing your cover and you cannot expect them to do this without the fullest possible information.

Finally, make sure you keep up the payments. Failure to pay must be the surest way to terminate the agreement, and could provide a nasty shock at the worst possible time.