The coming health reform bill, (please pardon my reference to this bill as being related to actual health reform) is going to garner the support of AARP. I felt the need to vent on my opinion as to why.
Health insurance and health care is a very tricky and confusing subject. Let me admit publically, if I haven’t before, I wouldn’t have a career if health insurance was easy. One might argue that my bias would be to promote my own agenda. I respect that potential conflict and have never taken issue with anyone questioning my ethics. I purposely steer clear of any opinion on subjects that would impact, either positively or negatively, my income. That said, other special interest groups do not appear to be as noble. Thus, the subject of today’s blog post, those good folks at AARP.
AARP is a special interest group with interests in Media, Insurance, and Financial products. AARP is bigger than
On the eve of the historic House Congressional vote on the wobbly healthcare reform bill, President Obama managed one last pull at the AARP, but may not have saved its members from falling into the verbal mud pit in the long tug-of-war over the Affordable Healthcare for Americans Act. By his own admission, AARP CEO Barry Rand knows his 40 million members are still very much split down the middle in their support. This leaves the President wiping his brow while leaving Rand in the awkward position of posing for the photo-op while crossing his fingers behind his back.
There’s a school of thought that says, “the number don’t lie”. The assumption is that numbers are facts and facts are always true. So if someone counts the number of times something happens, this gives you a basis from which to estimate the probability of the same thing happening across a population. This is the basis of underwriting for insurance purposes. Teams of highly trained people called actuaries count how many traffic accidents there are. They break it down into the age, make and model of car, the age, gender and profession of the driver, the time of day, the weather conditions, and so on. We happil
Sometimes having the wrong health insurance is even worse than being uninsured. An recent article in Chester County’s Daily Local News made that clear. After becoming unemployed, many people are left in dire straits once their employer’s COBRA coverage expires. With little money, most are only able to buy inferior health insurance plans. At that point, millions of individuals and families become underinsured. Imagine if your insurer refused to cover even one emergency room visit! No
Amelia Nosehart liked to fly through the malls to get a head start on Christmas. But a policy she’d purchased from California Health Insurance agent Matt Lockard literally helped save her sight when “shopping” went horribly wrong.
Amelia Nosehart’s favorite day of the year was the day after Thanksgiving when Rancho Bernardo shoppers could get a head start on their Christmas shopping with early bird specials. Retail stores in neighboring burbs would open at two, three, four, five a.m. in efforts
California health insurance agents pay homage to Charlie Brown’s comic strip deity.
The cartoon boy with an “every boy’s” persona would ask the Great Pumpkin arcane questions about life, and in a manner of being, the inanimate orange harvest veggie assumed the stature of an odd deity – or at least a sage in the tradition of certain gods transported from Greek Mythology. As a relig
There are many services that already incorporate online records for your medical history, prescriptions, etc. For instance, CVS, Blue Cross of MA, Quest Diagnostics and many clinics store up to 2 years of your medical history. It is easy to get on Google Health and authorize those sites to import data into your Google Health profile. This way your treatments at the clinic and prescriptions at the drug store all stay in one handy place.
The advantage to using Google Health is having access to all of your own personal files in one location. You can set sharing permissions, and import whatever data from whatever doctor you need. You can even manually import data if you have paper copies of your records.
Sometimes having the wrong health insurance is even worse than being uninsured. An recent article in Chester County’s Daily Local News made that clear. After becoming unemployed, many people are left in dire straits once their employer’s COBRA coverage expires. With little money, most are only able to buy inferior health insurance plans. At that point, millions of individuals and families become underinsured. Imagine if your insurer refused to cover even one emergency room visit! No 