Is Medicare Truly Helping the Poor?
As
family health insurance becomes even harder to come by, many people look to Medicare to fill in the gaps and protect the uninsured. But as it's made clear at
insurancenewsnet.com, sometimes the poor don't benefit from Medicare at all, leading them into a horrible cycle of illness, emergency rooms, and unpaid medical bills.
According to the article, "half of all bankruptcies filed in the U.S. stemmed from a medical crisis. And three-quarters of those bankrupted by illness were insured when they first got sick." What does this mean? Essentially, that Medicare and family health insurance are not protecting families, and in many cases, do such a poor job of it that those who are struggling along find themselves among the poor and uninsured based on one medical incident.
At the same time, reimbursements from government-sponsored Medicare and Medicaid are shrinking, and insurance companies, which follow Medicare's lead, are lowering their reimbursements, too. The insured end up making up those costs through higher premiums.
And then there are the rules and regulations that make qualifying for Medicare so difficult. Aside from mountains of paperwork, transient families often have long lapses of Medicare insurance because information gets lost in the shuffle. In other cases, American citizens who don't have the right paperwork might be improperly denied coverage. It's estimated that tens of thousands of poor families are denied coverage based on these simple mistakes.
All of this, and the cost of family health insurance averages about one third of their income, and many employers don't (and can't afford to) offer family health insurance, or even employee coverage.
Facts on:
Family Health Insurance
Did you know...
Half of all bankruptcies filed in the U.S. stemmed from a medical crisis?
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There are a variety of options available for those who need better coverage, including Medicare supplement insurance, and purchasing
family health insurance from an independent agency. In these cases, it's smart to know how much you can afford to pay monthly, for doctor's visits, for prescription medications, and for deductibles.
But no matter how we approach it, the rising numbers of uninsured prove that Medicare just isn't enough, and our insurance system is in dire need of revision.
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