| As Health Costs Soar, More Find Care Overseas
WHEN SHE WAS diagnosed with a fibroid tumor last year, Kathleen Dodds found herself in a bind. She didn't have health insurance because she couldn't afford it. With no insurance, the surgery she needed was prohibitively expensive. "They were quoting me $30,000, tentatively, paid out of pocket," says Dodds, 42, a Portland, Ore.-based horse trainer. "There was no way I could afford it here." But 7,200 miles away in India was an affordable solution. Through IndUSHealth, a company in Raleigh, N.C., that arranges medical care in India for U.S. citizens, Dodds flew out to the Apollo hospital in Delhi, where she had a successful hysterectomy that allowed her to return to her horseback riding students just two-and-a-half weeks later. The total cost: just under $10,000, including round-trip airfare, transportation to and from the hospital, a one-week hospital stay where she says she was treated with more care and attention than she had ever experienced in the U.S., capped by 10 days at a "gorgeous hotel." "It was actually a pleasant situation, considering that I was having major surgery," she says.
Small Business Health Insurance Pools Approved By House
Des Moines, Iowa - Making good on another promise outlined in their Plan for Prosperity, the Iowa House overwhelmingly approved a bill today to allow small businesses to pool their purchasing power to get better rates on health insurance for their employees.
"One of our top priorities this year was to help small business with rising health care costs and I'm pleased we've made progress today," said State Representative Dawn Pettengill, who helped craft the bill and managed it through the House. "Many small businesses struggle with rapidly rising health insurance costs or cannot even offer health care coverage because it will put them out of business. I believe the proposal we passed today will provide some relief."
House File 790 allows businesses with 2-50 employees to join a group health insurance plan through an association.
IDP Calls For Solution To Health Insurance Issues
The Islamic Democratic Party (IDP) held a demonstration on Friday to protest the governments failing health insurance scheme and high living costs. We held the protest to bring the governments attention to the living conditions and complaints of the people. The government should not be proud of a record of having attended all the SAARC summits, but rather a record in attaining love and satisfaction from the people, Mohamed Hassan Manik, Vice President, said. IDP called on the government to start giving back medical allowances to employees, which were cancelled in readiness for the introduction of a new system. The new plan has now stalled and around 35,000 civil servants are currently without health cover due to a dispute between the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) and Finance Ministry on one side, and the Ministry of Higher Education and Social Security on the other.
Pennsylvania, Other States Lead Efforts To Expand Health Insurance ...
Recent legislation introduced by Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), which includes loosening regulations against nonphysician health care professionals is an "example of states stepping into a void created by a lack of federal action on health care reform," the AP/Houston Chronicle reports. Rendell's "Prescription for Pennsylvania" legislation would allow nonphysician health care professionals to provide basic health care with the aim of lowering state health care costs. Nonphysicians would be legally allowed to perform doctors' basic duties, such as taking medical histories and performing physicals. Dental hygienists would be allowed to practice without supervision from a dentist in certain situations, such as at schools or clinics, and midwives would be allowed to prescribe drugs. In addition, the legislation allows nonphysicians to be designated as primary care physicians for insurance purposes and requires insurance companies to include nonphysicians in all health care provider networks.
Incentive to serve
When considering the quality of a Richmond officer's compensation package, Richmond City Manager David Evans said it is important to look at the total benefit package. Some RPD officers' families agree.The father of three children, RPD Senior Patrolman Tim Craft pays nearly one-third of his total take-home paycheck into the city's family health insurance plan. The youngest in the Craft family, 6-year-old Jared, is a special-needs child. The total cost of the Richmond HMO family plan is $1,011.94 each month. The city pays $255.18 of that cost. "We are on the lower health plan and it doesn't cover hardly anything," said Linda Craft, Tim's wife. "We couldn't afford (the HMO plan)."Even on the minimum family plan, the Craft family is responsible for $410.72 each month. That cost does not include any dental or vision insurance."We have even thought about switching to Blue Cross/Blue Shield because it is cheaper than what we pay through the city," Linda Craft said.
GPPI Hosts Roundtable on Universal Health Insurance
Georgetown Public Policy Institute and the O'Neill Institute on Health Law at the Georgetown Law Center will host Getting from Here to There, a roundtable discussion on the renewed interest in universal health insurance, on Monday April 9, 2007. The session will feature presentations by Katherine Baicker of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation, and Jeanne Lambrew of the Center for American Progress, and will be followed by a roundtable discussion by other experts on health finance. The event will take place from 9 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. at the National Press Club. Every year approximately one million people are added to the rolls of the uninsured. As the number of firms offering health benefits declines, growing health costs stymie growth in earnings. Many insured Americans are seeing their benefits dwindle while health costs consume their wages, leaving some unable to pay their medical bills and others going without much needed care.
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