photo credit: swanksalot

America’s health care system is pretty political. There’s Medicare and Medicaid, tax cuts for employer-funded health insurance, and an upcoming election in which health reform policy has been under much debate.

None of that is bad. America’s government takes some responsibility for the health of its people, and that’s a good thing. But how good is it when the pharmaceutical industry buys TV advertisements that back lawmakers who back the industry?

The Ties Between Political TV Spots and State Children’s Health Insurance Programs

Over the last five or six weeks, the drug industry has spent a total of $13 million to buy TV time for advertisements that praise lawmakers who voted to expand a program called the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Brooks Elliott

Getting more employers to provide healthcare benefits for their workers isn’t simply a matter of making health coverage cheaper.

A recent report from consulting group Mercer has found that most employers who don’t offer health benefits to employees say that they could not – or would not – pay more than $50 per month per employee to cover healthcare insurance.

Much of the national health reform debate is centered on the question of how to encourage more employers to provide their workers with healthcare benefits. An additional question is whether this should be done at all.

Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: wilhei55

Open enrollment season is approaching, and soon employees will be able to investigate their healthcare cover options for 2009. With that in mind, here are a few tips for keeping your costs down in the coming year.

Don’t Ignore your Options

Many people ignore the fact—or just aren’t aware—that they have the option to choose their healthcare plan. If you didn’t know, or you haven’t bothered in the past to check out your options, make this year the one that you break the habit. If you have options, it’s never a good idea to ignore them—you could end up saving money simply by choosing a new plan.

Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: r3v || cls

Picture this: You visit your doctor and find out that you have a chronic and potentially serious illness for which you will need medication. With half a dozen different medications which might be appropriate, which should your doctor choose? What if there is no way of knowing in advance which will work best in your case?

That’s an important decision for a doctor, simply because choosing the wrong medication can have negative consequences for patients. Currently, however, the new field of pharmacogenomics – genomics-based medicine – is revolutionizing the way doctors prescribe medicine, leading to an entirely new type of highly personalized healthcare.

Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Marcin Wichary

Recent proposals about buying health insurance across state lines have sent many of us scrambling to check policies, and wondering whether such changes might mean it’s time to find a new insurer. After all, wouldn’t such a change open up the market and make it possible to get cheaper coverage?

Unfortunately, it’s by no means certain that such a change would be largely beneficial. In fact, it’s actually possible that the end result might be more expensive insurance overall, and that over time, more Americans would find health insurance too expensive.

Read the rest of this entry »