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I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!
A friend of mine owns three wellness centers and employs 80 people. Yesterday, she told me that her health insurance broker made his yearly visit with a renewal policy where the premiums keep going up … and up … and up. In the decade she has been in business, premiums have never gone down. And…
Read MoreScared of high-deductible health plans (HDHPs)? You shouldn’t be. Here’s why.
For no good reason, HDHP has become a dirty four-letter acronym for healthcare consumers. The WebMD article, “Why Your Employees Are Afraid of Your High-Deductible Health Plan (HDHP)—And What You Can Do About It”, by Christine Muldoon, Senior Director of Health Plan Market Strategy, may be from 2013, but it’s even more relevant today, as…
Read MoreCost, quality, and your healthcare—a story about relationships
Cost and quality—they’re always related right? Well, usually. Sometimes we buy the cheaper good or service when we’re looking to save money, understanding the trade off is often quality. We might buy a hamburger at a fast food joint for $2 instead of spending $10 at the local pub. The same goes when we’re buying…
Read MoreDon’t really know what a health savings account is? Then you’re way overdue to fire your broker!
In my travels, I ask many community and business leaders if their health insurance plans include a health savings account (HSA). “Yes, I think so” is the most common answer I get, but that is quickly followed by “that’s the thing where we have to predict what our out-of-pocket spending might be for the year…
Read MoreDon’t have an HSA? Here’s why you need one.
Since their creation as “tax-advantaged” accounts by Congress in 2003, the prevalence of health savings accounts (HSA) has been growing steadily despite the reality that the health insurance industry doesn’t like them. Even with the industry floating “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt” (a.k.a. FUD-factor), consumers are starting to see the light when it comes to high…
Read MoreNot happy about your salary increases (or lack thereof) over the past decade? You might want to blame it on healthcare.
While many factors may be contributing to the lack of salary increases in America, have you considered that one of the biggest culprits might be the rising cost of healthcare? In the past decade alone, health insurance premiums for families have risen 73%, dramatically outpacing increases in family income (read more here about the study…
Read MoreSteve Forbes Prescribes Price Transparency to Remedy Our Skyrocketing Healthcare Costs
Currently, the patient isn’t the “customer”; so says Steve Forbes, Editor-In-Chief of Forbes Magazine. Transforming patients into customers also means empowering them to shop for lower-cost healthcare like they already do for other purchases. Sadly, that hasn’t been possible so far—you can’t Google to find the lowest-cost, high-quality provider that’s also nearby for a medical…
Read MoreFor mature audiences only
Just when you thought we were done talking about health savings accounts, here we are again talking about HSAs. We’ve outlined HSAs before, but new reports indicate that they may be more of a necessity than simply an added benefit. One thing we’ve spent a lot of time discussing is the use of HSAs as…
Read MoreHuge opportunities for HSAs in coming era of private exchanges
“Driven by the emerging private health exchange sector, health savings accounts may be poised to quadruple their growth over the next six years,” according to a report published by Consumerdriven, LLC and HSA Consulting Services, LLC. “While health savings accounts have experienced a steady growth rate over the past decade, health exchanges, especially private exchanges,…
Read MoreIt pays to shop for healthcare, when you have the right tool
“Figuring out how much a medical procedure would cost put more stress on me than the actual diagnosis of cancer…” So says Michelle Bergman on the CBS Evening News. We at MyMedicalShopper empathize with Michelle’s predicament. Millions of others face the same problem of finding accurate pricing that enables informed decisions. We applaud CBS for…
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