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Discount Cards are Not Health Insurance
Health insurance is almost a requirement in today's society. If you get sick or injured, then you need to go to a doctor and when you go to a doctor, you need health insurance to make the cost of seeing that doctor more affordable. You also need health insurance to cover you and your family from more serious conditions in life. However, it's important that you realize that the discount card provided by many companies and health insurance companies are not necessarily health insurance. This fact is true no matter where you live, whether it is Los Angeles or Boston or anywhere in between.
A real life example that shows that there is more than many people realize behind the health discount cards that are available comes from a young mother in Los Angeles who noticed her son had a lump in his testicle. The doctor diagnosed the two year old boy as having a potentially life threatening hernia. This young mother and her family were uninsured and told she had two options available to her. She could pay the hospital $4,000 up front to schedule the operation or she could wait until the hernia ruptured for emergency surgery and she could pay for it later.
However, she could not gamble with her son's life like this. She found a discount card that would help pay for medical expenses and the hospital accepted the card. It was only after this did she find that the card simply readjusted the bills and the cost was not much cheaper than what she would have paid the hospital. The card companies actually re-price the bills and those patients without insurance tend to be charged higher prices than the cards that are handled by managed care companies.
It is important to realize that these cards are not the same as health insurance. Health insurance does have a monthly premium and a deductible as well, but once your deductible is met the insurance company pays for the remainder of the bills. The idea of discounted services appealing, it is important to remember that these insurance policies and companies that sell them do not make the same types of payments and reimbursements that your insurance company would. The cost is placed back on you and there is often a time period that it must be paid back in.
The cost of health insurance varies depending on your plan. You pay a premium each month and you receive a discounted rate for prescriptions and doctor's visits. When you have a medical emergency, you will have to pay your deductible, which varies depending on your plan. When the deductible is met the insurance company covers the additional costs. In this case, had the mother had health insurance she would have had to meet a deductible in addition to making her premiums, but in the long run she would have saved more of a headache and money.
