Why does health insurance cost so much? Year after year, many of the articles that appear in print detail the specific factors driving the cost of healthcare.
These factors include: general inflation, advances in drugs and other medical devices, rising hospital and doctor expenses, government mandates, increased consumer demand, litigation, fraud, and cost shifting.
The basic answer is that a magic bullet to solve the cost of insurance does not exist because the real difficulty is controlling the cost of healthcare. A simple way to dramatically decrease the dollars spent on healthcare is to reduce the demand for healthcare.
I have seen estimates that up to 40% of all healthcare related expenses result from preventable conditions. These preventable conditions are caused by lifestyle choices such as tobacco, obesity, stress, lack of exercise and poor diet.
Most of us, myself included, make lifestyle choices everyday that eventually increase our demand for healthcare. We are never going to be able to totally eliminate all lifestyle related healthcare costs. However, improved lifestyle choices would cause a dramatic reduction in demand. This would then result in a similar reduction in the dollars spent on healthcare.
Lower demand for healthcare would result in lower health insurance costs, increased productivity, and reduced absenteeism. If your organization has not done so already, your organizational leaders need to seriously consider the benefits of health promotion and disease prevention programs. Your return on investment will most likely be as high as 2:1 in the first year.
About the Author
Michael Ertel is the founder of http://www.MedicalInsuranceNow.com which is a website that assists individuals and small business owners by providing side by side comparisons of health insurance alternatives. |
|
 |
small_business_health_insurance Home
small_business_health_insurance Directory
Different Types of Health Insurance Explained
Health is the biggest and most crucial asset of every living
being. An unhealthy animal and individual can never truly
experience any joy. It is the wealth of health that provides the
requisite potential to topple over all odds and to move...
The Real Cost of Health Insurance
Do you know the actual cost of your health insurance?
Everyone knows that health insurance costs are continually rising, but how do these spiraling costs affect your health insurance coverage? You know how much you pay every month for your health...
How To Best Handle Health Insurance Plan Changes
Many economists have suggested and recent economic data indicates that the economy is steadily moving in the right direction. A combination of several factors has no doubt had a negative impact on the economy over the last several years. The recent...
|
