Healthy for Health Insurance

My high school class recently was given the opportunity to speak with a local Accountant. She spoke about taxes, investments, and money in general. As she spoke about these topics, I began to think of health insurance. How can we reduce the health insurance premium for everyone?

A health insurance policy is a form of collectivism where people as a group pool their risk. In this case, it is the risk of medical expenses. In most cases, health insurance is purchased by a group (such as a firm of employees), but it can also be purchased by individual consumers. The healthcare expenses of a person or group of people is estimated, and then is usually paid monthly. Different types and different amounts of healthcare expenses are specified in advance for each consumer's benefit.

Since the amount of health insurance expenses go hand-in-hand with the amount of people who become sick or hurt, we must reduce the amount of people who are sick or hurt.

Our country wastes $312 billion per year when patients are misdiagnosed or given the wrong treatment. This is a tremendous amount of money that is wasted for health insurers all around the country. One way to stop this big waste is "Best Doctors," which is a health benefit offered through hundreds of insurers and health plans. This plan of "best doctors" could possibly help our country save millions.

Another waste of health insurance that exceeds $29 billion per year are medical mistakes. These mistakes kill up to 100,000 people per year and well over half of them are preventable. The best way to fix the problem of "mistakes," is to have a federal health care safety reporting agency come and investigate the mistakes. When doctors know that people are constantly watching over their backs, they might care for their patients a lot more. Another way to improve a problem such as this is to make doctors across the country have more strict rules on their "mistakes."

Lastly, 70 percent of healthcare costs are in some way linked back to unhealthy habits. Since some workplaces provide health insurance, the employers should provide incentives for employees with healthy habits. Incentives such as employees receiving checks for joining a gym, quitting smoking or even losing weight. Exercising daily and eating healthy plays a big role in staying away from type-2 diabetes. Staying free of type-2 diabetes can also save tremendous amounts of money for everyone.

In conclusion, health insurance is something everyone must have no matter what the cost is. By simply setting higher standards for doctors and eating healthy, billions of dollars could be saved for our entire country.


Sources:
1)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance
2)http://www.rd.com/living-healthy/18-ideas-to-reform-health-care-now/article101364.html