Is your health insurance sickening?
Got lyme disease? Are you using health insurance? Is it keeping you sick? Often one of the biggest reasons why lyme victims are not getting well is because they use ‘health insurance’. Lyme disease sufferers, like many who are chronically ill, are often limited or unable to get an accurate diagnosis or the care they need due to restrictions and exclusions in their health insurance plans.
Money and Politics Preventing Health
Health care in America is a profit-based not a health-based system. A profit based health care system is not necessarily a bad thing. Profits and competition in the marketplace are good for business and consumers. They create an environment that promotes incentive, creativity and resourcefulness. Competition often allows consumers to purchase quality goods and services at affordable prices. A major problem with American health care is that free trade, free speech and competition is no longer permitted. Those who have their hand in the health care pot have meddled with and prevented competition to preserve self-serving greed and profit. Health Care process improvements that adversely affect revenue, conflict with self interests or pose a liability are consistently rejected.
The process improvements are often reasonable, cost-efficient, logical and save lives but none the less are avoided. In addition, those working within protected medicine are exempt from accountability. Consumers (such as those suffering from lyme) often have little recourse when their health care rights have been violated. Those who know how to help lyme victims such as lyme-literate and alternative care practioners are often excluded by health insurance, discriminated against by the ill-informed, threatened by the ignorant, harassed by medical boards and sometimes imprisoned for their efforts to help save the lives of lyme victims. The combined corruption, lack of accountability and denial of health care freedoms for consumers perpetuates rising health care costs, illness, and disease for lyme victims and others who are sick throughout our country.
Letting greed and ignorance ruin your health?
As lyme disease sufferers already know, they often need a combination of treatments at various stages of their disease. Their treatment needs vary depending on the amount of time between their exposure, diagnosis and treatment, their ability to gain prompt access to the right kind of help and their individual case. They may need years of IV and oral antibiotics, chiropractic care, nutritional supplements, psychiatric medications, IV minerals and vitamins, pain treatments, homeopathic remedies, craniosacral therapy, herbs, acupuncture, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, de-tox therapy or other types of treatments. They may need to purchase support items such as canes, wheelchairs, walkers and assisted living and communication devices for their home or office. They may need to hire a home health aide or even a nurse to administer care during advanced stages of the disease. They also may need to hire a child care provider to help care for their children when they are too sick to do so themselves.
Who decides if you are sick or if you get better?
These treatments, support devices, and resource related expenses are not luxury items. They are critical needs for the survival, healing and possible recovery of lyme victims. These needs may seem so logical and obvious to those looking out from a body and mind that is diseased with lyme but conversely are often viewed quite differently by health insurance providers who have to justify their cost. These needs are often categorized as a 'medical loss' by insurance providers and claims for such treatments and supports are often denied. Lyme disease suffers spend their limited precious energy trying to convince their health insurance company that they have lyme and need treatment. Maybe you want to ask yourself, instead of wasting energy, money and time trying to convince the greedy and the ignorant that you are sick wouldn't it be more useful to get the right kind of help to improve your health and possibly save your own life?
Self-insurance
Have you considered replacing your standard unhealthy insurance plans with a self-insurance plan? These plans, also known as self-funding plans, can either be managed by the lyme sufferer themselves or a financial advisor. For those unfamiliar with this type of insurance I will attempt to explain it. I am using the example of one individual but it can be expanded for families as well. Instead of paying your monthly health insurance premium of $800.00 to your health insurance provider each and every month throughout your entire lifetime you would instead contribute this same amount each and every month to your own self-insurance health account. This self-insurance account would be designated solely for the purpose of covering health care related expenses and as protection against future loss. Any and all funds not used for health expenses are invested. These funds continue to grow and earn interest each and every day that they are not needed for health related expenses. You may want to research this topic further and speak with a financial advisor to ensure that your funds are earning the best possible returns on your investments.
Commercial Insurance verses Self-Insurance
As you know, if you are purchasing commercial health insurance now the health insurance provider determines the type of care you may use, the type of providers, the length of treatment and places innumerable other restrictions on your health freedoms, access to accurate health information and your health rights. These imposed limitations often adversely affect your ability to recover from lyme disease.
Self-insurance is often a better option for the sick since it simplifies the process of finding the right kind of help so that you can get better. When you use self-insurance to cover your health care expenses you (not a stranger) determines your choice of providers and treatments. You can be treated by lyme-literate practioners of your choosing. You can seek the type and duration of care that is needed to avoid further debilitation, promote your healing and possibly avoid death and financial ruin. Self-insurance plans may be purchased by those who are self- employed as well as those who work for others.
Lyme Disease is Expensive
Many who do not receive a prompt and accurate lyme diagnosis suffer tragic financial consequences. They are often forced to use all of their personal savings as well as their retirement and children's college funds to pay for current health related expenses resulting from their lyme disease. In some cases patients are not able to afford the expensive and much needed care so their condition often continues to deteriorate. This is truly tragic for lyme victims, their families and society.
Funding Lyme
Depending on your current health status, your comfort level, functionality, disability level and your ability to earn money, you may want to use a combination of self-insurance and commercial insurance plans designed specifically to cover catastrophic events. If you choose to supplement your self-insurance plan with a catastrophic plan you can then set your deductible to your comfort level. You can generally purchase catastrophic plans for a nominal monthly premium amount since the deductible is so high. Many lyme victims are currently documenting some of their struggles with commercial health insurance plans, private disability plans and social security benefits in their lyme case histories. I plan to cover these topics in my book.
In conclusion, lyme victims who are able to make their own health care choices are more likely to have a favorable outcome for their health and less financial ruin than those who have their health care decisions imposed upon them by heath insurance providers or others.
I welcome any comments and feedback regarding lyme disease, health insurance coverage and covering the high cost of lyme.