Wild Card Blog- 11/29

Wow almost the last assignment this semester! I has been a great semester and a wonderful class. Human resources is my subject of choice and I hope to work in this area, so i always enjoy the material. For this wild card post I will do my usually and review a current article.
One of the topics on this weeks readings was benefits, including insurance. The article I choose to review is titled, "Caution:High deductible plans might be bad for your health." This article comes from Kaiser Health News, and was written by Julie Rovner on November 24, 2010. In this article they consider s high deducible plan one which is over $1,000 before services. in 2009 about 23% of adults were paying this high deductible. This percentage is for an employer based insurance. The percentage rises to 50% for individuals who purchase insurance on the open market.

A study done by Archives of Internal Medicine, aimed to analyze this issue. The sample was patients in Harvard-Pilgirms high deducible plan. The survey results are as followed; 60% of low income groups delayed or went without care due to high cost, 42.5% of those with income over 300% of the poverty line also reported going without care, those who went without care also reported stress increase, 35% of low income group and 31% of high income group. In conclusion the article states the people may be more likely to go for high deductible plans due to the new health insurance laws. This is because the law puts limits on what the insurance companies can charge for monthly premiums. Finally the author states that policy makers should consider strategies to support patients facing high levels of cost sharing.

This article is interesting to me because I am a young adult who doesn't have health insurance. I work full time and go to school full time, my current employer does not offer health insurance and i can not afford Private insurance. I hope that the passing of the health reform will make it possible for me to obtain insurance as soon as possible. My significant other and I fall into that category of people who forgo or delay care because they can not afford to pay and at times it can be stressful when you are unsure of how serious something could be. I agree that policy makers should develop a strategy to support patients who are apart of these plans. I assume that those who are enrolled in these plans are those who really need continual care and probably that which is costly. By focusing on these types of issues policy makers can tackle one of the biggest issues, outrageously costly care, which effects the cost of care for all individuals. I believe that by addressing the biggest issues, the smaller ones will solve themselves.