Busy, Busy, Busy!

Wow, it's been quite a while since I've gone blog hopping again. I have really been missing hanging out with my cyber buddies, but the recession we are in has caused me to do a lot of looking for more ways to cut our expenses further than I already have. Of course the bank has not helped us at all, so I've had to be very creative in my searches.

I have searched for home health remedies to move us further away from the world of chemicals (for cleaning our house and healing our bodies), recipes for eating healthy without having to spend an arm and a leg on prepackaged (and preservative laden) foods, soap recipes (and yes, I did finally make some soap), and new insurance providers (for everything but our life and dental insurance which are the only products that haven't raised their premiums through the roof). If things stay on track with our finances and we have no other increased or added expenses we should manage to come through this storm in just a few months, then I can concentrate more on getting our health on track (which I have spent considerable amounts of time researching).

I decided about my recent thoughts on how companies who have to do with our health really don't care about the customer, they're way more concerned with making money in the short run. They need to focus on the future and they too could even help us get out of our economic recession.

When my husband and I got married we paid very little (maybe $100? I can't remember for sure) for our health insurance and it was excellent. It included 100% of maternity costs being covered, free yearly well visits, and we only paid 20% of the trip to the doctor costs up to our deductible and insurance paid 100% after that. We also never paid more than the stated office visit copays for other visits.

Fast forward 15 years...

Starting in January we will be paying over $600 per month for our health insurance through my husband's employer who pays half of the cost of this insurance. We still get yearly well visits, but somehow our well visits are never viewed as well visits and I have to fight with the insurance company them to get them to pay. Any trips I make to the doctor almost always comes completely out of my pocket. I have never actually gotten to the point of paying our deductible and then having them pay 80% because we rarely ever go to the doctor.

Besides the monthly insurance cost, I am also paying $78 per month to one clinic and $40 to another for past visits , labs, mammograms (plus 10% interest because I can't afford to pay the bill in full) that my insurance didn't feel the need to pay. Add to that our monthly prescriptions and we are well over $800 per month just paying for our health. That's crazy!!!! Who has any money left for food once we pay for that AND our mortgage? If we could just reduce those expenses for each and every American family by $200 per household, we would all have a whole lot more money to spend on other goods and services.

Any rational human being can see that by having a family pay less money for health care costs, the family could afford to buy healthier foods and health club memberships with the money they are saving. This would reduce the overall medical cost to the health insurance company giving them greater profits within several years.

If people are healthier it would also reduce the number of visits needed to doctor offices giving the doctors more time to concentrate on helping their patients to get healthy and reducing the numbers of malpractice claims. The doctor wouldn't have so many people to take care of that they don't spend the time to get all of the information they should have had. This would give the doctors more money because they wouldn't have to spend so much of their money on malpractice insurance. It would also save the clinics money because they wouldn't be so over run with patients that they need 4 receptionists to check patients in and verify their insurance plans.

Prepackaged foods are very inexpensive, but they are also not very good for us. They have few nutrients in them and lots of added chemicals and preservatives. Spending all of our money on paying drug companies, insurance companies, and clinic and doctor bills leaves us with less money for taking care of ourselves. This actually makes us LESS healthy because we are forced to buy more inexpensively produced foods in order to have enough food and skipping the health club memberships because it's not something we really "HAVE" to have. These foods add to our inability to loose weight, our feelings of tiredness, and lack of motivation to exercise compounding the problems that we already have.

I don't think people in the health care system should be large for profit companies. If everyone could stop being greedy for just a moment and just use the brains that God gave us, they could actually spend some time and energy to help people live healthier lives we would be a healthier, wealthier, and happier country.

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy