Category: Health and Wellness

Category: ACA and Policy, Cost of Healthcare, Health and Wellness

Why Bother With Health Insurance?

It’s Expensive, I Don’t Use It Much

As we were developing our recent Straight Talk posts that dealt directly with terminology, how health insurance pays for your health care, and how your out-of-pocket spending and your health insurance carrier’s spending relate to your premiums, another question kept coming up. This one came specifically from younger folks with health insurance. It went something like this: Read more

Category: Health and Wellness

Immunizations: Pain and Salvation!

I’m often struck by how ahead of the curve medical innovations have been in the United States of America. Years ago, I worked with a man who was brilliant, a programmer who had a Ph.D. in mathematics, who also had a disability. After several months of working with him and sharing a few meals together, we got to know each other. I learned his disability was due to catching polio as a child. That seemed really strange to me because he was younger than I am, and I got the polio vaccine as a child. Most American kids born since the mid-1950s have gotten the vaccine, and we’ve never met anyone with polio. Read more

Category: Health and Wellness

Firearms and Health Care: There is a Connection

As a lifelong Louisiana resident, with a dad who served in the U.S. Army, it probably wouldn’t surprise you a bit to know that I was raised with guns in the house. More than a few, in fact. My dad’s job in the Army and later National Guard was as a Firearms Instructor. In fact, he taught people how to properly instruct others on firearms safety. As his oldest child, he practiced his instruction on me, to the point where I could have taught the safety class at about age five. Read more