It’s a strange business, this health care stuff. I mean, what else do you use in your life that is so hard to predict? What else do you use or buy where you know so little up front about costs? Read more
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
Very recently on Straight Talk, I wrote a piece designed to help you understand your health insurance. This explained what all the words –deductibles, networks, claims, etc. – really mean. I also broke down who pays for what when a medical bill shows up. You might remember the three payment zones – the deductible zone, the coinsurance zone and the max out-of-pocket zone.
As soon as we published that piece, I heard this question: “So Mike, how do copays fit into all this stuff?” Read more
Summer is usually a slow season in the health insurance policy world. But not summer 2022. A lot is happening, and I want to keep you updated on all of it. I appeared on WRKF Radio’s Talk Louisiana with Jim Engster on Monday, Aug. 15. We talked about what’s going on in the health care world. Read more
When I was young, my dad and I spent a lot of time, days even, in boats on the water. One time, when I was about 11, we were crawfishing. We had a large aluminum boat loaded with two smaller boats (pirogues) and a lot of other gear. Read more
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
