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Why Does Health Insurance Cost So Much?
by: Michael Ertel
Why does health insurance cost so much? Year after year, many of the articles
that appear in print detail the specific factors driving the cost of healthcare.
These factors include: general inflation, advances in drugs and other medical
devices, rising hospital and doctor expenses, government mandates, increased
consumer demand, litigation, fraud, and cost shifting.
The basic answer is that a magic bullet to solve the cost of insurance does
not exist because the real difficulty is controlling the cost of healthcare.
A simple way to dramatically decrease the dollars spent on healthcare is to reduce
the demand for healthcare.
I have seen estimates that up to 40% of all healthcare related expenses result
from preventable conditions. These preventable conditions are caused by lifestyle
choices such as tobacco, obesity, stress, lack of exercise and poor diet.
Most of us, myself included, make lifestyle choices everyday that eventually
increase our demand for healthcare. We are never going to be able to totally
eliminate all lifestyle related healthcare costs. However, improved lifestyle
choices would cause a dramatic reduction in demand. This would then result in
a similar reduction in the dollars spent on healthcare.
Lower demand for healthcare would result in lower health insurance costs,
increased productivity, and reduced absenteeism. If your organization has not
done so already, your organizational leaders need to seriously consider the benefits
of health promotion and disease prevention programs. Your return on investment
will most likely be as high as 2:1 in the first year.
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About The Author
Michael Ertel is the founder of http://www.MedicalInsuranceNow.com which is
a website that assists individuals and small business owners by providing side
by side comparisons of health insurance alternatives.
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This article was posted on January 26, 2005
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