Posts Tagged ‘Health’
Many seniors enjoy living in their own home with the freedom to do as they please. While some health problems may limit a senior’s ability to do so, with the right home health care, a senior can enjoy an independent life in the presence of illness or other health conditions. When a senior receives adequate health care, it can keep the senior out of a convalescent or nursing home.
For many seniors, just knowing that they will be allowed to recover at home will put them in better spirits, which is more conducive to faster healing. The goal of home health care is to provide the senior with any necessary treatment as the senior heals from an illness or injury in the home setting. Home health care concerns medical treatments and services would otherwise be done in a hospital or other health care setting. Home health care can include services such as nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, counseling, social services and speech therapy.
A doctor will prescribe home health care when the doctor feels that a patient may recover successfully at home. The doctor may order of services of a nurse, homemaker, physical therapist and a personal care worker as part of the home health care plan. Each of these personnel members would perform different tasks as the senior recovers.
The nurse would administer medications, give the patient dietary tips and would arrange any other treatments or services that are necessary. The homemaker would do the household chores, shopping and preparation of meals. The physical therapist would perform such services that would help the patient get their strength back. The personal care worker would help the patient move around their home, including such tasks as dressing, bathing and walking with the patient. The people who provide home health care services are usually licensed nurses, homemakers, therapists and personal care workers.
Many products can be purchased for the purpose of home health care. Not all the products are related to the patient’s body and instead are used to make the home safer for the patient. Such home health care product and services involves the modification of the outdoor steps, seating, inside walls, bath and shower. A walkway may be built or railings may be placed inside the home. Mobility equipment such as a cane or wheelchair may be required. Any necessary medical equipment may be rented before making a purchase as well.
Home health care services may be performed by a public, private or other organization that is devoted to these services. Home health care workers are checked by most states for criminal backgrounds. Not all states perform a background check. If a state does not perform these checks, it is up to the person hiring the services of a health care worker to make sure that their criminal record is clear.
Home health care is not the same service as home care for seniors. Generally, home care revolves around house cleaning and other chores at the house. Home health care involves medical treatments or those services that are required to help the patient recover.
Home health care allows a senior’s life to go on despite any injury or medical condition. A health problem does not automatically mean that a person has to be cooped up in a health care facility or nursing home. Patients that receive home health care are grateful for the opportunity to avoid the hospital or nursing home.
If you are self-employed or there is no group medical benefit offered by your employer you will want to look for a health plan for individuals. You can select a plan to cover only you and either or both of your spouse and children.
There are diverse health covers now available from providers to match different customers’ needs, but selecting a satisfactory plan for you and your family at a reasonable price poses some difficulty. We can take a look at the main health insurance plans that are available today.
Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) - PPO health plans have are quite popular as they include a network of providers of medical services that help to control costs, but still do allow their clients to get service outside the network on some instances if they are willing to receive reduced cover. In emergency situations you do get full network coverage even when seeking medical attention from outside the network.
Where a particular service is not available within the network, you may still get the need covered at network rates. However, to get such service, prior authorization for the service must be obtained.
Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) - An HMO has what is called managed care. The health insurance provider manages costs by covering health care through a network. They will of course make exceptions in cases of emergency or where the service needed is not available within the selected network.
Health Savings Account (HSA) – The HSA plan comes in two sections. One is a medical plan with a high deductible and a savings account for the second part. Within limits, you may be able to deduct these contributions from the tax liability and the savings can accrue interest and the balance at year-end can be rolled. To control costs, the high deductible plan can be allied with a PPO network.
Indemnity Health Insurance – This is the old style insurance health plan that just provides health insurance cover for amounts based on the deductible and up to the maximum allowed for that policy.
Mini Med Plan or Specified Benefit Plan - For each medical service that is covered, the plan specifies the benefit amounts payable. The premium due on each policy is in general lower than that for major plans, but equally, the maximum benefits payable also tend to be much lower than for the majors.
Which plan then will suit your needs? You need to assess your needs, budget and expectations. There is no point in taking out a health insurance plan you can not afford.
You may decide on a higher premium or settle for higher cost sharing than you want to reduce premiums. For an individual, the type of covers available differ considerably from those provided through an employer.
You may find that an HMO network near you can provide you with the health care at an affordable cost. You may however prefer the flexibility provided by a PPO which does not require that all medical care is availed through a medical provider network. For the good savers, the HSA plan may fit them better as it gives them control over the management of costs.
Americans are deeply unhappy with the country’s health care programs and costs. And rightly so. As one author observed, “A recent survey showed that only 17 percent of respondents in the United States were content with their health-care system . . . Why the discontent? The superficial reasons are simple enough to describe: the system is hugely expensive, very bureaucratic, and extremely patchy. The expenses first: U.S. health care costs a third more, per person, than that of the closest rival, superrich Switzerland, and twice what many European countries spend. The United States government alone spends more per person than the combination of public and private expenditure in Britain, despite the fact that the British government provides free health care for all residents.”
The United States pays more for health care per capita than any other industrialized nation — and even then, Medicare is not a comprehensive, pay-for-everything national health program like those of many nations and United States per capita health care costs continue to escalate rapidly.
Here’s what you need to know about health care costs as you plan for retirement.
Americans age sixty-five and over spend four times more on health care on average than do Americans under the age of sixty-five. At the outset of this decade, the average per capita health-care outlay for a person under the age of sixty-file was about $2,800. For people over the age of sixty-five, it was $11,089. And for Americans ages eighty-five and older it was $20,001. Clearly, health care outlays are likely to get substantially larger as you age. You need to plan for them.
U.S. health care expenses have grown mightily. U.S. health care expenses have dramatically escalated each year as new medications, new treatments, diagnostic tools, and health care innovations have come onto the market.
For example, the median nationwide cost for a hospital stay — excluding physicians charges — was $11,280 in 1997; by 2004 it was almost double at $20,455. The average total cost for treating a heart attack climbed 40 percent in just seven years. All in, health care costs have escalated fast and the increases are gaining momentum.
Health care costs are likely to continue to grow unabated. Unlike in other countries, no laws meaningfully curb the continual climb of health care and drug costs in the United States. For example, many Americans continue to import drugs from Canada because Canadian prices are significantly lower. This is true even though the new Medicare Features introduced in 2006 offset the cost of pharmaceuticals for U.S. retirees. To curb the cost of medicines, Canada prohibits drug companies from advertising on its television channels. In the United States, on the other hand, the very legislation that created the new Medicare drug benefit (Part D) expressly prohibits the federal government from attempting to negotiate lower prices with drug companies.
Count on it: medical costs are sky-high and likely to keep climbing unless there is a radical overhaul of the system.
More and more corporations are cutting back on health care benefits as medical costs soar. Recent statistics show companies cutting health care benefits and requiring employees and retirees to pay more for them. As one survey of corporate benefit trends concluded, “[Benefit] reductions have become not just common, but expected, with the only question now being of how much more of a reduction in benefits and or an increase in cost will be directly placed on individuals . . . In the end . . . individuals, either as taxpayers or consumers, will need to pay the bill.
I believe this trend will gain greater momentum over the next decades. It will be part and parcel of the continuing erosion of employment benefits — like the demise of traditional pensions — that is taking place throughout the country. Just like pensions, more and more health-care expense is going to become a do-it-yourself responsibility because heath care insurance costs are simply becoming too great for companies to shoulder competitively.
Taken all together, you can count on: (1) higher and higher health care costs, (2) more health-care-benefit cutbacks by U.S. employers, (3) the need to factor large health-care expenses into your funding plans, and (4) the need to buy supplemental health-care insurance to shield your savings from cost attack.
Of course, these views will not come as a surprise to most folks. Recent polls show that — immediately after the foremost financial concern of having enough money for retirement — the next great concern of most Americans is health care. More than half of adult Americans are “very worried” or “moderately worried” about being able to pay for serious illness or catastrophic health-care expense.