Health Insurance Blog

Why does insurance cost so much?

As a health insurance broker this is a question I hear multiple times a day. The simple answer believe it or not is it’s what we as american’s want. I’m sure that sounds ridiculous to you.  Let me explain.

For the most part we always want the best, whether we can afford it or not. We pay lots of money to eat out at nice restaurants.  We go to fancy theaters and view newly released movies on a regular basis.  We take out loans to drive extravagant vehicles.  All because we crave this sort of quality that we know is at our fingertips.

In essence, we are driving the Mercedes of health insurance. We have the best health care in the world and it is getting better by the day.  Medical schools are forcing their students through extremely difficult programs in order to offer you the best training and skills when you go see your doctor.  Studies are being funded and carried out daily in hopes of finding new information that will help people with health challenges.  Sterilized state of the art equipment and materials are used whenever you need a procedure done, whether that is a simple mole removal on your arm or a triple bypass surgery, to ensure that you are at a higher chance of recovering properly and at a lower chance of having harmful and avoidable side effects.  Someone has to pay the bill.  Those doctors underwent high costs to attend medical school.  Those supplies had to be created, ordered and shipped through out the country just so that they could be used to give you amazing medical care.

Besides having the nicest health care possible the Affordable Care Act bill has made some changes as well. The Affordable Care Act states (among many other things) no one can be rated up based on their health or previous medical conditions.  Which is amazing news for everyone who had a “pre-existing condition.”  For example before the ACA passed if you were diagnosed with cancer or had recently come out of remission, good luck getting health insurance–and even if you could, it certainly wouldn’t be affordable.  You would be charged so much more because insurance companies knew that you would cost them so much more with all of the treatments that you needed.

Think of health insurance as a team effort. We are not just paying for healthy people but unhealthy people as well.  As citizens we are sharing the bill to make sure every one can be taken care of.

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