Posts Tagged ‘Health care reform’
|Health Insurance, Really?
Thursday, July 21st, 2011
By Dr. Greg Eckel, Naturopathic Physician at Nature Cures Clinic__________
The health insurance industry seems to be purposefully obtuse and complex. As a recent conversation reveals it is also costly. If you are responsible for your own health insurance you probably already know this. If your employer carries the insurance you’ve probably seen the portion you have to pay for has been on the increase.
One recent example that I had to write about was around a patient needing imaging of their abdomen. The insurance company confirmed they cover preventative screenings, however, if any positive finding (meaning anything that shouldn’t be there) would mean that the imaging would be deemed a surgical procedure, which they don’t cover any of the costs. The procedure could cost upwards of $5,000. My patient wouldn’t know if they had to cover the cost of the procedure until after they were woken up!! This is on top of a $600.00 a month cost just for the insurance to not cover a needed procedure! Yikes!
Instead of ranting and raving about this, it got me thinking about other ways of going about delivering our healthcare. I’m going to ask for some help and some brainstorming from you all out there in blog land though. Health insurance drives up the cost of running this little thing we call Nature Cures. We accept it for our patients as they have coverage and pay for it and should be able to use it. However, as more and more stories like the one mentioned above come in, I’d like to explore some options.
I was thinking about our patients who pay out of pocket for our services. Through creating a foundation, non-profit, some other vehicle (this is where I need your help to connect me to the people who know, perhaps you do?) where patients would get a tax deduction. The entity would employ doctors to deliver care. There would less transactions at the clinic. This would possibly cut down on the amount of health insurance transactions we would need to do around here. And patients would get the care they need from our office. Of course this doesn’t solve the above mentioned problem, but it does address the access to care for a lot of people to naturopathic and Chinese medicine care.
No need to worry if you are a patient of ours and have insurance coverage. We aren’t getting rid of the benefit. I’m just exploring some options with you all and starting a dialogue here.
If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them! We really like creating around here and want to support you in creating as well. Perhaps we could come up with a novel model that would help change health care delivery for the better!
Tags: Alternative medicine, Dr. Greg Eckel, Health care reform, health insurance, natural medicine
Posted in Alternative medicine, Articles by our Doctors, Conventional medicine, Dr. Greg Eckel, Health care reform, Miscellaneous, Naturopathic medicine | 2 Comments »
Tell President Obama why the U.S. needs naturopaths
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010
The American Association of Naturopathic Physicians is working to give voice to naturopathic medicine at the national level, by asking President Obama to appoint a naturopath to a new 25-member health advisory board. As naturopathic medicine continues to gain respect among more conventional practitioners, we believe this is a step in the right direction.
More support at the national level could give naturopathic patients like you louder a voice too, hopefully encouraging more insurance companies to support the preventative care that naturopaths provide.
Here’s an excerpt from AANP’s website:
“The new health care reform law includes the creation of many councils and advisory groups who will be tasked with creating policy and programs. AANP has nominated naturopathic physician Dr. Tara Levy to serve on one of these advisory groups. Having an ND participate in the design of health and wellness policy will significantly change the future of health care in this country for generations to come. Please let President Obama know how naturopathic medicine has changed your life, and ask him to name Dr. Levy to the “National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council Advisory Board.”
Your ND, like Dr. Levy, works every day to transform lives. It’s time they had a say in transforming our health care system.”
If you’d like to send a letter in support of naturopathic medicine to President Obama, AANP is making it easy for you to do. Click here to go to their form letter.
Thanks for supporting naturopathic medicine!
Tags: American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, Health care reform, Naturopathic medicine, President Obama
Posted in Articles by our Doctors, Health care reform, Health News Headlines | Comments Off
New Editorial on Health Care Reform
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
Dr. Greg Nigh recently wrote and published an editorial on health care reform. You can check it out online at opednews.com. Even more important than reading it, though, is to follow through on the suggestions there. If the government is unable to pass meaningful reform, we can still reform our personal health care.
Tags: Health care reform
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Reform Health Care, and Start With Your Own
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
A substantial overhaul of our national disease management system is now highly unlikely. What we will get is possibly an alteration in its financing. Perhaps insurance companies will form cooperatives, perhaps the government will pay for the treatment of more currently uninsured individuals, perhaps some costs will be contained with malpractice reform.
And of course, those changes are desperately needed. Medical bills are, by a large margin, the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States. It is a strong testament to the fundamental flaws of our system that two-thirds of those filing bankruptcy due to medical bills had health insurance.
Meaningful health care reform may not happen at the national level for many decades to come. However, there’s another way to reform health care in this country. It’s not reform that starts at the top level of government and trickles down to individuals. It is reform that starts with each individual. And someday, eventually, it might just trickle all the way up to the top. (more…)
Tags: Diet, disease prevention, Health care reform, Naturopathic medicine, Nutrition
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Big Pharma’s unspoken influence on health care and other musings
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
In a recent NY Times article students at Harvard medical school were surprised at the extent big pharma had on their education. In recent grades Harvard received an F for failure to disclose the conflicts of interest of their lecturers among other things. We have discussed this topic in our podcast ‘Nemesis of Medicine‘. This marriage of the pharma industry and medical education institutions is sadly absent from the current discussion of health care reform.
Tags: Big Pharma, Health care reform, medical politics, Medical school, Naturopathic medicine
Posted in Articles by our Doctors, Homepage Articles (old site) | Comments Off