Health Insurance - A Boon To Mankind

By Keith Baxter

Insurance is a good way of keeping yourself from going broke. Life insurance lets your family keep living a comfortable life after you die. Fire insurance helps you get on with your life after a fire. Auto insurance helps you get back on the road after getting into an accident. These days, there are all kinds of different insurance packages you can buy. This makes me wonder why health insurance lags behind all the other kinds. After all, it is very important and popular. Its purpose is to pay medical bills.

The principle that allows insurance to exist is loss sharing. Simply put, many people seek insurance, and they all pay the insurance company. These payments are called premiums. The company then promises to pay them much more than their premium in the unexpected event that whatever the insurance is for occurs. This promise of possible payment is called a policy. The three most common types of insurance are (1) life insurance, (2) private health insurance, and (3) property liability insurance.

Health insurance captured little attention before the 1920as. Before health insurance was widespread, the most common way of dealing with unexpected illness was to spend personal savings, borrow money, and sometimes to go without medical attention due to lack of money. One early solution was for doctors to accept payments in instalments, but this caused its own set of problems when patients died before finishing their treatments and left their families with their debts. Lack of money to cure treatable illnesses was so widespread that several illnesses became known by a slang term, aRich Manas Diseasea. In those days, the term insurance was synonymous with life insurance. Perhaps it was that the idea that insuring anything besides life was so foreign, or perhaps it was because the average person prior to the 1920as wouldnat have been able to afford the necessary premiums. Perhaps trust in providence was strong enough that average people did not worry about falling ill. Whatever the reasons, life before health insurance must have been painful at times.

Since those early times, the insurance industry had undergone radical changes, especially concerning healthcare. Modern health insurance pays for at least the partial cost of hospitalization, surgery, laboratory tests, medicines, along with other medical costs. It is possible that insurance is more necessary than it was in the past because with rising medical costs all around, very few illnesses are affordable for the average person. Luckily for us, help is easier to secure these days. Health insurance has most likely been a large factor in decreasing mortality rates. It is kind of ironic how a man with life insurance can die of no health insurance and still make his beneficiaries rich.

These days, insurance is also available for health related issues not directly involving life and death. For example, one can now purchase disability income insurance and dental expense insurance. Disability income insurance is like life insurance before death, allowing buyers to support themselves and their families while they are sick or injured. Dental expense insurance is part of a preventative insurance industry that aids buyers in staying healthy to prevent illness. These other types of health insurance are usually purchased by employers on behalf of their employees. These combined insurances make becoming sick much easier on todayas well covered employees. All the employee need do is accept treatment, while the finances are taken care of for them. The flip side of this new convenience is the markup that occurs when it is companies with bottomless pockets that must foot todayas medical bills. In my observation, this contributes to the inflation of medical services.

Even though medical costs have gone up possibly as a result of insurance, for those who are covered by insurance costs are quite low. This is because of the intense competition between the financial institutions that provide the insurance. Insurance companies know that consumers need, value, and want health insurance. The widespread availability of health insurance seems to contribute to the peace of mind of all mankind.

Health insurance for the artists and medical supplemental insurance are a common sight these days. Artists and performers insuring that part of their body, which is crucial to the continuance of their livelihood, is very common these days. A dancer insuring his legs, an actor insuring his teeth or other visible parts which are crucial to his overall personality and popularly is not unheard of.

In general, compared to old times, where health check ups and other treatments were at a premium and paying huge bills was a remote possible, times have changed drastically now and humanity in general can heave a big sigh of relief that come what may, there are doctors for every ailment and multi-specialty hospitals ready and eager to serve and tend him back to health during times of need and emergency. Long live the insurance industry and so also the health industry.

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