Private health insurance in Louisville?

My real problem with private insurance is - as Leann refers to - basically a fundamental problem I have with the system in the US:

The idea that health care be determined by wealth and not need is profoundly immoral. I'm confident that after serious discussion most people would agree. (not all, of course)

I'm sure Community Health Centers are adequate in certain situations, but for many they are inadequate. And many of us are just a serious illness away from bankruptcy. (whether currently insured or not). We should not accept such a system complacently.

(On an aside note here, I was talking with someone tonight who just had a heart attack last week. He's on passport insurance due to extremely low income. He has used ER's throughout his life, whether he has insurance at the time or he doesn't. He said he just makes paper airplanes out of the bills when he gets them.

In a situation such as his, I suspect he gets comparable care during the emergency, and inferior care following (lack of access to specialists, longer waits, etc). I also wonder about the frequency and quality of his preventative care. Simple things like long waits or rushed staff can be enough to deter people from making that extra visit to the doctor when it may not seem essential.

EDIT: doing some research on Passport (for Medicaid in Kentucky) and it looks like they're one of the better programs in the country. We may be pretty fortunate here!

I'll definitely talk to him further next time I see him.

No particular point on the side note, just relaying a conversation from tonight. It is a learning process, and listening is a good way to learn)

P.S., lacking health insurance presently, my actions are primarily preventative. I don't smoke or drink, I eat a well-thought out and researched near-vegan diet, and I exercise vigorously 6 days per week (weight training, karate, jiu-jitsu, and sparring). Additionally, I make time to relax, and get extra enjoyment and exercise with my two kids (ages 2 and 7). The goal is to make it to age 100 or so...haven't seen a doc in two plus years, and that was for a check-up. Glad that the weather is getting nice. I'll add some running, biking, hiking and hoops in the park to my exercise. .

Cheers - Enjoy the weather!!

My daughter lives in the UK. She has a couple of on-going health issues (not life threatening thank goodness) and has been very pleased with the healthcare system the UK has in place. Not only does the system work better but the doctors are more interested in treating the patient rather than using the patient as a vehicle for pharmaceutical consumption. Doctors in London scoffed at the way US doctors overly medicated her situation, cut out most of her prescribed medications, changed her diet and some life habits and her health is now much better than it ever was here in the states.
I honestly think that here our doctors are too close to the pharmaceutical companies and make too many decisions based on 'kick-backs' or whatever new drug they've bought stock in. The system is so whacked out that doctors can no longer make a living being a doctor, they have to resort to manipulating the system.

Not surprisingly, the conversation veered off the road a bit here from my original question about private health insurance.

In case anybody's interested, there are private options available. The first place I checked was with the agent who's handling our auto/home policy. Sure enough, she was able to give me a quote, although not with a company I was familiar with. The price seemed fair. Then I set out to do a little research on the web.

I've read a lot about online insurance aggregators, specifically ehealth.com, so I checked them out. On their home page for Kentucky they claim to offer 228 health plans with 20 carriers starting from $41 a month. You can get a general idea how much you'll pay for insurance without making a commitment by typing in some information about yourself. I did, and the prices seemed fairly reasonable, the with the most reasonable carrier Anthem.

I ended up going directly to Anthem's website and completing most of the transaction online. I'll have to admit that there's a dizzying array of options available, so if you're not comfortable doing this yourself you should probably find a broker.

Not surprisingly, the conversation veered off the road a bit here from my original question about private health insurance.

In case anybody's interested, there are private options available. The first place I checked was with the agent who's handling our auto/home policy. Sure enough, she was able to give me a quote, although not with a company I was familiar with. The price seemed fair. Then I set out to do a little research on the web.

I've read a lot about online insurance aggregators, specifically ehealth.com, so I checked them out. On their home page for Kentucky they claim to offer 228 health plans with 20 carriers starting from $41 a month. You can get a general idea how much you'll pay for insurance without making a commitment by typing in some information about yourself. I did, and the prices seemed fairly reasonable, the with the most reasonable carrier Anthem.

I ended up going directly to Anthem's website and completing most of the transaction online. I'll have to admit that there's a dizzying array of options available, so if you're not comfortable doing this yourself you should probably find a broker.

Another reason to have a broker (otherwise known as agent) is that if they're good, they can give you useful advice based on what they've seen. They're paid by the insurance companies, so totally free for you (yup, ten percent or more of your monthly premium goes to pay the broker, and if you go straight to anthem then that ten percent just goes straight to anthem. Actually, in Arizona, where I worked, Blue Cross paid 15%, every month, for the life of the policy - often years).

In short, a good agent is extremely valuable in this process. And I don't mean a friendly one. I mean one who knows their stuff.

Cheers

Based on comments from AnneMarie and Nimbus, it it fair to say that the quality of care at Community Health Centers is prone to be inconsistent, depending upon where (and when) one goes??