#1 Don’t Smoke

Quitting smoking, or never starting in the first place, is one of the healthiest things you can do for your body and for those around you. Not only does smoking cause lung cancer, it puts you at risk for all sorts of different types of cancer including throat cancer and mouth cancer. Secondhand smoke also put your loved ones at risk. It’s never too late to quit, talk to your doctor today.

#2 Live an Active Lifestyle

Thirty minutes of exercise a day can make all the difference, from swimming laps in the pool to taking a leisurely walk in your neighborhood. Living a sedentary lifestyle puts you at risk for many types of cancer, as well as obesity. Incorporate 30 minutes of exercise into your daily routine and you will see results. Change up your exercise so it doesn’t get mundane, eventually you will look forward to this 30 minutes of “me time.”

#3 Trust Your Gut Feeling

Although many disregard digestive troubles as nothing more than an annoyance or an embarrassment, it could actually be an indicator of poor health. How your gut functions is a fairly accurate indication of health in the rest of the body. If you’re experiencing frequent heart burn, feelings of fullness, bloating, indigestion, or gas, these may be warning signs for a more serious problem affecting your body. Do not ignore these telltale signs as they may be your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong.  If you feel like your digestive system is out of whack, a visit to your doctor may be in order.

#4 Eat Well-Balanced Meals

Mom was right after all for making you eat all your fruits and veggies. Many fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants, or cancer-preventing properties, including berries, pomegranates, grapes, spinach, red beets and more. A diet low in fat and high in protein is ideal for keeping your body functioning properly, so make sure to include servings of fruits and veggies with every meal.

While red meat may be delicious, it is not the best for our bodies. Limit your intake of red meat to special occasions, if possible. Red meats are high in fat and can increase the risk for certain types of cancer including colon cancer.

#5 Don’t Forget to Slather Up

Perhaps one of the easiest, yet the most overlooked health precautions is wearing sunscreen. We spend so much time in the sun on a day to day basis that it should come as no surprise that skin cancer is the most common type of cancer in the United States. Although skin cancer is easily avoided, one in five Americans will develop skin cancer over the course of their lifetime.

Follow these easy tips for lowering your risk of skin cancer:

1. Take the time to apply sunscreen daily.
2. If you are going to be in the sun for a prolonged period of time, wear a wide-brimmed hat.
3. Avoid tanning beds at all costs.

Dental health is important in overall health, and fewer Americans opt for dental coverage as opposed to health insurance coverage, despite its importance.

While there is much to be excited about in the new health reform law, one critical piece of care is still going to be missing for millions of Americans: Dental care.   An estimated 132 million Americans are without dental insurance (compared to the 47 million without health insurance).

While many Americans perceive dental insurance as a luxury they cannot afford or oral health problems as a minor inconvenience, anyone who has ever had a toothache knows better.   Oral health problems can be painful, but they also have some big implications for the rest of our body.  For example. poor oral health can lead to heart disease.  In 2007, a young boy from Washington DC died after an infection from a molar spread to his brain, prompting outrage.

The Importance of Dental Coverage

Oral health problems are also a significant issue for employers and educators.  Studies tell us that over seven million days of work are missed every year in this country because of oral health problems.  Oral health problems are the leading cause of missed school days for children.  And oral health problems are a significant problem for older adults.  Many seniors are surprised to learn that Medicare does not pay for routine dental care.

States Cutting Dental Benefits

The truly bad news is that all these problems may become worse before they get better.  In response to budgetary woes, a number of states have cut dental benefits for their Medicaid populations in recent years.  For example, California no longer covers optional adult dental care under its Medicaid program (recipients can get badly needed care such as extractions).  While federal health reform expands eligibility for Medicaid, this may be challenging because so few dentists will see patients covered under the program.

The new law does provide subsidies to help adults obtain overall health care coverage.  Such subsidies indirectly could help Californians pay for dental treatment by lessening the financial burden of medical care, but with 132 million Americans without coverage for their teeth, there is still a long road ahead.

photo credit: Joaquin Villaverde

Under the current health insurance system and until the new law takes effect in 2014, it is the most difficult to get insurance when you try to purchase it as an individual or family (as opposed to getting the coverage through your employer).   In the “individual market” people are routinely denied coverage for certain conditions or denied coverage altogether for a long list of preexisting conditions.

Why Do Companies Deny Health Insurance Coverage?

While this practice makes insurance companies appear heartless, the practice has historically existed to help keep insurance rates lower for other customers and to keep the insurance company solvent.  If a person with any physical aliment could buy insurance at any time, many might wait until they are very sick to buy insurance, generating large medical bills.  The way insurance works today, the customers’ premiums are pooled together to collectively cover everyone’s health care expenses.  This helps the insurance company spread the risk and ensure the solvency of the pool.

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Most Americans with health insurance can relate to this scenario: you get the bill from the doctor’s office or the imaging center, you open it and wham!  How did that one procedure end up costing so much? And how come you have to pay that much of it?  Despite having insurance, many of us have policies that require co-pays or co-insurance.  Yet most of us don’t know the difference.

A co-pay is a fixed amount that you pay each time you see a doctor while co-insurance is the percentage of the cost of doctor visits, hospitalizations (and prescription drugs) that you must pay under your insurance policy.  So, if you give birth via c-section and the bill comes out to $10,000, and your co-insurance is 80/20, you’re going to be paying $2,000 yourself, typically referred to as “out of pocket.”

Co-insurance

Co-insurance is common; according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, over half of all Americans with coverage through their employer have co-insurance.  Older Americans and women are more likely to have the highest “out of pocket” costs for care.   They frequently have more trips to the doctor and need more medical care, resulting in more co-payments and co-insurance payments.

This fall, heading into open enrollment, consumers can take steps to limit their financial risk.  Some plans offer a limit on the amount the patient can pay out of pocket.  Several online sites provide calculators to help you understand the real costs of choosing a particular policy, when you consider all the factors.

Come 2014, the new health care reform law will set some limits on the total amount consumers will pay out of pocket, but until then, it is important to continue to read the fine print.

photo credit: Anil Mohabir

The rising cost of family health insurance has dramatically outpaced that of family incomes, as you can see in this historical graph.

The President really has his work cut out for him lately selling health care reform; it is hard for the average American to get excited about the new law when those who buy their own coverage are facing a 20 percent increase in their health insurance premiums.  Those covered by their employers (in the “group market”) have seen their rates rise as well.  If we have finally started to fix this mess why is health care getting more expensive not less?

So Why are Health Insurance Costs Going Up?

The answer is simple and complex at the same time.  At the most basic level, health insurance premiums are going up because the cost of health care is rising.  And during this recession people who don’t need a lot of care (the “young and healthies”) are opting to forego coverage, making the current pool of insured in the individual market older and sicker on average.  A slightly more sinister explanation is that insurance companies may be playing off consumer fears of health care reform, and trying to make strong profits before several provisions in the new law actually take effect.

But sticking with the most basic explanation for a moment, why do health care costs continue to rise?  The answer to this question is less simple.  Many experts believe our health care system continues to provide care that is excessive, ineffective or even unneeded.

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An illustration of how Health Care Reform will manage high-risk individuals who were denied coverage. The federal government has stepped in to increase the amount of funding for high-risk pools, but the type of coverage will vary by state.

The great news is that, come 2014, no one will be denied health insurance because of a preexisting condition.   The less-than-good-news, for people shopping for their own insurance who have diabetes, asthma, or even a pregnancy, is that 2014 is still more than three years away.

Under existing law in many states, insurance companies can turn down individuals for a wide variety of preexisting medical conditions.   Some will offer coverage with a preexisting condition exclusion or a waiting period; they won’t cover a medical expense associated with that condition for an extended period of time.

Why Insurance Companies Deny Coverage for Preexisting Conditions

Insurance companies have a very smart reason to take a hard look at preexisting conditions.   In a totally free market, people would have an incentive to buy insurance when they get sick to cover their bills, but not purchase it when they are healthy.  This works fine for the individual, but not for others covered by the same insurance, because the very concept of insurance relies on the company being able to spread risk among healthy (ier) and unhealthy patients.

Health Reform Offers Insurance for All – Regardless of Condition

In 2014, when the new health reform law goes into effect, denial of coverage will no longer be an issue, because the law requires everyone to have insurance.  “Everyone into the pool!”, including the young and healthy helps spread the risk, so that insurers can cover the 67-year-old diabetic without him bankrupting the system.

So what can individuals do from now until 2014 if they have a pre-existing condition and cannot get individual coverage?   Under health reform, many states have already begun to create or expand their ”high risk” pools – an option for people denied coverage.   In other parts of the country, individuals can enroll directly into the government’s new Preexisting Condition Insurance Plan, or they can request a quote for coverage here.

In many cases, coverage for those who are usually denied coverage is not cheap — not even close.  But it is coverage and a bridge to get us to 2014 when there will no longer be “pre-existing” conditions and insurance rates won’t vary based upon one’s health status.