Living and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is always something that should be a top priority. Your body is the only one you are going to get in this lifetime, and you should always be thinking about how to take the best care of it. Ladies, when you’re having to think about being healthy for two (and no we aren’t talking about fretting over your partner’s alarming disdain for vegetables), your health is more important than ever.

Your body is home to a tiny, dependent little being, and making sure you have the best of resources available to you should be your top priority. Your baby needs frequent and adequate checkups from the moment of conception, and this can quickly get expensive if you don’t have health insurance during pregnancy. But sometimes figuring out the best health insurance for you and your soon-to-be new addition isn’t simple and straightforward.

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You hear whispers of it on the wind, legends of time where one person saw one doctor, who knew all of their past ailments, and truly cared about their health and well being. This standard has seemed to have fallen by the wayside in the recent years, among all the chaos and hubbub of the current United States healthcare system. Doctors now get paid per patient they see per day, so crammed waiting rooms, curt visits and impersonal service have become the norm, and we have gotten so used to it that we haven’t even considered an alternate way of doing things. But take of your goggles of disbelief, because a more personal, cozy model of health care is being buzzed about.

What is the Medical Home Model?

Three years ago, the healthcare guru’s over at IBM started looking at what they were doing to improve the quality of life for their employees and realizing they were overlooking a crucial component: healthcare. After realizing this crucial change that needed to be addressed, the director of healthcare transformation at IBM, Dr. Paul Grundy, helped found the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative (PCPCC). This coalition of large employers, consumer organizations and medical providers developed the Medical Home model, and its combination of old school patient care combined with the latest in medical communication technology makes this unique and optimistic proposal for healthcare. Under the Medical Home proposition, one doctor would act as a coach for the team of specialists treating one patient, including things like preventative, holistic and wellness needs. More time is spent with the patients in person than you are probably getting from your doctor now, and the doctor is accessible on the phone and via e-mail in addition to extended office hours and coordination of care across the entire medical team.

Advanced Technology and Medical Care

The sharing of a patient’s health information via an EHR, or electronic health record, is an integral part of how the Medical Home model works. An EHR can help to reduce errors, eliminate duplicate tests, highlight drug interactions, improve overall quality of care and reduce costs. This interweb of information can allow a patient to access a web portal to schedule appointments and check their lab results, patient registries and e-prescriptions. With the click of a mouse, information about a patient’s health can be shared across a network of healthcare providers, and patients can always stay in the know about their treatment, doctor recommendations and medications by hopping online or picking up the phone. Instead of wasting precious free time that most of us don’t have, you would be able to utilize the tools readily available to you in the form of your phone and computer to stay in touch with your physician. Doctors would get extra money for being available for the patients in odd hours, and offices can get a little bit more money by implementing the technological changes necessary to upgrade the office. Phone and e-mail consultations would be reimbursed.

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Bankruptcy is no picnic. Having to legally declare yourself officially broke in hopes of someday cleaning your slate and getting back on your feet isn’t easy for anyone, and there are always countless contributing, individual factors as to why someone finds themselves whispering “bankrupt.” For those who gamble away their savings, lose their homes and drink away the last of their pennies, they are left to lie in a bed of their own making. However, President Elect Obama is proposing a dramatic change in some legislature which would help those people and families who had to file bankruptcy because of medical bills. What does this mean for the average American and is it really as good as it seems?

A Bankruptcy Reprieve

If you were to take a peek at Obama’s economic agenda, you’d see this listed in a bullet point: “Obama and Biden will create an exemption in bankruptcy law for individuals who can prove they filed for bankruptcy because of medical expenses. This exemption will create a process that forgives the debt and lets the individuals get back on their feet.” Taken from the horse’s mouth, or as close to that as we can get before Obama takes office, this seems like a dream scenario. If you are someone who has had to give up everything to spend down to the last penny on medical expenses for your loved one (partially covered by your health insurance or not), this may seem like the savings grace you have been dreaming of. But are all people in this scenario: virtuous, thrifty spenders who have only gone into such horrendous debt due to medical bills?

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