Preventative Health Care

Free Preventative Health Care is Not Free

“Access to Free preventive health care services”: This is a quote from a website promoting the benefits of ObamaCare or the “Affordable Care Act” (ACA). In life, most of us know that there is no free lunch. The same goes for preventive care benefits. Do you really believe preventive health care such as mammograms, physical examinations conducted by a Doctor, blood tests, and cancer screenings done in a lab are free from the provider of those services? No, of course not! Neither are they free on a health insurance plan.

Free?

Look at it this way: Let’s just say that our car insurance had to provide “free” maintenance services under our car insurance plan. This would mean we would take our cars into wherever we like to go for these services, and get our oil changes with filters, tire rotation, wheel alignments, etc. and it is all covered on our insurance. “FREE!” What would happen to our behavior? First of all, more people would take better care of their cars because it is “FREE.” This would mean more cars going into the car repair or oil change shop. In return, this would mean longer waits when we do go. Do you think the car repair man would lower his prices because they have so many cars coming in? Probably not! So, we would have more cars being taken care of, which would mean longer waits and higher pricing because it is quote-on-quote “FREE”. Then, what would happen to the costs? Now since it is “FREE”, do the employees of these car service shops get paid? Or is that “FREE”? If they do get paid, who pays them? The car service shop owners will be paid with the “FREE” service money from the car insurance companies. But, where is the car insurance company getting their money? Is this beneficial to the car service shop? Not really. On top of all of that the car insurance company must spend 80 cents of every dollar they take in, or if they don’t, they must give it back to the insured. So they can only make a certain profit that the government tells them they can make. What happens to their employees when raises need to be given, or they need to hire new people to meet the demand since everyone has to buy car insurance? The answer is simple: they wouldn’t survive.

You likely get it by now: these services are NOT free! They cost money and the people who deliver them are getting paid (as well they should!) Any third grader in math class can tell you this math problem is not solvable the way we have been told. The government is telling us that Preventive Health Care Services are now FREE under the Affordable Care Act. No, all these third graders would tell you, the costs are higher in every way, the wait for service will be longer and the risk of business failure and thus consumer prices being much higher are built into the system. We shouldn’t be deceived.

Transitioning into the Affordable Care Act

So what can we do? There are solutions today. Getting a health plan today is one of them. We have a top health insurance carrier who has announced that if you purchase an individual plan with an April 1, 2013 effective date or after, you may keep this plan with a rate guarantee until December 31, 2014. Most people we talk with every day sincerely believe that their health insurance is “FREE” provided from our government; it is NOT and will NOT be. Some solutions are better than others, we are tuned into the daily U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) updates and can help you with your questions about the Affordable Care Act.