Limited medical insurance options will be an issue for people with chronic dieases

As 2017 begins to draw to a close, along with holidays and getting ready for a new year, many families are also attempting to find health insurance that will work for them as a family in the upcoming year. However, many of these families are being surprised by the lack of options and families with specific needs are unable to find insurance that covers possibly lifesaving medication, leaving them in situations where there seems to be no answer.

For the upcoming year, there is only company in the state of Nebraska that is offering insurance independent of a work place or another similar program. This leaves families with a couple of options, either chose to go with insurance through a work place or buy insurance from Medica, the one company offering independent insurance in the state of Nebraska. This amount of options has even fallen from last year, when there were two private insurance companies in the state of Nebraska. Nebraska is not the only state facing a lack of insurance options. Last year, other states were dropping to no private insurance options, leaving people with only being able to get insurance through an employer.

The fewer number of options is not the only problem, as the rates to buy a plan have also skyrocketed meaning the plans that cover more expensive medical equipment and treatments are not affordable for those who need them. Premiums, or the amount of money a person pays per month to have health insurance, have risen, meaning a person has to pay more to get an insurance plan. Not only is this cost rising, but prescription benefits are being taken away and deductibles are rising.

Prescription benefits means the insurance company lowers the price of medicines, such as an EpiPen, so that way people who need the medicine to survive are able to afford it. When the insurance company takes these benefits away, the patient is then forced to pay the full price for that medicine. Additionally, a deductible is the amount of money a person has to pay for medical treatment or supplies before the insurance company begins to cover it. As a deductible rises, it becomes more difficult to reach meaning that people are paying more before the insurance will cover anything.

As health insurance becomes more expensive it become difficult for people with medical conditions to get the coverage they need to pay for treatment. For people who have chronic illness, or conditions that will not go away, this overpriced health care can lead to someone not being able to afford equipment that could help them better control their condition.

For the past four years, options for health care have been dwindling and price has been sky rocketing. Every year there are fewer options for people to choose from, and people need to pay more money to get fewer benefits. This is due, in part, to new standards of healthcare that are causing prices to rise and companies to stop selling in certain areas.

New regulations on what needs to be provided in certain healthcare plans makes it so the plans are less differentiated, allowing consumers to pick more of what they want or don’t want, and instead providing a base line of what needs to be provided in any plan. While what some of the required aspects are important, things that people with chronic illnesses need, but others don’t, are being dropped on nearly, if not all, insurance plans, leaving those people with no options to get the treatment they need to survive.

Before regulations were in place requiring companies to include certain benefits, those benefits were being covered in plans. However, once plans that did not include those benefits were forced to, than the benefits that were covered for only a couple of plans were lost due to price. When it comes

down to it, the regulations on health insurance are barely helping the system and instead causing the medical treatment needed for those with chronic illnesses to not be covered at all. It is important that plans offer basic benefits, but basic benefits were being offered in almost all plans previous to the requirements, and the requirements have ruined the other differences from those insurance plans.