Westhill Consulting Insurance

A nonprofit organization the three work with known as Health Care Cost Institute, a nonpartisan research organization, said the insurance companies will develop and provide consumers "free access to an online tool that will offer consumers the most comprehensive information about the price and quality of health care services." Additional health plans could soon join Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealth in the effort. The move by the insurance companies comes as more Americans gain health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile, these newly insured Americans and those already with coverage are demanding more information about the cost of care as deductibles and co-payments rise and they pay more out of their own pockets for medical services and treatments. "This unprecedented initiative is testament to our belief that educated consumers benefit the entire health care system," UnitedHealth Group said in a statement to Forbes. The information on prices will also include information about quality and other information in an effort to help health care become more transparent. "Consumers, employers and regulatory agencies will now have a single source of consistent, transparent health care information based on the most reliable data available, including actual costs, which only insurers currently have," David Newman, the Health Care Cost Institute's executive director said in a statement issued this morning. There will be three tiers of information provided. In one tier, any consumer will get average price information for an "episode of care" such as a knee replacement or heart surgery based on complex coding and claims data submitted to and analyzed by the Institute. In another tier, consumers with coverage from Aetna, Humana or UnitedHealth Group will get more detailed price information given the health plan subscribers in their plans already have a relationship with the companies and therefore more specific information on their networ

Wearable Technology: The Coming Revolution in  Healthcare The year 2014 may well go down as the year of wearable technology. The impact of wearables is already being felt in education, communication, navigating, and entertainment; but perhaps the greatest potential lies in healthcare. Wearable technology has started to revolutionize healthcare by assisting doctors in the operating room and providing real time access to electronic health records. The full potential of wearable technology in healthcare, though, goes well beyond directly assisting doctors. Patients can now continuously monitor their own health. At the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Sony, LG and Garmin introduced devices that track everything from heart rate and blood pressure to a patient's O2 saturation. By 2018, the overall number of wearable devices shipped to consumers is expected to reach 130 million. With such acceptance on the part of the public, wearables are perhaps the perfect application for healthcare.

Does health insurance increase your lifespan? Felue Chang, who is newly insured under an insurance plan through the Affordable Care Act, receives a checkup from Dr. Peria Del Pino-White at the South Broward Community Health Services clinic on April 15 in Hollywood, Fla. The mortality rate in Massachusetts declined substantially in the four years after the state enacted a law in 2006 mandating universal health care coverage, providing the model for the Affordable Care Act. In a study released last week, Harvard School of Public Health professors Benjamin Sommers, Sharon Long and Katherine Baicker conclude that "health reform in Massachusetts was associated with a significant decrease in all-cause mortality." The authors caution that their conclusions, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, may not apply to all states, and other studies have shown little correlation between having insurance and living longer. Nevertheless, the Harvard study adds to a growing body of evidence that having health insurance increases a person's life expectancy.

Hep C Cure Costs Pose Challenge for Medicare By Richard Knox NPR   Walter Bianco has had hepatitis C for 40 years, and his time is running out. "The liver is at the stage next to becoming cirrhotic," the 65-year-old Arizona contractor says. Cirrhosis is severe scarring, whether from alcoholism or a chronic viral infection. It's a fateful step closer to liver failure or liver cancer. If he develops one of these complications, the only possible solution would be a hard-to-get liver transplant. "The alternative," Bianco says, "is death." Previous drug treatments didn't clear the virus from Bianco's system. But it's almost certain that potent new drugs for hep C could cure him. However, the private insurer that handles his medication coverage for the federal Medicare program has twice refused to pay for the drugs his doctor has prescribed. Doctors are seeing more and more patients approaching the end-stage of hep C infection. "There isn't day that goes by when I don't have a story very similar to Mr. Bianco's," says Dr. Hugo Vargas of Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz., his liver specialist. Researchers estimate that 3 to 5 million Americans carry the insidious hep C virus. The biggest concentration is among those born between 1945 and 1965.

Practical Saver: Tips for saving money on healthcare By KARA ROZENDAAL Courier Columnist Changes in the health insurance arena have many consumers scrambling for affordable options. Don't despair; there are still ways to save significant money on healthcare. Below are a few medical resources that Prescott has to offer, as well as tips on how to pay less at the doctor's office, and an alternative to health insurance. To save money on premiums, many families opt for higher-deductible health insurance policies. High deductibles generally equate to lower monthly insurance premiums. However, in exchange, the majority of the medical expenses are paid out of pocket. In the case where doctor's visits and medical treatment are paid out-of-pocket, you can save money by asking the medical office if there is a cash pay discount. When a patient pays cash and the business doesn't need to submit the claim to the insurance company, it saves the office time.

WEDNESDAY, May 7, 2014 (Health Day News) - there will be almost twice as many elderly Americans in 2050 as there are now, posing serious issues for the nation's health care system, according to two U.S. Census Bureau reports released Tuesday. "The United States is projected to age significantly over this period, with 20 percent of its population age 65 and over by 2030," Jennifer Ortman, chief of the Population Projections Branch at the census bureau, said in an agency news release. The number of people aged 65 and older is projected to reach 83.7 million by 2050, compared with 43.1 million in 2012, the bureau reported. This sharp rise is due to aging baby boomers, which were born between 1946 and 1964 and began turning 65 in 2011. An aging population "will have implications for health care services and providers, national and local policymakers," Ortman added. She said businesses will also have to adapt to meet new demands as a rising number of elderly influences both the "family structure and the American landscape." Baby boomer-influenced growth in health-care related industries began a few years ago, the agency said. According to the census bureau, there were about 819,000 health and social assistance-related facilities and businesses in 2011 - a 20 percent jump from 2007.

Entrepreneurs' Outlook for the Healthcare Cloud Is ... Cloudy I've written sunny posts about the opportunity for entrepreneurs in key areas of digital healthcare: health & fitness wearables and healthcare transparency businesses. The "healthcare cloud" is a third major area of innovation, but here the opportunities for entrepreneurs will be fewer and will carry more risk. [Disclosure: New Atlantic Ventures in which I am a partner has an investment in one of the four companies cited below: TruVeris.] First, the pro's: the idea of putting data and applications in the cloud is taking hold throughout the IT world, including healthcare. Payers and providers get the fact that they are being held accountable for managing cost and outcomes for groups of people ("Population Management") and they are working hard to master this problem, which creates strong need to collect and analyze data from many sources in one logical database. And cloud technologies promise to both lower costs by strengthening care coordination, and to improve clinical outcomes, e.g., analysis of medical data in the cloud has revealed drug interactions that were not previously understood (1) Read more http://www.westhillinsuranceconsulting.com/

Avinash, a businessman, knows how to deal with all kinds of clients. Avinash, a businessman, knows how to deal with all kinds of clients. However, his inexperience in finding good health insurance policies has landed him in trouble a couple of times. In the recent past, he hasn't been able to keep an eye on the rising premiums of his health coverage and ended up spending much more than he should have. It is essential for you to go through the policy premium rates from time to time. Several strategies can be adopted for reducing the premium over a period of time. Rising health insurance policy premiums could be devastating because you would end up spending a big part of your income in paying them. We buy a health insurance policy to secure our future in case of a medical emergency. Even if you can't control expenses with respect to sickness, you can definitely control the rising health cover premiums. Avoid a policy with claim holding Insurance firms are known to charge a huge amount of premium to cover the client, considering it is going to cover the entire cost if the policy benefits are claimed. Sometimes, when you claim the policy benefits, your insurance provider hikes the premiums for the next year. So, it becomes imperative to go for an insurance policy that entails lower burden. For keeping a tab on premiums, it is recommended to opt for a family floater policy. These coverage policies can be taken for all your family members. They are much cheaper as the premiums are divided and you have to pay on an individual basis. Family floater insurance policies come with a two-year waiting period and some of the diseases/disorders that are covered during that time are all kinds of duodenal or gastric ulcers, sinuses, hemorrhoids, fibromyoma, hysterectomy, cataracts, endometriosis, hernia, etc. Opt for a policy with high

February 25, 2014 - The Internal Revenue Service is offering educational Health Care Tax Tips to help individuals understand how the Affordable Care Act may affect their taxes. The IRS has designed the Health Care Tax Tips to help people understand what they need to know for the federal individual income tax returns they are filing this year, as well as for future tax returns. This includes information on the Premium Tax Credit and making health care coverage choices. Although many of the tax provisions included in the law went into effect on Jan. 1, 2014, most do not affect the 2013 tax returns. The Health Care Tax Tips, which are now available at IRS.gov/aca, include: * IRS Reminds Individuals of Health Care Choices for 2014? Find out what you need to know about how health care choices you make for 2014 may affect your taxes. * The Health Insurance Marketplace - Learn about Your Health Insurance Coverage Options - Find out about getting health care coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace. * The Premium Tax Credit? Learn the basics of the Premium Tax Credit, including who might be eligible and how to get the credit. * The Individual Shared Responsibility Payment - An Overview? Provides information about types of qualifying coverage, exemptions from having coverage, and making a payment if you do not have qualifying coverage or an exemption. * Three Timely Tips about Taxes and the Health Care Law? Provides tips that help with filing the 2013 tax return, including information about employment status, tax favored health plans and itemized deductions. * Four Tax Facts about the Health Care Law for Individuals? Offers basic tips to help people determine if the Affordable Care Act affects them and their families, and where to find more information. * Changes in Circumstances can Affect your Premium Tax Credit? Learn the importance of reporting any changes in circumstances that inv

The needs of elderly parents can surprise even those who are prepared, but you don't have to support your family alone Adult children of older parents should prepare financially for the costs of care and travel. Photograph: Alamy We all want to age like the late Pete Seeger, who celebrated his 90th birthday performing onstage in front of thousands of adoring fans of all ages at Madison Square Garden, and went on to entertain the Newport Jazz Festival audiences a few months later. In our pragmatic moments, we know that the odds of living that long and in such good health aren't in our favor. We know we need to plan not only to live longer but perhaps to spend more time in costly nursing homes or care facilities. It's not just ourselves we have to worry about. Failing to develop a plan to help our parents in their final years could deliver a similar kind of blow to our emotional and financial wellbeing. In the last few months, I've watched three friends, ranging in age from their 40s to the early 60s, scramble to resolve non-medical problems for their parents. In all cases, that meant forking out on costly airfares to be there in person; in one case, it required money to hire a new accountant. "I've always been aware that at some point, there would be an emergency, but I had assumed it would be a stroke or something, not this," one told me, ruefully. A recent US Trust survey revealed that while about half of all Americans have planned for their own long-term care needs, on

Study: More exercise, less sitting reduces heart failure risk for men More exercise, less sitting reduces heart failure risk for men By American Heart Association DALLAS - sitting for long period's increases heart failure risk in men, even for those who exercise regularly, according to new research published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Heart Failure. Preventing heart failure, researchers found, requires a two-part behavioral approach: high levels of physical activity plus low levels of sedentary time. The study is the first to examine the link between heart failure risk and sedentary time, said Deborah Rohm Young, Ph.D., lead researcher and a senior scientist at Kaiser Permanente in Pasadena, Calif. "Be more active and sit less. That's the message here," Young said. Researchers followed a racially diverse group of 84,170 men ages 45 to 69 without heart failure. Exercise levels were calculated in METs, or metabolic equivalent of task, a measure of the body's energy use. Sedentary levels were measured in hours. After an average of nearly eight years of follow-up, researchers found: Men with low levels of physical activity were 52 percent more likely to develop heart failure than men with high physical activity levels, even after adjusting for differences in sedentary time. Outside of work, men who spent five or more hours a day sitting were 34 percent more likely to develop heart failure than men who spent no more than two hours a day sitting, regardless of how much they exercised. Heart failure risk more than doubled in men who sat for at least five hours a day and got little exercise compared to men who were very physically active and sat for two hours or less a day. Study limitations included: Since

Information submitted COLUMBUS - Complications with the federal health insurance exchanges have created challenges for some consumers who have not yet received proof of their insurance coverage. As a result, many consumers are unsure if their medical treatments are covered and are unable to provide their proof of coverage. "Since open enrollment began on Oct. 1 the federal exchange has struggled to process applications and enroll consumers in coverage," Ohio Lieutenant Governor and Department of Insurance Director Mary Taylor said. "These delays are making it more difficult and confusing for consumers to use the health insurance plans they have purchased through the federal exchange." If you recently purchased a plan, but still haven't received proof of insurance from your insurance company, Taylor offers these tips. Contact the Company The first thing you should do is contact your insurance company to verify that you do have insurance coverage. Ask your insurance company for proof of coverage, such as an insurance card or identification numbers. Take detailed notes of conversations and include the representatives names, and date and time they took place. Keep copies of written communication you received from your insurance company such as emails or letters. You may need these materials later. You should also verify that you have paid your first premium on time. Some insurers have permitted late payments for coverage that is retroactively effective to Jan. 1. Ask your insurer for their deadline and keep any records that can serve as proof of payment. If you are about to buy coverage from the federal exchange, print any paperwork or confirmations that you receive during the enrollment process. Payment Options