Medical Rationing and Medical Tourism

Something a lot of people in this country don’t know is that the various state and federal health care plans for the poor do not cover most poor people or their children. In other words, you may be on unemployment and food stamps, but if your state has a fixed budget for Medicaid, SCHIP and other programs, you probably won’t get health care coverage. In my state the cap has remained in place for years, so in a region (southern Appalachia) where 3 out of every 5 people qualify for state and federal aid because their incomes are below the poverty line, 1.5 of those 3 won’t get any aid at all.

Then there are the “working poor” - those who work as many hours a day as is possible at as many jobs as they can get, but whose income still falls to poverty level or below. These people generally have no health insurance and no state/federal coverage. Not because they choose not to purchase expensive insurance, but because it’s simply not available to them. And on top of this are all those in the “lower middle class” who may have junk insurance through their employers with deductibles so high they simply cannot afford health care, or whose insurers routinely refuse to cover any and all claims.

And on top of that there is the whole rest of the middle class, who have exactly the same problem with their insurance companies - they simply refuse to pay for health care, leaving all but the very rich (who can pay out of pocket) without usable access to health care and one accident or illness away from bankruptcy.

Continue reading »

Filed under Alternatives, Health Care, Medical Tourism | Comments (2)