Too Good To Be True

Health insurer Humana Inc. is rolling out plans that cap premium increases on three-year contracts. It doesn't take too long to figure out that there's nothing so exciting about that news. Humana raises the deductibles on existing plans and can raise them and co-payments during the contract period. Don't be fooled.

"In Chicago, Humana is introducing a plan for businesses with 51 to 99 employees called "No Worry," a health insurance package that caps premium increases for three years at 6 percent annually, or 4.5 percent if businesses also choose a Humana dental plan and agree to certain other terms. In exchange, deductibles can rise from $500 to $2,500 depending on the products being offered."

This is what a Cigna executive had to say:

"It's very easy to cap renewal increases if you are going to substantially reduce benefits," said Pat Boughey, president and general manager of Cigna HealthCare Illinois, a subsidiary of health insurance giant Cigna Corp. "I am not sure what benefit that provides to an employer in the long run."

Read the article in the Bradenton Herald.

The American Prospect Progressive Perspective

Please don't read that title aloud. You'll get saliva all over your computer screen.

Here is an interesting critique by Ezra Klein of the current, employer-sponsored health insurance system.

"There is no earthly reason for employers to control not just their workers' salaries, but their health security, too. There is no justification for a health system that dissuades would-be entrepreneurs from testing their brilliance, or unhappy laborers from striking out on their own, or disgruntled workers from leaving their positions. Nor is there a compelling rationale for forcing employers to assume the moral burden of providing medical coverage, or putting the generous employer at a competitive disadvantage because his competitor offers barebones coverage, or having GM pay more for health care than steel. On every level, in every way, the employer-based system is unjust, inefficient, and unwise. No plan that preserves it should be considered acceptable."

Your Sponge and Toilet Seat Aren't So Different, After All...

Gabriel Bitton, professor of environmental engineering at the University of Florida, discussed the findings of a recent study on bacteria in sponges:

"Cooks should microwave their sponges every other day, he suggested. The warm, damp environment of kitchen cloths is the ideal breeding ground for microbes. In the right conditions one bacterium can multiply to more than four million in just eight hours. This can make them up to 200 times more infested that [sic] a lavatory seat."

Yuck. You should microwave your sponges periodically, while damp, for 2 minutes on high.

You may read the full article on The Daily Mail website.

State of the HSA

The President's big (mis)speech is tonight. Listen for his proposals for health insurance reform.

From Reuters -

"The president is proposing tax deductions -- $15,000 for a family and $7,500 for an individual whether or not they purchase their own health coverage or get it from their job -- to help buy insurance."

The END of employer-sponsored health insurance..?

Blue Monday?

I guess that's what today is called. There are a few links on today's Drudge Report about it. Some reasons given for being down this time of year are holiday debt, nasty weather, and failed resolutions. It surprises me that so many people would have given up on themselves so early in the year. Here's an article about the phenomenon in the Daily Mail. Another article posted on Drudge about the "World's Happiest Man" reminds me of one of Abe Lincoln's lines, "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be".

FYI - UHA, New HSA? Maybe, if AHIP has its way.

If you haven't been reading my blog, I don't know where to start. Oh wait, yes I do:

FYI - For Your Information (that's easy)
UHA - Universal Health Account (that's new)
HSA - Health Savings Account
AHIP - America's Health Insurance Plans (organization of health insurers)

Read the entire article on Heartland.org.

"The UHA could be paired with any health plan--or none at all, if the UHA owner opted not to purchase insurance."

That differs from current HSA rules which require the participant to have a qualifying high deductible health insurance plan.

"Moreover, the UHA plan described by AHIP would allow contributions to be made into the accounts by the federal government. For persons with incomes less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level, the federal government would make matching contributions up to $1,000 for individuals and $2,000 for families. AHIP suggests the federal government should also create rules to allow states to contribute to the UHAs as well."

Premature Celebration?

"Growth in Health Spending at Lowest Rate Since 1999"

The increase in health care spending slowed to 6.9% for 2005. According to the above article in the South Florida Business Journal, due largely to the influence of consumer-directed health plans on prescription drug prices.

The Commonwealth Fund notes that the US still spends twice as much per capita on health care than any other country.

Good Advice from Dale Carnegie

“Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.”

-Dale Carnegie

That's a variation of the old line "anything worth doing is worth doing well". It's good to remind ourselves once in a while. Take pride in what you do; even the little things.

Matri-money

My father thinks I have a negative attitude toward marriage, but I think my generation in general has such a strong feeling of independence, that being unmarried is not strange to us. Anyway, he recently handed me a copy of an article from The Wall Street Journal that was published on February 12, 1999.

In "Getting Married Pays", the authors discuss one of their rules from "Getting Rich in America: 8 Simple Rules for Building a Fortune and a Satisfying Life" (HarperBusiness, 1999).

Some key points:

-Married couples are twice as wealthy as unmarried ones.
-Married people take better care of themselves and live longer.
-Married people have lower rates of cancer and hypertensive heart disease.
-Married people are more likely to plan for and think about the future and therefore save more.

I found a copy of it posted here.

Happy Birthday

To me. I have decided to put down the quote that has meant the most to me of all of the ones I have read or heard during my 28 years:

"Be the change you wish to see in the world."

-Mahatma Gandhi

It's followed closely by the O'Higgins family motto:

"You can never be too rich or too thin."

-Wallis Simpson, American-born Duchess of Windsor

100 Best Companies to Work for (2007)

Google takes the top spot this year. Review the full list on CNNMoney.com. You can search by state, by pay, by size, etc. Check out the "A day in the life of a Googler" video here. You might just want to send in one of those resumes they receive every 25 seconds.

"Wake-up Call"

Read here in Forbes about a recently completed longitudinal study of weight problems in females that began when they were 9 or 10 and continued until the women were in their 30s. This is a rather bleak outlook, but it demonstrates how important it is to develop good diet and exercise habits early in life:

"'This shows that obesity and other risk factors for heart disease track from younger to older. This is a wake-up call for policymakers, for schools, for parents,' said Arlene Spark, associate professor of nutrition at Hunter College, in New York City. 'The success rate for treatment is practically zero. The only thing that we can really hope for is that we can prevent children from becoming overweight and obese.'"

"Girls who were overweight during childhood were 11 to 30 times more likely to be obese as young adults."

New Year's Eve 2007!

I might be getting the word out a little early for next New Year's Eve, but I am definitely doing so too late for NYE 2006. Hopefully, you didn't end up with a massive hangover after celebrating a little too enthusiastically.

LiveScience.com has an article you can read here, published on 12/28/06, that dispels some of the myths about hangover cures. Sleep and water are the best ways to get back to normal, but the way to avoid a hangover, of course, is during the time you are actually consuming alcohol. Spacing drinks out by having water and food in between is a good way to minimize the pain that you have coming. The article points out that you should avoid acetaminophen (Tylenol) as it can cause liver damage when combined with alcohol.

Here's some advice from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism:

• Pace yourself. Drink alcoholic beverages slowly. Drink water or other non-alcoholic drinks throughout the evening to keep your body hydrated.
• Eat. Munch on snacks during the night to slow the absorption of alcohol and keep your blood alcohol level low.
• Try fruits. Studies have found that eating fruits and drinking fruit juices decrease the intensity of hangovers.
• Snack on crackers. Bland foods such as toast and crackers can raise low blood sugar and help with nausea.

Your Belly Is SAD

There is an article on Medical News Today, uh, today about what researches consider to be a better predictor of future heart disease than BMI (body mass index). This makes sense, since a professional athlete can sometimes have a rather high BMI suggesting obesity when, in fact, he has very low body fat and is in better health than someone who is just fat.

Researchers measured each man's belly, the scientific term for which is "sagittal abdominal diameter" or SAD.

"Iribarren and his team also looked at the results within categories of BMI. They found that within the same BMI range, the SAD measure was a reliable predictor of CHD [coronary heart disease] risk. In other words, two people with the same Body Mass Index (even if their weight was "normal") would effectively have different risks of developing CHD depending on the size of their belly - the larger the belly the bigger the risk."

A Small Part of the Future of Medicine

Doctors and patients will, more and more, be communicating via the internet, over secure sites onto which they will log. Change is coming more slowly than many would like, but it's happening.

"An estimated 80 percent of Americans with Internet access would like to communicate with their doctors by e-mail, according to a HarrisInteractive Health Care Poll done in March 2005. That said, doctors have been slow to make use of the technology.

Only about one in four physicians reported that e-mail was used in his or her practice to communicate with patients in 2004-05, according to a study released a few months ago by the Center for Studying Health System Change, a health policy research organization in Washington. That was up from one in five in 2000-01."

One of the problems is that doctors aren't compensated for time spent on the phone or sending messages over the internet (not email, since it has to be specially encoded). I am remembering how stupid it was to get the results of an MRI in person, taking time off work, parking in downtown Boston, only to have a discussion with the doctor I could have easily had over the phone. This is the kind of stuff that absolutely must change for health care in this country to be effective and efficient.

Read the article on columbiatribune.com.

HSA Calculator

The 2007 annual contribution limits for Health Savings Accounts are $2,850 for individuals and $5,650 for families. The good news is that, now that President Bush has signed the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, you can contribute the max even if your deductible is lower. Try out this HSA Calculator from HSA Bank, to give yourself an idea of how much you'll have to start squirreling away to pay for medical expenses in retirement.

More On HSAs

President Bush today signed the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006.

"The bill’s provisions include the following:

1. It allows HSAs to be funded with one-time transfers from Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), enabling individuals to benefit from the tax advantages provided by HSAs when paying for medical expenses.

2. It allows individuals to make the maximum annual contribution to HSAs at any point in a given year; previously, they were only allowed to make prorated contributions based on their enrollment dates.

3. It allows individuals to contribute amounts that equal the annual contribution limit, regardless of their plans’ deductible limits; previously, they were only allowed to contribute amounts equaling their deductibles.

4. It allows funding for HSAs to come from a health reimbursement arrangement (HRA) or a flexible spending account (FSA) in the form of a one-time rollover.

5. It allows employees with lesser earnings to receive higher contributions from their employers into HSAs."

Read the article here on insurancenewsnet.com.

SWB

Contrary to popular belief, that doesn't stand for "single white bunny". SWB stands for "subjective well-being".

From the University of Leicester's School of Psychology:

"This underlying state is conceptualised as a sense of satisfaction with one’s life, both in general and in specific areas of one’s life such as relationships, health and work."

I read an article about the study in The Futurist magazine and was able to track down the paper and complete ranking of countries' scores on the Satisfaction With Life Scale here. Denmark and Switzerland tie for 1st place with a 273, followed by Austria, Iceland, Bahamas, Finland, and Sweden. USA is a little bit down the list with a score of 247, but comfortably ahead of the miserable French, at 220. It will come as no great shock that the bottom of the list is comprised of African and former Soviet Bloc countries, where health problems and poverty abound.

1-800 Contacts

I have an exciting development to report. I have used my HSA card for the very first time, and made a purchase, using pretax dollars, of an eligible product. I went on 1800contacts.com to check out the prices for contacts that I last bought at Costco (where I was unable to use my HSA card because they don't have the proper vendor code), and upon viewing the homepage, saw that FSA (Flexible Spending Account, an inferior predecessor of the HSA) cards can be used to purchase contacts. I called customer service to check if I could use my HSA and they said "yes". Even though the contacts are quite a bit cheaper at Costco, it's a long drive for me, and I was able to finally put my HSA card to the test. It was just like using a normal credit card. This kind of stuff will only get easier.

I should note that, even if one cannot use one's HSA card at Costco's Optical department, as long as the receipt is retained, one may reimburse oneself with HSA funds by doing a transfer to a personal account or writing a check. It's an extra step that takes away some convenience, though.

Here are some statistics and U.S. Treasury documents from HSA Insider.

Some Stuff You Need To Know

From Popular Mechanics:

"10 Tech Concepts You Need to Know for 2007 From concrete that can flex to sensors that you swallow, here are the technologies you’ll be talking about."

As we are bombarded by more and more information, and burdened with rapidly increasing amounts of personal data, photos, and music, the "data cloud" will become an essential tool for managing one's life. It is the last of the ten concepts listed, and it will be huge. Google's Gdrive is sure to be a big hit, offering "unlimited storage" of information that can be accessed online from anywhere, just like your email.