Yet another patient of mine lost his job and both husband and wife in their mid 60’s lost their health insurance. Husband struggling with advanced liver disease and the wife with Diabetes and High Blood Pressure, left to sort out their medical expenses. They started skipping their pills every other day so they can ’stretch it’ longer. The cost of the medicines and the blood work for their chronic diseases prohibited them to care for their health appropriately……. and this is just one of my many patients who have lost their insurance.

The health care cost is taking a toll on our health and wellbeing.

More than half (53%) of the American households cut back on their health care secondary to cost concern, reports Kaiser Family Foundation survey of February 2009.

One in four put off the health care they needed, 16% delayed care for a serious medical illness.

One in five didn’t fill prescriptions.

One in six skipped their medications to make it last longer.

One in five experienced serious financial hardships secondary to their health care expenses. 12% have been reported to collection agency.

HealDeal is envisioned to bring transparency and fair market practices to health care. Patients who are self pay will be able to manage their health care dollars effectively. As Mr. Dave Mandelkern, CEO of QuickHealth, says ‘One of the myths of the self pay market is that the consumer is not savvy enough, its just that they don’t have the tools to manage their health care expenses’. Here at HealDeal we work hard to bring these tools to our self pay consumers.

Archana Dubey, MD

If you are in your 20s and shun health insurance either because your age makes you feel invulnerable or because you find health insurance outrageously expensive, you are not alone. The health industry calls you the “Young Invincible.”

In other words, you are “willingly uninsured”! The Young Invincible along, with many other self employed people in the US are willingly uninsured or underinsured. They can afford the premiums but would rather take the risk and save that money for something else.

As Young Invincible you also have not one, but two top honors:

First: you are the nation’s largest group of uninsured— there were 13.2 million uninsured nationally in 2007, or 29 percent of the population, according to the latest figures from the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit research group in New York.

Second: you are the insurer’s top choice as a target customer. You are least likely to use services the health insurer will have to pay for. Your health premium goes a long way in paying for health services utilized by the “high risk” population, the older and the not so healthy.

This is how the insurance system works. The healthy pay for the sick, in the hope that when they, the healthy, get sick the next set of healthy people will pay for them.

As a Young Invincible whether to get health insurance, and if you do decide to, what type of health insurance you should get depends on your risk tolerance, your health condition, and your employment status.

We at HealDeal believe that there should be alternatives available to people without health insurance or government coverage. If you passed the “Young Invincible” test, you fall in that category and you should also have the choices and power to demand better value from your health care spending $$$. That’s why we build this platform, to empower you the same way the insured folks are.

We would love to hear your opinion. After all, you are the generation that will be shaping the future of healthcare in this country. Send us an email at feedback@healdeal.com or post it right here.