As you travel through life, your ability to get and keep health insurance will depend upon your age, your marital status, whether you are single, divorced, or widowed. It will depend upon your status as a college student coupled with your age of either under or over 23½ years.
Your health insurance premiums will depend upon your gender----male or female. This is legalized gender discrimination.
Your ability to obtain and keep a health insurance policy will depend upon the state of your health----your weight in relation to your height. It will depend upon your past health history and your current health snapshot as you reveal in your health insurance application. It will depend upon your age; your employment status; and whether or not your employer even offers an employer based group healthcare insurance plan.
As you move through life the premiums you pay will be on an ever increasing upward spiral that increases at three times the rate of your salary (in general). As you move through different age brackets your monthly premiums will increase dramatically based upon increments of usually every five years, i.e. your monthly premiums will be far far higher when you are 50 years old than when you were 25 years old. These are called “age bracket increases”.
If you are like many young single Americans you may look forward to the day when you get married and have a child, then another child and maybe even a third child----a typical American family, so to speak. At each juncture of these wonderful events your insurance status will change and your monthly premiums will increase.
Marrying the man of your dreams, or the woman you have always been waiting for is wonderful. However, should your spouse have a pre-existing condition of any kind it will without doubt turn into a financial debacle from a health insurance standpoint.
Bringing a child into the world can be a very risky endeavor today as there are hundreds of diseases and medical conditions that a young newborn may be born with that the insurance company simply will not cover, in any way, shape or form.
Out of all 50 States, only one State has passed a law that requires that insurance companies cover autism. In all other 49 States should your child have any degree of autism whatsoever your child will not be covered and you will be responsible for the more than $1 million in lifetime medical expenses you may incur.
Pre-existing conditions. Every time you go to a doctor or a hospital for any reason whatsoever you are basically racking up new pre-existing conditions or calling attention to the fact that you have a medical condition that needs attention. Your insurance company can, at any time declare that whatever it is that you have, is a pre-existing condition and put limitation, restrictions on your medical treatment.
If you do indeed have a long medical history for any one of hundreds of medical conditions you are basically in dire straits if you lose your job, voluntarily change jobs, get divorced, lose your spouse in an unexpected death, or if your spouse loses or changes his or her job.
If you are over 65 you can be covered by Medicare. If you are under 65 you can’t. If you are poor and have no money to your name you may be eligible to be covered by Medicaid. If you get a job and save some money you will not be entitled to Medicaid, and still may not be able to afford health insurance, nor be old enough for Medicare.
Millions upon millions of Americans work NOT for the wages or salaries they earn. They work for the health insurance that their employer currently offers.
Millions upon millions of Americans have lost their insurance because they have been through a divorce, or have lost a spouse in an unexpected and untimely death.
Millions upon millions of Americans are stuck in what has become known as “job lock”. They can’t leave their jobs. They can’t explore new opportunities. They can’t take that entrepreneurial idea they have and take the risk and “run with it” because they can’t take the risk of being unable to afford the astronomical cost of obtaining health care insurance when one is classified as a small business owner.
Millions of Americans can’t relocate to a different State and seek out a better job opportunity because if they do, they or their spouse will lose their health insurance coverage.
If any of the above life experiences happen to you (marriage, becoming a parent, changing jobs, divorce, losing a spouse, a change in your age, etc.) you will be at severe risk of being denied insurance coverage entirely should you have a chronic or pre-existing condition. There are many hundreds of pre-existing conditions which may include diabetes, cancer of any kind, pre-cancerous conditions, female reproductive medical problems, female menstruation conditions, male prostate enlargement, chronic digestive problems such as ulcers, skin conditions such a psoriasis, chest pain of any kind, back pain (this is one of the insurance companies favorite pre-existing conditions should you ever in your life have sought medical treatment for back pain), etc., etc.
