Treatment, Care and Cost- Are You Prepared-Think Again

For a moment, think about the Coronavirus, Cancer and Autoimmune Disease. Think about the treatment and care you will need. How will you secure it, pay for it and recover? During that time, how will you maintain your home, respond to the blizzard of mail you will receive and keep the structure of your life intact? How will you pay attention to deductibles, co-pays and co-insurance?

What will you do when you use up your 60 days of Hospitalization under Medicare? What will you do when your employer self-insures the company and denies your claim? What will you do when your employer offers insurance through one of the dominant hospital systems in your area and the hospital system discharges you because they don’t want to treat you anymore? Worse yet, what if you are never presented with the treatment option that is the best for you simply because the hospital system notified your physician that it won’t be covered.

From a Financial Planning perspective, policy moves to water down the value of health insurance is a serious blow to protecting your health. In the worst-case scenario, once you have exhausted your benefits your only alternative is to self-pay and spend down your assets. Once you have exhausted your insurance benefits and spent down your assets your only alternative is Medicaid. Medicaid alone won’t cover what you need.

Being required to spend down your life savings, subject your home to Medicaid recapture laws while you are alive and leaving you with nowhere to return when you recover is not exactly the best policy.

This is true for anyone of any age group who has an illness or health problem that creates this situation. Full coverage often does not result in appropriate care. Lack of coverage or partial coverage ensures no care at all.

The truth is, the problems in Healthcare go way beyond health insurance, access and the financing of care. What gets confusing is not if, but when your treatment will be denied, when your care will be phased out and how you will continue taking care of yourself.

Facilities will withhold medical information from you. No one will really know the complete picture Because no one knows the entire system Medical and Financial. The Legal System cannot help you. By the time you litigate your case you may be dead.

Poor communication and co-ordination within and between facilities, providers and medical professionals will thwart you. Despite existing laws and regulations on the books

Healthcare is a system that no longer accomplishes its intended purpose. The problems are systemic.

Until you have experienced this for yourself it is difficult to understand. By the time you experience it, it is too late to do anything anything about it. You are then caught in a system which is indifferent to your plight and is not inclined to help you get well.

For example, very few people outside the Healthcare System know about the concept of Baseline. Physicians want to know what your relative level of health is before you are treated. If you are not completely healthy, you are treated only to the level of health you were at prior. If you do not make it back to your prior level of health, you know have a new baseline and your spiral down continues.

This is compounded by the fact that at discharge, hospitals systems instruct their case managers to either discharge home or to the first bed available at a nursing home. If you can’t go home, it is very likely you will end up in a facility that does not have the resources or staff to properly care for you.

If you need nursing care and therapy at home, exhaust your insurance benefits and cannot privately pay for it, you will have to go to a nursing home and apply to the state for home healthcare which takes many months for approval.

The sicker you get the more likely it is you will not be treated and cared for.

In the process, you are bled financially dry. The formal means of financing like health insurance to pay for treatment and care can be exhausted as quickly as 30 days.

You are told it is your responsibility to get yourself well. Without medical help or resources.

What has happened to Pension Plans since the late 70’s when pension plans began to disappear has happened to Healthcare. You bear the risk both financial and personal for maintaining your health.

The cost of Healthcare in retirement alone is $300,000. Not to mention what you will need to spend before you retire.

This is why 60% of Bankruptcies are directly caused by problems with health or are Healthcare related.

Mortality is on the rise.

47 percent of men and 58 percent of women who reach age 65 will need long-term care in their lifetime.

75% of people who go to nursing homes do not make it out alive.

Your choice is to pay for it or not receive care.

We believe this is a crisis of such epic proportions that a catastrophic healthcare event will drive anyone into poverty if you are not Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffet.

Rich, Poor, Young or Old. It makes no difference

It will drain your retirement savings, cause the loss of your home and destroy your credit.

It will end your ability to take care of yourself.

Once you are financially drained you will find yourself trapped in a system that will throw you away and leave you to die.

To do anything about it, you must plan 5 years ahead of time or your planning will not be effective.

You must accumulate a large bucket of money to cover as much of the cost as you possibly can.

To survive you must protect your net worth.

You must educate yourself, to prepare yourself to navigate a healthcare system which has become un-navigable.

This is for the wealthy, the not so wealthy and the poor alike.

This is something you must pay attention too. Your life may depend on it.

At The Investment Advisor we help guide you through the planning process. Work with your attorney and accountant if you have them. Help you find them if you don’t. Help You develop a plan to accumulate the money you will need to protect your health. Help you implement your plan in concert with your attorney, accountant and family members. Educate you about how to manage your healthcare before it manages you permanently.

The Investment Advisor

We Help Improve Your Life

Phone: 570-815-0770.

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