February 8, 2012

You Need Insurance on Your Side to Fight the Good Fight

Life is carefree until the day that a terminal disease enters the picture. You can live in a healthy manner, making all the right choices, but sometimes, your number comes up anyway. Nothing can prepare you for the really bad news you might receive from your doctor one day. Nothing, that is, except for health insurance. Having insurance is the only real way of standing a chance when the doctor’s bad news includes the words, “terminal illness.”

When it is a diagnosis that involves cancer or imminent renal failure due to hereditary factors, the sad fact is that most doctors can’t accurately tell a patient how much longer they’ve got to live. They can be candid and honest, but research shows that doctor’s estimates on remaining lifespan in the case of terminal disease tend to be overly optimistic. There’s no way to turn that into good news.

One way to realistically prepare for such news is to stack the deck in your favor. In this case, that involves making sure you’ve got the best health insurance money can buy.To fight a terminal disease and stand a fighting chance, you need expert medical care. This can involve operations to remove the malfeasance, an unfortunate amount of time spent in a hospital, and more medication prescriptions than you might have thought possible. But they’re all necessary.

Health insurance can help you to afford these essential medical procedures, without which your chances of being healthy, or even surviving, are quite low. It can also ease your mind’s worry about costs when you need to be focused on your recovery efforts. Check out online insurance quotes, because you’ll need the best medical care available to help fight your battles. You’ll find the most competitive quotes by utilizing the vast researching power of the internet, whose reach extends far beyond your town or city’s somewhat limited insurance choices. In this case, a comparative, competitive quote could save your life.

Understanding the Prior Authorization

There used to be a time when you would get a drug prescription from your doctor, take it to your local pharmacy, wait ten minutes and then take your medication home. Well, those days are long gone. Getting a prescription from your doctor is no longer the key to getting the medicine you want or need. Now, the most important thing is running the medication past your insurance company and hoping and praying that they pay for it. If you have ever heard the words “prior authorization” then you understand that sometimes getting the script is a problem, but perhaps you don’t know why. There is a reason for prior authorizations.

When an insurance companies goes through there drug list they set parameters for each drug. They decide if they pay for it, how much they pay for it, and at what age they pay for it. Occasionally they make exceptions for patients who meet some specific criteria. Let’s say a 40 year old woman is having a severe bout of acne. Perhaps she has tried all the over the counter treatments but there were of no help. She sees her doctor and her doctor gives her a script for some heavy duty acne cream. The pharmacy may try to bill it to the insurance company but the insurance company requires a prior authorization.

The reason is they don’t have it in their guidelines that a woman over the age of 25 should experience acne problems so they won’t cover the medication. They will then require that the doctor call them and tell them the exact reason why she is in need of such an expensive and unusual cream for her age. The doctor will have to say the right things. To say she suffers from acne may not be enough but to say she suffers from chronic acne may be all that is needed. Sometimes they will come back and reject the claim outright and then it’s up to the doctor and the patient to decide what is the next best course of action which may include a new prescription.

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