purplerat wrote:crank wrote:purplerat wrote:Agrippina wrote:What really gets me going about American health insurance is the business that you can't take it across state lines. Well that's what it sounds like to me anyway. Surely if you buy health insurance, you should be able to claim against it, anywhere in the world, let alone in your own country? I don't know but that just wrong that you can't carry it across borders within your own country.
You can take it wherever you want (in theory at least). It's just that you can't buy it out of state.
If I understand it correctly, it might be better to say the companies have to sell policies that are state specific, because they are still regulated by state law, the federal law sits atop the states' laws, mandated minimum coverages and other restrictions and requirements,. The companies cannot sell a plan to anyone that isn't a resident of the state. If you are traveling, you are still covered, but could likely face difficulties if you don't get all kinds of shit preapproved. Like, if you're not unconscious, get approval before you get in an ambulance, if having a heart attack, get approval before you so to a hospital. It'll be even worse if you out of country. I don't know about moving to another state, not sure how that would work.
Yes that is how I understand it.
The getting approval part though, for many you have to do that no matter where you are. It's not like having insurance in X state means you can just go to any doctor in that state. At least that's not the way it works for many.
***ETA***
That's one one of the arguments for not allowing insurance to be sold across state lines; that doing so would exasperate that situation whereby it would be harder for people to get approval even within their own state as they would be dealing with an out of state agency to find local access.
This is what baffles me. Everything is on computer today, so shouldn't all healthcare insurers be in every health facility's database so it can be accessed when someone is out of their state. That's how ours works, except if we're overseas. Then we produce our insurance card to show that we are covered, it's recorded on the account, but we pay upfront, then claim when we return, or even by email while we're away. I haven't had to use it personally. When I dislocated my shoulder in Scotland, I just put it in a sling, and dealt with it when I got back home. We have travel insurance up to R1m for illness or injury abroad, if we buy the ticket with a credit card, automatic, with no charge. They'll even pay for a family member to visit or to help you travel back home. I didn't think of using this with my shoulder. I think in the UK if you visit an A&E centre as a traveller, you don't pay. I might be wrong about that.
When we travel within the country, the health provider just puts in the details on the computer, and gets authorisation from the insurer and we either have a co-payment or not, depending on the service. For teeth for example, there is a small co-payment. For everything else, we've never paid in anything. I had my cataracts done in January, at a cost of about R50,000 without paying anything. Last year I needed a new tooth to replace one that had fallen out, I paid in R180 on a cost of a few thousand. We could give up our insurance but that would mean going to government hospitals, and waiting for treatment that isn't an emergency. So for my eyes, I wouldn't have had to pay, but would've had to wait for years for my turn. My kids' dad needed a pacemaker. He got it on the government, immediately, and at no cost because he was a state pensioner, with no insurance.
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