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Mini Med is a smoke-and-mirror concept that looks good, but are designed to not pay claims(the design of course varies - how else to hide cost from cost comparisons - but the employee's $60 per month premium usually covers a $15 co-pay for in-network physician office visits benefit with a maximum annual benefit of $450, and with maximum annual limits on outpatient diagnostic coverage of $300, an outpatient surgery surgery annual maximum benefit of $1,000, a hospitalization is usually not covered but if covered it might have a maximum of $1000 per day with a few days as the maximum, and if drugs are covered there would be a co-pay and annual maximum also). These plans are being promoted by companies that bill themselves as mini-medical insurers, but that are really just marketing organizations, resulting in a breakdown of the quality and frequency of health care in the US - but then again the private sector is meeting the request of the Bush administration for a low cost non-governmental innovative response to the high cost of health care.
Now that Aetna Inc.(which acquired Strategic Resource Corp) and and United Health Group Inc. have joined little guys like Star HRG in offering these plans, can we ever again trust being a large operation to mean you have any more credibility than someone running a marketing scam?
The Bush/Reagan/GOP corporate greed is good world already has about 10% of US companies using these plans, including around 70% of companies with more than 5,000 employees, and they are coming soon to the part-time, hourly, and contract worker jobs and to the retailers, hotels, restaurants, nursing homes, trucking companies, and employment agencies businesses. GOP approval was earned by the fact the cost "sharing between employer and employee' is overwhelmingly 100% out-of-pocket for employees - less than 5% of employers contribute anything. But the selling pitch suggests mini-med is an employee retention tool because the company can start paying a small percentage of the small premium after say the first six months of employment, and the workers will know they are better off than they would be with a union.
Of course this fits into the high-deductible plans the Bush administration has been trying to sell as the national health crisis cure that doesn't involve single payer national health. The Bush folks want you to takes some of that pay increase you received during the Bush years, and build up some savings in the MSA savings account so that you start to cover that high deductible. But since pay has actually gone down for the average worker under Bush, few MSA's have been started, so these mini-med policies are now GOP approved to fill that hole. While this is an inefficient expensive way to deliver health care, it preserve those high salaries for health industry paid management, the high returns for the health industry shareholders, and the high PAC contributions to the GOP.
Hey, it is better than nothing - right?
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