When health insurance is depleted

The Issue: The difficult reality when a family’s health insurance is maxed out while patients are in off-island medical centers.

Our View: This reality has begun draining family resources sending them to raise funds to meet hefty medical expenses.

Most lay people have no inkling of the astronomical cost of catastrophic and long term medical cost. It takes an actual experience to understand what happens when a health insurance policy is maxed-out and the family is told in the midst of an already difficult situation that it must begin shouldering the cost henceforth.

This is an issue of serious concern that has crept up on families since a decade ago. It is an issue of personal responsibility that has given those affected some very rude awakening. It is an issue we’ve taken for granted or even thought of as free. Nothing is free and neither is the cost of catastrophic or long term medical cost. We all must face the music and dance to the beat. Nothing is free!

It is also an issue that leadership and health providers must discuss in deliberative fashion hopefully soon, including how do we extend assistance for families in off-island medical centers deal with the depletion of their health coverage. It is a thorny issue even at the national level between the current debate of patient’s rights vs. the role of health maintenance organizations (HMOs).

This difficulty should open the eyes of policymakers in how they view preventive medicine. It is easy to fall into the trap of calling such expenditure as cost when in fact it rightly deserves that it be viewed as an investment. We can’t blindly perpetuate the notion that money funneled for preventive health programs is just another cost. It must be viewed as an investment in guiding the general public to come to grips that health is a personal responsibility and all must contribute to healthy habits that ensures a health populous.

We fervently hope that all concerns converge in the first part of the new millennium to address and resolve this and other issues. This filial crisis is especially hard in cases where patients are situated in off-island medical centers. It is a definite drain in their meager resources. Let us meet in hopes of arriving at some middle ground the lessen the burden of meteoric cost that will drain and send families to instant bankruptcy for the rest of their lives. Si Yuus Maase`!