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Against the Grain with Dr. Chad Edwards | Oklahoma City Prolotherapy| Podcast 8 – Part 3
Chad Edwards: Correct. Right.
Brian Wilkes: When we say catastrophic, I want to be covered for myself, my children and my wife for an event like cancer.
Chad Edwards: I’ll take it a step further and say for an unforeseen, unbudgetable issue.
Brian Wilkes: Correct.
Chad Edwards: Fall down, go boom, break a leg. That would count, because you can’t budget for that unless you just set some extra money aside to cover. It can go a little bit further, but go ahead.
Brian Wilkes: For that person prior to ObamaCare, which I think kind of changes the game in how we view insurance, because … You’ll have to educate me here, but as I understand ObamaCare, you cannot have insurance right now, have a catastrophic event, and theoretically I suppose that you could get insurance because they can’t deny on pre-existing conditions.
Chad Edwards: My understanding of the law is that’s correct.
Brian Wilkes: Which is really a bad thing for society at whole because if enough happens I don’t know hospitals can stay in business and all that good stuff.
Chad Edwards: Well, it goes into this … I don’t know how else to say it other than the bleeding heart mentality, and I don’t mean that in a negative way. I think we all feel this way. If one of my friends had an issue like that, I would want them to be able to be covered.
Brian Wilkes: Sure.
Chad Edwards: I mean, from an emotional perspective, of course we want everyone covered. Of course we want them to be able to get their medical care taken care of. They want to be taken care of and without question that is not really the issue of debate. The issue of debate is how are you going to do it? That’s where it gets sticky, because if it were just sprinkling pixie dust around and everybody’s covered, then hey, let’s all do it.
Brian Wilkes: Let’s be realistic about it, and here’s what I’ll say is back to the example is, so the option is is let’s say if you’re a middle income person you don’t get insurance. You have a catastrophic event. I think how it works currently is you are penalized on your tax return. For example, if you have not enrolled in ObamaCare and you don’t have health insurance, that will be … If you’re a person that gets money back on your taxes, to put it simply, a person that gets money back on their taxes or if you’re a person that has to pay, you either pay more to cover those premium rates or you don’t get as much money back, but they make you pay. You pay for it.
Chad Edwards: My understanding, first of all it’s a … You can have health insurance that does not meet ObamaCare criteria.
Brian Wilkes: Correct.
Chad Edwards: You can have health insurance that covers catastrophic events, and if it doesn’t meet the criteria, then you’re still paying the fee.
Brian Wilkes: Still paying the tax burden, yes.
Chad Edwards: Correct. You have to find a plan that …
Brian Wilkes: Standardized plan.
Chad Edwards: They got whatever the … Copper, platinum, whatever. I don’t remember what they are.
Brian Wilkes: We got options, folks. The government’s kind of like, it’s a circus, a circus of options, but I don’t even … It’s like the tax code. You can’t follow it. Who knows?
Chad Edwards: Exactly.
Brian Wilkes: You got a problem when you can’t even put up a website for it. That should be a first indicator that it’s too complex.
Chad Edwards: Oh my goodness. Right, but the other piece of that is the tax component or the fee. Now how they implement the fee, I don’t really know, but yes, there is an annual fee based on your income and those kinds of things, anywhere I think it’s from $97 to $3,000, something like that?
Brian Wilkes: Yeah. Something like that, and that is somewhat beside the point, with the next level here in my case, right?
Chad Edwards: Right.
Brian Wilkes: You have to consider it, now that ObamaCare’s in place, so you need a policy that’s compliant so you’re not doubling up on tax problems for a catastrophic.
Chad Edwards: But let’s run that just for one second, let me interrupt, so $3,000, that’s the high end, because I think that’s the upper limit of the fee.
Brian Wilkes: I could Google it.
Chad Edwards: I’m sure that’d be right.
Brian Wilkes: We’re sure about that.
Chad Edwards: Let’s say it is $3,000, so the average family, $3,000 for the year, that’s less than $300 a month.
Brian Wilkes: Right.
Chad Edwards: Now, how much is that person paying for their insurance?
Brian Wilkes: Right. Good point.
Chad Edwards: Now this isn’t an issue of them saying, “I don’t want health insurance, screw them.” This is an issue of, “I’m barely making budget and now I’m spending 5, 7, 800, not uncommon, dollars a month on insurance for that family versus taking a $3,000 hit. That’s a net difference of $3,000 a month. If you’re barely making your bills as it is, it’s cheaper to pay the fine and roll the dice.
Brian Wilkes: Yeah, again, the main reason why most people don’t have health insurance, and most people don’t in our country, a good number. Well, you could argue now they have ObamaCare, but the chief reason prior to ObamaCare was 48% of adults said, “I just can’t afford it.”
Chad Edwards: Right.
Brian Wilkes: It’s not affordable. It’s not that they don’t want it. It’s just not affordable.
Chad Edwards: Then what I have seen is patients coming in and their plan, their insurance plan, used to cover …
Brian Wilkes: A consortium of different …
Chad Edwards: Exactly.
Brian Wilkes: A large group of problems or tests, yeah.
Chad Edwards: Now we get letters all the time that this is not a …
Brian Wilkes: Denied, denied, denied.
Chad Edwards: Exactly.
