Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Health News: Finding Good Health Care in Bad Times

Many Americans were having problems affording good health care even before the recent recession and wave of layoffs began. The economic downturn has only made things worse. The Wall Street Journal has two articles on finding good health care in hard times.

One story looks at how a family's health care support system unraveled in the recession. The family's children have a rare bone-marrow disorder and relied on donations to meet the costs insurance didn't cover. But the economic downturn has greatly reduced the donations; contributions to their former church's medical care fund are down, and a fundraiser held to gain contributions has yielded less money this year than last.

On a more positive note, there's an article explaining how some new online services have arisen to provide basic medical consults in an easy, low-cost manner. Patients can interact with doctors in a variety of ways (online video, text chat, or phone), and the fees can be as low as $10 for a 10-minute consult. Other services charge a monthly fee and then a per-consult fee. This article looks at some of the companies now offering these services, and notes their pluses and minuses.

1 comment:

Medical Assistant Employment said...

Medicines we take these days are mostly prescribed over the counter. Which is preferably good on my part. But, what about medicines sold on the streets? Whether legal or not, companies are losing quite a bit of money. And who is who to say that anything let alone can be sold on the streets without the proper consent of the manufacturers, not that they would allow it, but still. Regardless how effective the drug or not, even now a days health care should most definitely be a necessity since without it you might end up paying 8 times the price. I think no matter what medicine people are prescribed, everybody should make it a priority in their lives to obtain some sort of health care.