Exploring the nature of Nevada Health Insurance both for consumers and for the industry, it becomes immediately clear that there are a number of problems when it comes to people slipping through the cracks, and either not having any insurance, or having inadequate cover.
Statistics from the Kaiser Family Foundation show that the percentage of people who have no Nevada Health Insurance is one of the highest in the country, with 21% of the population of Nevada (552,400) having no cover in 2011.
Of the remaining people, 51% (1,341,900) are covered under employer Group Nevada Health Insurance Plans, whilst government programs like Medicaid and Medicare accounted for 23% (602,600), and Individual Nevada Health Insurance accounted for the remaining 5% (132,000).
Health Insurance – The Political Football…
Health insurance has become like a football that gets kicked backwards and forwards in the political arena, but for real families on the ground in the United States it is a big-deal, because increasing percentages of their budgets are being spent on healthcare.
In fact, figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that on average American families spend more on healthcare every year then they do individually on entertainment, clothing or eating out. So any savings that can be made on health care can have a big knock-on effect to families’ real standard of living.
In many ways health insurance in Nevada is going through a period of transition in keeping with the new Affordable Care Act that is due to fully come into force in January 2014, as insurance companies are adjusting to the fact that the hundreds of millions of dollars that they have spent on trying to block the reforms has not succeeded in totally de-railing them.
Estimates in fact put the figure at $380 million spent on lobbying and campaign contributions to opponents of the bill, and there are an estimated six lobbyists paid to oppose the bill for every member of Congress.
Unfortunately in many ways the insurance and health care industry has succeeded in scaremongering politicians into greatly watering down the bill.
For example, there are no caps on the prices that can be charged for medicines (which can be huge), and they have managed to change the legislation to make it illegal not to have cover, rather than offering a more encompassing solution that doesn’t threaten to drown the already drowning.
The Affordable Care Act then emerges as an improvement over what has come before, but hardly the solution to all the problems that permeate the US Healthcare Industry, and which seem to mean ever increasing premium increases for average Americans, and ever rising profits for the health insurance companies.
Between 2002 and 2011 the average cost of health insurance premiums for the average American family more than doubled, and even in times of supposed austerity, between 2010 and 2011 the rates rose by an average of 7% across the country.
So the harsh reality is that Nevada Health Insurance is expensive now, and likely to get more expensive.
That isn’t to say that there is nothing you can do, because there are a great deal of health insurance companies in Nevada, and there is some level of competition for business.
So it is a good policy to check out various Nevada Health Insurance Quotes from different companies and make an objective judgment about the price, quality and amount of cover that each of them are offering.
