Categories

Nearly 1 in 2 women delayed health care in the past year due to costs – the economic impact on a woman’s physical, emotional, and fiscal health

Nearly 1 in 2 women put off seeking health care because the cost was too high. The kinds of services delayed included visits to the doctor, medical procedures, and filling prescription medications. The fourth annual T.A.L.K. Survey was released this week by the National Women’s Health Resource Center (NWHRC), focusing on the declining economy and its impact on women and three dimensions of their health — physical, emotional, and fiscal. 40% of women say that their health has worsened in the past five years due to increasing stress and gaining weight, according to the survey. One of the most interesting

 

For those with health insurance, a growing bounty of benefits

For those employees fortunate enough to receive health insurance from work, there’s a bountiful array of health care services that are still covered by plans. The International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans (IFEBP) polled its membership in late 2007 and found that employers are not only continuing to cover a broad range of services, but also new services the likes of which weren’t covered even two years ago…from medical tourism to biofeedback. These results are documented in IFEBP’s publication, Health Care Benefits: Eligibility, Coverage and Exclusions. The usual suspects are covered by well over 97% of employers, such as ER

 

Steel, Coffee Beans and Health Care

The UAW and GM have been debating health care as Friday’s deadline for their national contract approaches. This round of negotiation is about survival. Yesterday, I covered the rising costs of employer-sponsored health insurance. Today, let’s visit the intimately-related topic of retiree health benefits. These are eroding even faster than health benefits for employed workers. Many employers have significantly scaled back health benefits for retirees. Currently, one in three large employers offers retire benefits, compared with two in three in the late 1980s. Consider the predicament of the company ranked #3 on the 2006 Fortune 500 list, General Motors. Retirees