A follower sent me this article and I thought it was worth posting:

100 Ways You Can Lower Your Health Care Costs

Whether you’re in the health care industry or not, you know that health care costs are soaring. However, there are some ways to get your medical bills under control. Here, we’ll look at 100 different ways you can save money on health care.

Insurance

Here you’ll learn how to save on your premiums and more.

1. Increase your out of pocket costs: Forego luxuries like deductibles and co-payments, and you’ll have lower monthly premiums.
2. Reassess your needs: Consider what benefits you really need on your health insurance.
3. Change your coinsurance ratio: Raise your ratio to cut your monthly premium.
4. Never stop shopping: Always be on the hunt for the best deal on insurance.
5. Have a good credit score: A good credit history can help lower your health insurance plans with an individual plan.
6. Don’t take no for an answer: Go through appeals processes with your insurance company if they deny your medical claims.
7. Follow the rules: Make sure you know all of the rules for your insurance program to avoid surprise charges.
8. Get a high deductible plan: Generally, the higher your deductible, the lower your monthly premium will be.
9. Know what you’re getting: Be sure you know what you’re getting for your premiums.
10. Spread it out: If you need extensive services consider spreading out the cost between different plan years.
11. Customize your plan: Get an insurance policy that’s customized to your needs to get savings.
12. Ask for exclusions: You may be able to cut down your costs by excluding certain coverages.
13. Plan ahead for emergencies: Know which providers are covered in your health plan before you need them.
14. Get married: You can save on health insurance by getting coverage with your spouse.
15. Improve your driving record: A good driving record can help you get a better health insurance rate.
16. Shop for the best rates: Use websites and agents to help you find the best rate for health insurance.
17. Increase your co-pay: Reduce your premium by paying a slightly higher co-pay for doctor visits.
18. Keep up coverage between jobs: Avoid a lapse in coverage by using COBRA insurance.
19. Consider catastrophic coverage: If you’re generally healthy, get limited insurance with a high deductible just for emergencies.
20. Get a part time job: If you’re self employed and need insurance, consider getting a part time job for the coverage.
21. Stay on your parents’ coverage: Stay covered as a dependent for as long as possible to save money.
22. Don’t be risky: Avoid dangerous hobbies like mountain climbing, skydiving, and car racing that can increase your insurance premiums.
23. Use the best plan: If you and your spouse have group insurance plans, find out who has the best plan available, and use it.
24. Use a health savings account (HSA): With a health savings account, you can put away pre-tax contributions that can grow tax free and use until your deductible is met./li>
25. Shop for private coverage: Check out the pricing on private insurance to compare your costs to that of your employer sponsored plan.
26. Become a part of a trade organization: Find a group rate discount through your professional or trade organization.
27. Juggle family coverage: Don’t automatically assume that your entire family should be on the same coverage-consider splitting spouses on different plans that work best for them.

Free Care

Find out how to get free health care here.

28. Take advantage of state programs: Many states offer free or low cost insurance and/or health care, especially for women and children or those who have low income.
29. Use free screenings: Get early detection at free screenings like the Wellness Tour.
30. Go to federally funded clinics: You can get immunizations, checkups, and dental care, while paying what you can afford through special clinics.

Negotiation

These strategies can help you negotiate a better health care experience.

31. Be nice: When negotiating, remember that you’ll catch more flies with honey.
32. Find a doctor who will negotiate: Shop around to find a doctor who can work with your budget.
33. Conquer fear: Don’t be afraid to haggle.
34. Talk to your doctor: Let your doctor know if you’ve lost your job or can’t deal with your deductible to see if you can negotiate your price.
35. Barter: Offer your services in exchange for health care.
36. Pay today: Offer to pay immediately with cash or credit card to get a discount.
37. Shop for tests: Compare prices among different labs and clinics.
38. Go to schools: Visit dental or medical schools to get a discount on care from well-supervised students.
39. Use the CPT code: With a CPT code, you can compare costs.
40. Ask for better payment options: Ask for free financing or extended payment options.
41. Disclose your income: Share how much money you make so that billers understand your hardship.
42. Pay cash: Paying for procedures up front can help you get a discount.
43. Use an advocate: Patient-advocate services can help you with disputes.
44. Ask for Medicare rates: Find out if you can get Medicare’s prenegotiated rates.
45. Question follow up appointments: Find out if your follow up can be completed via phone call.
46. Learn about your coverage: Call your insurance to find out how much you’re covered for the service you need, and talk to your doctor about staying within that limit.
47. Pay attention to little things: Bring your own hospital toiletries or your prescription medicine.
48. Don’t assume you have to pay full price: Many hospitals will settle bills for less than what you owe-you just have to ask.
49. Get medical financial aid: If your medical debt exceeds a certain ratio, you may be able to only have to pay a portion of your bill.
50. Ask if it’s necessary: When tests are ordered, ask if you really need them.

Kids

Read these tips to find out how to save money on child health care.

51. Don’t postpone necessary healthcare: Be sure to stay on top of essential health visits for kids.
52. Take safety precautions: Require that children wear bike helmets and wear safety belts.
53. Prevent overeating: Save your children from obesity by stopping overeating.

Savings

These ideas can help you find savings in health care.

54. Use in-network providers: Avoid using providers that are outside of your network.
55. Shop around for prescriptions: Check out pharmacies online and off to find out who has the best deal for your drugs.
56. Use cost-comparison tools: Many insurers will allow you to compare your costs between doctors before you make your visit.
57. Consider a mail order pharmacy: You may be able to save money by ordering drugs from a reputable online pharmacy.
58. Don’t use the ER if you don’t have to: Use your primary care physician or urgent care center instead of heading to the ER.
59. Look to other countries: Consider having surgery outside of the US where US-trained physicians can treat you for less.
60. Ask for generic drugs: Generic drugs offer an incredible savings on brand names, so ask for them whenever possible.
61. Go to local clinics: Use clinics designed for simple ailments to save money.
62. Use big retailers for your prescriptions: Fill your prescriptions with retailers that can offer you savings.
63. Ask for medications on your plan’s list: Check out your plan’s preferred drug list and request that your doctor prescribe you medicine from it.
64. Try alternative treatments: You may be able to save money by using alternative treatments like acupuncture or yoga.
65. Go to Planned Parenthood: For many women (and men), Planned Parenthood offers lowered fees for reproductive services.
66. Join the Farm Bureau: Become a part of the Farm Bureau to get benefits like discounted health insurance.
67. Avoid duplicate tests: Keep your medical records and share them among your doctors to make sure you don’t have to take duplicate tests.
68. Use your flex spending account: Put money in your pre-tax flex spending account, and make plans to use it all before the end of the year.
69. Keep a safety net: Keep savings handy just in case of medical emergency.
70. Split pills: Make your prescription last twice as long by ordering a higher dose, and splitting it each time.
71. DIY lab work: Get blood and urine analyses using independent labs that can save you money and mail results to your doctor.
72. Use discount plans: Become a part of health benefits clubs to save on visits, drugs, services, and more with participating health care providers.
73. Use insurance discounts: Find out if your insurance plan offers discounts for acupuncture, gyms, massages, or weight loss programs.
74. Ask for a 90-day supply: Avoid some copays on maintenance drugs by getting a larger quantity each time.
75. Use nurse hotlines: Instead of making a visit, use a nurse hotline to find out if you can wait to see your doctor instead of rushing to the emergency room.
76. Ask for samples: Ask your doctor if they have samples to give you, which can save you on at least a few days of medication.
77. Carefully check out bills: Look for mistakes in your bill and promptly request corrections.
78. Use tax incentives: Be sure to take the proper health care deductions on your taxes.
79. Keep track of your expenses: Stay on top of your expenses, as you may be able to write them off.
80. Do your paperwork: Many insurance companies require that you contact them before or within a certain time period of visiting the emergency room or having surgery.

Preventive Medicine

Keep yourself from needing health care in the first place by taking these preventive measures.

81. Stop smoking: Cut your insurance costs by quitting smoking, and help prevent costly conditions down the road.
82. Know warning signs: Pay attention to warning signs, and know when it’s time to see a doctor before things get worse.
83. Go vegetarian: Reduce common diseases by eating a plant based diet.
84. Wash your hands: Avoid the common cold and flu by washing your hands regularly.
85. Sleep well: Help your body help itself by getting the proper amount of sleep.
86. Use disease management programs: Take advantage of disease management programs to help better treat your disease.
87. Eat colorfully: Lower your risk for diseases by eating colorful fruits and vegetables.
88. Be careful of back pain: Be sure to bend with your knees and avoid twisting while lifting heavy objects.
89. Plan for long term care: Find out how you can safeguard your assets and save money by discussing long term care with a financial adviser.
90. Immunize: Be sure to keep up with childhood immunization on the recommended schedule.
91. Take advantage of wellness incentives: Many employers offer financial incentives to employees that participate in company wellness incentives.
92. Eat a balanced diet: Eat lots of fruits and vegetables, and avoid sweets and fatty foods.
93. Use sunscreen: Wear sunscreen and avoid tanning salons to help prevent skin cancer.
94. Use aspirin if you’re middle aged: Decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease with aspirin.
95. Feed your brain: Eat foods that are rich in essential vitamins and Omega-3 fatty acids.
96. Get genetic testing: Find out what diseases you’re most at risk for so that you can better prevent them.
97. Lose weight: Fight obesity, and you’ll save on your insurance premiums, as well as prevent weight related conditions.
98. Stay active: Keep your heart and lungs healthy with regular exercise.
99. Exercise your brain: Avoid mental health problems by exercising your brain.
100. Laugh: Get relief from depression by laughing often.

This was just on the internet and she is TOTALLY, TOTALLY wrong and I would love to know her education and experience to be giving exercise advice:

Her comment:

Acquaint yourself with small to moderate free weights (3-5 lbs.), especially if you’re over 40. A bit of extremely simple resistance training is an antidote to hours spent on gym machines. Short but focused movement with small weights is a good way to preserve upper body tone and bone density and supplement the cardiovascular benefits of an active lifestyle. A little goes a long way, and that only increases the older you get, so don’t let extremism overtake you.

End of her.

WRONG. Light weights do N O T H I N G to help preserve and maintain muscle or bone. It’s an exercise prescription I would not even use with a 90+ year old.

This is the problem with my industry. People with no knowledge say things and we are then faced with confusion and contradiction.

Lift heavy as that is what gets the job done.

Just a few blogs ago I talked about the progressive resistance training that helps seniors. Note the word progressive. Those 3-5 pound weights will be history in a week.

JIm

Interesting article in “The Wall Street Journal” regarding cleansing the colon.

There is a great deal of debate over whether this is needed or not.

Fifteen percent (and I think it’s higher) of Americans suffer from constipation. That can be linked to many potential illnesses and is not a comfortable situation to be in.

The way to address constipation is to eat a diet high in fiber from fruits, vegetables and whole grains and stay well hydrated.

I would also talk with your doctor and see if he/she recommends a fiber supplement.

Just know, a cleanse is not necessary, but staying regular is.

My Chicago and New York staff also believe that the more you poop, the more weight you lose. I don’t have any research that supports this theory, but my staff in optimal shape are all prolific poopers and we laugh about it all the time.

Jim

I don’t watch the show, but did read in a magazine that they made the morbidly obese recent contestants run a mile and two of them had to be hospitalized.

Now, we know that these two suffered complications, but we have NO idea what happened to the joints or the organs of the other contestants.

That is my whole message about exercise. Every time you think about doing some form of exercise or trying a fad diet, finish the sentence with “at what cost.”

Examples:

I want to run a marathon – at what cost?

I want to take spin class – at what cost?

I want to go on the Atkins diet – at what cost?

We never think that way, and we should, since the wrong exercise and ridiculous fad diets have long lasting, damaging consequences.

Think about it.

Jim

Great article in Nutrition Action Newsletter about arthritis and the risks.

Hands down, being overweight comes with a 60% chance of developing osteoarthritis while only 29% at a healthy weight will develop it. That cuts the risk in half.

And please, don’t get me started on punishing cardio. It is the WORST thing you can possibly do on your joints.

Jim

Get on the scale both tomorrow, Saturday AND Sunday. That will keep you on track more than anything else.

This just in:

LONDON – Being fat could become the leading cause of cancer in women in Western countries in the coming years, European researchers said Thursday.

Being overweight or obese accounts for up to 8 percent of cancers in Europe. Experts said that figure is poised to increase substantially as the obesity epidemic continues, and as major causes of cancer, such as smoking and hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women, drop dramatically.

“Obesity is catching up at a rate that makes it possible it could become the biggest attributable cause of cancer in women within the next decade,” said Andrew Renehan, a cancer expert at the University of Manchester. Renehan presented his findings to a joint meeting of the European Cancer Organisation and the European Society for Medical Oncology in Berlin on Thursday.

Renehan and colleagues designed a model to estimate the number of cancers that could be blamed on being fat in 30 European countries. In 2002, they calculated that 70,000 cases of cancer out of about 2 million cancer cases were attributable to being overweight or obese. By 2008, the number had jumped to at least 124,000.

Colorectal cancer, breast cancer in menopausal women and endometrial cancer accounted for 65 percent of all cancers linked to being fat. Renehan said that in the U.S., some studies found obesity was responsible for up to 20 percent of cancers.

Experts said the results should help shape future cancer policies across Europe.

“Being overweight or obese is likely to be one of the biggest single causes of cancer after smoking,” said Lucy Boyd, an epidemiologist at Cancer Research United Kingdom who was not linked to the research.

Scientists aren’t sure why being fat boosts your cancer risk, but suspect it is connected to hormones. As people become fatter, they produce more hormones like estrogen that help tumors grow. People with big bellies also have more acid in their stomachs, which can lead to stomach, intestinal or esophageal cancer.

Still, not all experts said obesity would produce skyrocketing cancer rates in the near future.

“It is not likely (obesity) will have as severe an effect as smoking,” said Jan Coebergh, a professor of cancer surveillance at Erasmus University, who has done similar research. Coebergh expected it would take a few decades before rounder Europeans would see a parallel rise in cancer, since the disease often takes years to develop.

Still, scientists called for more measures to fight obesity and the cancers it might cause.

Renehan said new strategies were needed to help people stay slim. “We need to find the biological mechanism to help people find other ways of tackling obesity,” he said. “Just telling the population to lose weight obviously hasn’t worked.”

Jim again.

If you have had ANY cancer in your past or in your family, losing weight is NOT an option, it is a must. I hope you see that.

Jim

Duke Medical Health Newsletter reports that 121 studies show older adults can maintain daily activities and independence through some form of progressive strength training.

They also relieve the pain of arthritis, strengthen their bones, reduce the risk of falling and so much more.

I have always said, “If you don’t lift, you don’t last” and these studies clearly support that theory.

PLEASE urge anyone over 60 to lift to live a long, healthy, independent lifestyle.

Jim

While this article is mostly about cardio, I do like what it has to say about intensity of exercise. ONCE AGAIN, walking and all that low intensity, worthless exercise loses out to “real” exercise that pushes both the mind and body to improve.

This was in the “New York Times:”

What Sort of Exercise Can Make You Smarter?
By Gretchen Reynolds

Allow a laboratory mouse to run as much as it likes, and its brainpower improves. Force it to run harder than it otherwise might, and its thinking improves even more. This is the finding of an experiment led by researchers at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan and placed online in May.
Phys Ed

In the study, scientists had two groups of mice swim a water maze and in a separate trial had them endure an unpleasant stimulus to see how quickly they would learn to move away from it. For the next four weeks they allowed one group of mice to run inside their rodent wheels, an activity most mice enjoy, while requiring the other group to push harder on minitreadmills at a speed and duration controlled by the scientists. They then tested both groups again to track their learning skills and memory. Both groups of mice performed admirably in the water maze, bettering their performances from the earlier trial. But only the treadmill runners were better in the avoidance task, a skill that, according to brain scientists, demands a more complicated cognitive response.

The mice who raced on the treadmills showed evidence of molecular changes in several portions of their brains when viewed under a microscope, while the voluntary wheel-runners had changes in only one area. “Our results support the notion that different forms of exercise induce neuroplasticity changes in different brain regions,” Chauying J. Jen, a professor of physiology and an author of the study, says.

For some time, researchers have known that exercise changes the structure of the brain and affects thinking. Ten years ago scientists at the Salk Institute in California published the groundbreaking finding that exercise stimulates the creation of new brain cells. But fundamental questions remain, like whether exercise must be strenuous to be beneficial. Should it be aerobic? What about weight lifting? And are the cognitive improvements permanent or fleeting?

Other recent studies provide some preliminary answers. In an experiment published in the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, 21 students at the University of Illinois were asked to memorize a string of letters and then pick them out from a list flashed at them. Then they were asked to do one of three things for 30 minutes — sit quietly, run on a treadmill or lift weights — before performing the letter test again. After an additional 30-minute cool down, they were tested once more. On subsequent days, the students returned to try the other two options. The students were noticeably quicker and more accurate on the retest after they ran compared with the other two options, and they continued to perform better when tested after the cool down. “There seems to be something different about aerobic exercise,” Charles Hillman, an associate professor in the department of kinesiology at the University of Illinois and an author of the study, says.

Similarly, in other work by scientists at the University of Illinois, elderly people were assigned a six-month program of either stretching exercises or brisk walking. The stretchers increased their flexibility but did not improve on tests of cognition. The brisk walkers did.

You won’t believe this. I would think Paula Dean came up with this idea:

KFC tests new sandwich with ‘bun’ of fried chicken
Comments

It might just be the greatest thing since sliced bread.

KFC is selling a sandwich that uses two fried chicken filets instead of a bun.

Between the finger-lickin’ pieces of chicken are two slices of bacon, melted slices of swiss and pepper jack cheese and a dollop of “the Colonel’s sauce.”

It’s been dubbed the “Double Down,” and “It’s so much 100 percent premium chicken, we didn’t have room for a bun,” according to a KFC commercial posted on YouTube.

Is your mouth watering? Well, don’t run down to your local KFC just yet. The Colonel is test marketing these calorie bombs only in Providence, R.I., and Omaha, Neb.

They’re $6.99 (not including airfare) for a value meal including fries and a drink.

The calorie count has yet to be posted on KFC’s Web site. But an independent analysis by the Vancouver Sun (yet another example of Canadians looking down on Americans) estimates the Double Down has 1,228 calories.

To put that into perspective, that’s almost 300 calories more than a Wendy’s Triple with Everything.