Saturday, February 12, 2011

Insurance Health Assessment Going Too Far?

For a 50% reduction in our health insurance payroll deduction, our insurance carrier is offering all of its participants employed by my company a health assessment and wellness program.

The program requires annual check-ups and blood screenings, along with the completion of an online questionaire which generates a wellness report containing an overall look at your physical health and some general health advice.

I have some troubling feelings about this program. In theory it's a good idea to offer an incentive to get people to the doctor. Too many people, including me, wait until there's something wrong before darkening a doctor's doorstep. This program got me to a doctor for the first time in years.

What don't I like? Well, there's this questionnaire that we're required to fill out. I'm required to provide the results of my blood screen and checkup. I'm not comfortable with a third party having access to my personal health information, particularly my medical insurance provider.

More importantly, I didn't expect to be asked the following questions on the assessment, even after I indicated that I was married:

1. Are you sexually active?
2. How many sex partners have you had in the last 5 years?
3. Do you use birth control?

Aside from the fact that the results didn't discuss anything related to any of these points, these are the kinds of issues for your confessor and your physician, NOT YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY. How, exactly, does wedging itself like this into my marriage help my health?  I was not the only person offended by these questions.

We all know how insurance companies operate. They determine what health care you will get by determining what they will or will not pay; and thanks to ObamaCare they have a green light from our government, since every American will be required to carry medical insurance by 2014.

It all stinks of socialism.

Recently I was sent an article titled "What the Popes Really Say About Socialism" by the folks over at  America Needs Fatima. It's great stuff, take a look at it when you have a few minutes. While I was filling out the questionnaire it was Pope Leo XIII's quote that rang a bell. The excerpt that follows is directly from his encyclical titled Quod Apostolici Muneris:
(Socialists) debase the natural union of man and woman, which is held sacred even among barbarous peoples; and its bond, by which the family is chiefly held together, they weaken, or even deliver up to lust. Lured, in fine, by the greed of present goods, which is "the root of all evils, which some coveting have erred from the faith," they assail the right of property sanctioned by natural law; and by a scheme of horrible wickedness, while they seem desirous of caring for the needs and satisfying the desires of all men, they strive to seize and hold in common whatever has been acquired either by title of lawful inheritance, or by labor of brain and hands, or by thrift in one's mode of life.
Some "benefits", eh?  Eddie-Ray, we will be having a talk about all this.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh gina, i can see the smoke flowing out from your ears right now!!!! and ritchiously so my dear sister... how intrusive, invasive AND IRRELAVENT to your insurance.... did you know that I was FIRED from my last job because, at that time, i was over 300 pounds...so, naturally i had health issues.....so, in turn I was fired because i was FAT!!!! all my medical bills made our employer's insurance coverage rise!!! I of course, WON our court battle about getting unemployment checks AND being allowed to STAY for one YEAR on THEIR insurance through "COBRA". thank you LORD for "cobra".....what the heck does my fatness have to do with being one of their BEST phone order operaters for almost six years???
also, it'razy but TRUE, employers around our country are now making people that apply for a job take an "MMPI" test to see if they will work out or not...in case you're not familiar to what an "MMPI" is, it's the standard testing that psychologists and psychiatrists (a written test) use on their patients to be able to know in what area's the patient needs help with. it also is the way to analyze if, and/or what, mental disorders their patients may have or not have........ i ask you, why would an owner of some small, pidley-ass company be able to LITERALLY see what is IN MY MIND!!!!! HEY GUNA, while the insurance companies and employers are busy learning EVERY SINGLE private thing about us, why don't they just ADD one of those AIRPORT BODY SCANNERS as a standard part of be accepted or rejected for health care or a new job......if we dig VERY DEEP in to the UNDERBELLY of all this DARK and DEHUMANIZING, i think our minds would actually EXPLODE from all the dark, slimey, secretive horrors we would find in that underbelly.....instead of singing "GOD BLESS AMERICA', we should change it to "GOD HELP AMERICA!!!!! we are sinking fast my dear sister.NOT good.......
all my love always, janet

Gina said...

That's terrible, Janet! For the last few days I've been laid up with a very bizarre, very serious chest cold. The meds have my mind a little too liquefied to read, so I've been watching documentaries on Netflix. BAD BAD BAD things are happening in this world, to this world, to us, at the hands of people with what can only be considered very, very evil intentions. We really need to buckle down and pray for this world...Many rosaries; many chaplets of Divine Mercy for the millions suffering.

Bill Borden said...

Government health care will be the best thing this country has seen in years IF your doctor gets to decide what procedures you need and payments for those procedures are guaranteed. As long as corporations and shareholders get to decide what level of care we need, and patients are required to pay in full if insurance companies change their mind about paying, your health care and mine will suffer no matter how much we pay for health insurance.

Gina said...

That's how it's set up, Bill. Doctors won't get to decide anything. Corporations and shareholders benefit, and government continues to fleece the nation, only now at the expense of our health. There's no point in even writing "if".

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