The Vitality Team knew a young man who was fond of saying that his idea of an exercise regimen was the annual physical he received for free courtesy of his employer. He was, of course, fortunate to have health coverage through his employer’s California small group health insurance policy.
On the other hand, if you are looking for an affordable California health insurance plan for yourself and/or your family it behooves you to do what we call ‘thinking like an underwriter’. When you are shopping for a California health plan, here’s what you and Vitality will be looking for: An affordable California health insurance plan that provides the highest level of benefits at the lowest monthly premium! Affordability is determined in part by your health history to date and also your approach to a healthy living lifestyle. Underwriting is going to look at factors such as proportional height and weight to help them understand your physical wellbeing at the time you apply for coverage. They are going to ask whether you smoke.
In short, the underwriting process is about understanding the risk you represent to that health insurance company in terms of future health care costs. Pose a higher risk, expect to pay higher premiums. Pursue a healthy living lifestyle with proper nutrition and regular exercise strategies and the prospect of a California health plan with a lower monthly premium becomes that much brighter.
Fortunately you have help in your pursuit of healthy living and it can be as close as your nearest hospital. For instance, a quick check with our local hospital – Community Memorial Hospital here in Ventura – turned up a range of classes and support groups on health. On a broader scale, you can even look to the United States government for a Guide to Healthy Living!
Here at Vitality, we’re dedicated to helping you pursue a path to healthy living: First and foremost, your health means the world to us and your family. Secondly, your pursuit of a healthy living lifestyle may have a significant impact on your ability to secure the most affordable California health insurance plan with the benefits that appeal most to you – and that makes for happy clients!
A quick last comment – Health Reform legislation means that all new individual market health plans must provide coverage for preventive services. Make use of these preventive services. Make preventive care an essential part of your strategy for healthy living! You’ll also be pleasantly surprised to find that in many California communities free healthcare screenings abound. Be on the lookout for them and we’ll help too! Check back with us on a regular basis for more healthy living articles here at the Vitality Blog!
We’ll see you out on that bike, hiking, or walking path, California health insurance consumers!
The Vitality team is dedicated to helping California health insurance consumers find important information about the selection and purchase of an affordable California health insurance plan for themselves, their family, and even their California small business. We do that by dedicating ourselves to making our Web presence the very best it can be and also by working one-on-one with clients who are seeking both the ease and convenience of the Internet combined with the peace of mind that comes with an always free, careful, considerate California health insurance consultation with a Vitality team member.
If you’re new to our Vitality Blog we welcome you and hope you’ll make it a point to list us a ‘favorite’ in your Web browser for easy future access. If you’re a regular reader of our blog – welcome back – and we’re confident that you’ve already gotten the sense that this blog is always striving to be both a reliable and convenient resource for the purchase of affordable California health insurance as well as a valued online health care resource our readers can turn to in learning more about a multitude of subjects related to health care and how we access that health care.
Today, we’d like to focus on the use of complementary and alternative medicine for people with cancer. We have a special interest in this subject because members of the Vitality team have been engaged in cancer battles themselves or have close family members who have been diagnosed with cancer.
Vitality is gratified to see that complementary and alternative medicine or CAM for short is being embraced by the medical community as an acceptable adjunct to existing cancer treatments. The medical community now understands that CAM helps the patient better cope with the side effects of cancer treatments; helps reduce the stress that comes with a cancer diagnosis; and helps the patient attain a sense of empowerment about being proactive regarding their treatment strategies. It should, of course, be noted that choosing a CAM strategy should be done with care:
- Choose practitioners of CAM with the same care that you used to select your internist and oncology team.
- Talk with your doctor about your CAM strategy and ask for their input. Your doctor may be able to provide a reference for a CAM consultation. Also, it is important that you coordinate your CAM strategy with your cancer treatment to make certain the two are working in complete harmony for your health.
- Get information from trusted sources. The good and the bad of a great research tool like the Web is that there is a lot of information available – unfortunately, some of it isn’t reliable and can be misleading.
- A resource like the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) might be a solid starting point along with your oncologist.
In preparing this article it occurred to us that healthy California health insurance consumers who are presently shopping for a plan might already be strong advocates or disciples of complementary or alternative medicine and regularly take vitamins, herbs, and/or prefer acupuncture for the treatment of certain ailments. If that’s the case, let us know: Let’s discuss the advantages of a HSA-compatible high deductible health plan that will allow you to spend your HSA funds on qualified medical expenses like acupuncture.
As always, we thank you for spending time with us here at the Vitality Blog: We strive to make the Blog an important and reliable resource to our readers and look forward to seeing you back here soon!
