• Lucy Bennet. Played by nubile Kerry Biché, who has become the show’s leading character. If you like brunettes (and we do), she’s worth looking at. Like most of the others on the list, she even manages to make surgical scrubs seem sexy.

• Meredith Grey, played by Ellen Pompeo. She’s the title character of Grey’s Anatomy, of course, and a total babe. Of course, to get to her, you’d have to do in the McDreamy twerp, but that’s bonus as far as most of us are concerned.

• Erica Hahn, played by Brooke Smith on Grey’s Anatomy. Admittedly, she’s a bit overly professional and kind of a bitch, but if you can get past that, she’s also kinda hot, if you like blondes. And, let’s face it, who doesn’t like blondes?

• Susan Lewis, played by Sherry Stringfield. She was in the early seasons of ER as an intern, then popped back up a few years later as an honest to goodness doctor. Admittedly, the blonde was hotter back in ’96 when she was an eager young intern, but the years didn’t do any serious harm. She was still one of the hottest blonde doctors on TV.

• Christina Yang, played by Sandra Oh on Grey’s Anatomy. OK, we expect to catch some flack for this pick, but we are totally into Asians, and she was the best we could find, so she makes the list. And really, she is a good looking lady. Frankly, we’d be willing to pay extra for medical insurance to have her work on us.

So, who’s your favorite? We know you have one. After all, when the wife or girlfriend makes you watch these silly, sappy medical dramas, they’re the only things that make the show worth watching.

Photo via Kwintin

However, as expensive as medical insurance is, it’s less costly that going without it. For the average uninsured person, it doesn’t take many trips to the emergency room to drive you to bankruptcy. A typical visit to the ER costs upwards of $1,000 dollars. And God forbid you need to be hospitalized. One week in the average hospital is going to cost you fifty grand. That’s a hell of a lot of rent and more than enough to wipe most of us out. It’s certainly enough to make you think twice before saying that you can’t afford major medical insurance. The truth is you can’t afford not to have it.

Of course, government programs going into effect over the next few years aim to reduce the cost of medical insurance for those with lower incomes, but don’t kid yourself: it’s still going to be expensive. Perhaps all the more so because the insurance companies will need to insure those who are in poor health, spreading the cost of coverage amongst all of us.

Perhaps the best argument for biting the bullet and getting medical insurance whether you can afford it or not, though, is that studies have shown that it increases your life expectancy. Perhaps this is blatantly obvious already, but that’s especially true if you have a life threatening condition.

One poignant example is Cystic Fibrosis patients. Those with medical insurance, who are able to receive the appropriate care when they need it, live an average of more than 20 years after they are diagnosed. Those without medical insurance live an average of about 6 years after diagnosis.

Of course, that’s only one medical condition. There are literally thousands of different things that can kill you which can be prevented, or at least significantly delayed, with proper medical care. So, even before it becomes mandatory for every US citizen to have medical insurance, you might want to consider looking at other areas you can cut back rather than your health budget.

Photo via Sam Howzit

Medical insurance has been around since the 1800s, but it didn’t really catch on en masse until the Second World War. During that time, there was a fairly significant labor shortage in the United States. This was coupled with a number of government regulations that capped or froze wages, so that employers couldn’t offer more money as an incentive to work for them. To make up for this, employers started offering generous fringe benefit packages. Of course, these eventually became part of the national fabric, something we all expect from our employers.

Initially, medical insurance only covered hospital visits and emergencies, and patients were still expected to pay for routine doctor’s visits. As the years passed and labor organizations bargained for better benefits, insurance has come to cover more and more. Here are a few things most insurance companies will cover that our grandparents in the ‘50s sure as hell didn’t expect:

• Weight loss surgery. Of course, back then, being overweight didn’t carry quite as much of a stigma, and since people tended to be less sedentary, they didn’t tend to get as heavy too often anyway. But if someone was heavy, they had a fairly simple solution. Eat less. Even if weight loss surgery had been around, they wouldn’t have expected their small premiums to entitle them to an optional surgery costing thousands of dollars.

• Birth control. They were too busy making the Baby Boom generation to think about it, and for many of them it was against their religion. Of course, birth control wasn’t widely available at the time anyway, and in most places, it was against the law to provide it to unmarried people.

• Viagra. Or Cialis. Or any of the others that have come along behind them. Originally designed to treat hypertension and angina, this family of drugs was quickly found to have certain other benefits. I doubt Grandpa would have thought that someday his medical insurance might pay for this. Judging by how many kids their generation produced, I doubt he’d have cared. I wonder what he’ll think if they start covering Extenz?

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Many trace the origins of our modern system (for lack of a better term) to the 1920s, when costs of health care began to spike. Of course, part of the reason for the higher costs was that doctors and hospitals had developed new and better treatments for sick and injured people. These treatments, while better, were more expensive.

Soon, the cost of going to see the doctor was beginning to get a little steep for many, especially those on the lower end of the spectrum financially. The Great Depression served to highlight this, as more and more people found themselves closer to the bottom of the totem pole.

Baylor Hospital is reputed to be the first to offer a solution resembling medical insurance, when it started a program which eventually morphed into the Blues. The program was (and remains to this day) not for profit, and benefited from generous government tax breaks.

Of course, the American capitalist didn’t take long to catch onto the idea that there was money to be made here. And while medical insurance companies don’t have the high profit margins some seem to think, they don’t go under often, either. The development of commercially available insurance, combined with a labor shortage in the ‘40s led many companies to offer insurance as a fringe benefit, in order to recruit more or better employees.

In large part, the fringe benefits were the result of wage freezes during the war because they provided a loophole through which companies could offer a better package without technically raising wages. Of course, sixty years later, most of us expect that when we take on a grown-up job we will be provided with medical insurance.

What’s happened since then isn’t much different than the developments that led to the creation of medical insurance in the first place. Better treatments, which cost more money are becoming available at a dizzying pace. The question that is raised, of course, is who pays for it?

The truth is we all pay for it, and that won’t change no matter what system of health care we adopt. But, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Paying for medical advances still beats not having them.

Photo via aussiegall

Of course, for now, most of us in the United States have traditional medical insurance coverage. Of all points of the health care debate, there are few more hotly contested than who should have the right to determine what kinds of treatments we receive. As it is now, doctors, health care professionals, prescription drug companies and medical insurance actuaries all have a say in the matter.

So, in today’s system, what happens if our medical insurance says no to a treatment or medicine our physician recommends? Most people assume they’re simply screwed, but that’s not really the case. Here’s the best process to deal with being told no by your insurance company:

1. Contact your doctor. There may be alternate treatments which are as good or nearly so and are acceptable to your insurance company.

1. Contact your insurance company to file a grievance. If your doctor says there isn’t another treatment that will work for your case, get it in writing and submit your claim again, along with a grievance. Too many people simply accept no the first time. Your insurance company will do an internal review, and may reverse their earlier decision.

1. If they don’t, file an external grievance with your state’s governing body. Sometimes simply having this filed will get some favorable action on the insurance company’s part, as it isn’t in their best interests to deal with multiple grievances.

1. If that doesn’t work, consider contacting an attorney. Sometimes they can help, sometimes they can’t, but it’s worth a shot. This is your health we’re talking about, after all.

Not knowing, however, can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The fact that there are many types of medical insurance policies, and countless variations on each type of policy means you probably aren’t going to be able to sort it all out yourself unless you happen to be a licensed medical insurance agent, but there are some things you should look into before you need medical attention. Here are some of the basics, all of which should be detailed in your policy. If they aren’t, ask your benefits person or call the medical insurance company yourself:

• What is your insurance company’s policy concerning trips to the emergency room? Virtually all insurance companies will cover a trip to the ER if it’s obviously warranted, but different insurance companies have vastly different ideas of what does or does not justify a trip to the emergency room. The last thing you want is a bill from the hospital, as they are much more expensive than a doctor’s office visit. Incidentally, the last thing your insurance company wants is a bill from the ER for exactly the same reason.

• What is your insurance company’s policy concerning medical clinics? Most communities have walk in clinics which have much more amenable hours than traditional doctor’s offices. And if you happen to slice your hand open after five o’clock, you would think the insurance company would prefer you go there than the emergency room. Not always the case, as it turns out. It’s better to know before you need to go and better to give your insurance company a large ER bill than to get soaked with a smaller walk in clinic bill that you need to pay yourself.

• What is your medical insurance company’s policy regarding specialists, chiropractors, etc.? Some types of insurance allow you to see a specialist directly, others make you get a referral from your general practitioner.

• Which doctors can you choose from? Some insurance companies let you pick your own doctors, others restrict who they will pay for. Always know ahead of time which doctors your insurance company will cover when you visit.

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You might think it odd that medical insurance would come to mind, but think about it. If marijuana is an acceptable prescription for some ailments, how long will it be before insurance companies have to take a hard look at whether or not they will pay for it? And with new legislation on the way that promises to take medical decisions out of insurance companies’ hands and into doctors’, how long will it be before they’re required to pay for it?

Now make no mistake, we’re not suggesting that medical insurance companies shouldn’t pay for a guy’s weed if he can find a doctor to say that he needs it. If the law is implemented elsewhere like it is in Michigan, where users with prescriptions are expected to “grow your own,” the insurance companies will probably walk away a lot cheaper than paying for other less entertaining and more traditional medicines.

The plant reproduces itself, so they’d only have to pay for it once, at least in theory. We’re not sure what a pot plant is going for on the open market. Of course, that’s partly because pot plants aren’t sold on the open market. But it would have to be cheaper than some of the medications that are used to treat the same ailments.

Of course, it remains to be seen how federal law will affect the state’s laws. So far, the federal government seems to keep a mostly hands-off approach to the whole thing since California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996. But there’s no promise it will stay that way. It is still against federal law to possess MJ, and there’s no telling when the government will decide to enforce its laws.

So far fourteen states have legalized pot for those who can get a doctor’s script. Is it for the better or the worse? And will insurance eventually pay for it? If it does, I’ll betcha we have a sudden tragic outbreak of glaucoma.

Photo via r0bz

But who should be making our medical decisions. It’s easy to just say that we should be making the decisions between ourselves and our doctors. And ultimately, that’s what happens anyway. Medical insurance companies don’t ultimately decide what treatments you will or won’t receive. They just decide which ones they will or won’t pay for.

Of course, with the sky high costs of many medical services, the distinction can be paper thin at times. The fact that you can opt to pay for and receive any service you want doesn’t help the overwhelming majority of us. So, we should take the medical insurance companies out of the decision making loop, right?

On the surface that sounds like a great idea. The only problem with it is that you’d be killing the goose that laid the golden egg. If insurance companies accepted every medical suggestion out of hand, they couldn’t operate profitably. And insurance companies are not run entirely by pocket protector wearing bean counters with actuary tables. You’d better believe that medical insurance companies retain some of the finest medical minds in the country to advise them concerning which treatments they should and should not consider viable.

That’s not to say insurance companies always get it right. Usually, the one closest to the action makes the best call. With your health, that’s you and your doctor. But with that said, if insurance companies didn’t put some controls on what treatments they will accept and pay for, they would soon be bankrupt and unable to pay for anything for anyone.

Of course, in some countries, the government controls those kinds of decisions. There are arguments for and against that, to be sure. But ultimately, whether it’s a panel of bureaucrats or a panel of actuaries, at some point, bean counters somewhere are going to have their say about what will and what won’t be paid for. In the end, it comes down to picking your poison.

Photo via Eva Blue

For starters, we don’t have enough doctors. The bottom line is that American medical schools just aren’t training enough of them? Is that the schools’ fault, or the governments? Who knows. Let’s just hope everyone can stop pointing fingers enough to look at the issue. It’s predicted that we will be short over 100,000 doctors within twenty years from now.

So why is that? For starters, the overwhelming majority of the doctors currently serving are from the baby boom generation. During the 1970s, the government approved funding for more doctors to be trained. Of course, when the immediate shortfall ended, so did the finding. More accurately, it hasn’t increased in proportion to population increases. With more Americans set to be insured, there will be even more demand for doctors.

So, what’s the problem with that? Well, as baby boomers, lots of the doctors are retiring. So is the rest of the baby boomer population. The children of the ‘60s did what they vowed never to do…they got old. And with that comes a greater need for medical attention. So, we have more people, particularly more older people needing more attention from fewer doctors. Yikes!

But whose fault is it, really? Well, the baby boom began when the American GIs, members of this country’s Greatest Generation and recipients of FDR’s New Deal, came home from fighting World War 2 in  Europe and Asia, full of red blooded American vim and vigor. And as any red blooded American boy would do, they set right to chasing American girls. And that, kids, is what produced the baby boom generation. So, if you think about it, this whole thing was caused by a bunch of horny GIs. It’s the Greatest Generation’s fault. But that’s OK. Seems they were the ones who brought us the concept of medical insurance anyway.

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Since the laws don’t start taking effect until 2014, we still have a while to wait to see how they will really affect us. Whether we own a small business or just work for one, there are some features of the new legislation that we can be sure will affect us, but much of it is still a mystery, and there are still three and a half years for lawmakers to make revisions to the bills before they take effect.

As it stands now, here are some of the likely effects (benefits and liabilities) for small businesses:

• All Americans will be required by law to have insurance. Of course, this means you. It also means your employees. So, if you don’t insure them, they will need to find private insurance. Some employees might simply look for other employment rather than paying premiums, so be sure to take that into consideration when you make decisions regarding employees’ medical insurance.

• Small companies will be able to band together to purchase insurance at lower rates normally reserved for larger groups. Each state is required to make provisions for smaller companies to do this. These Small Business Health Options Programs (known as SHOP exchanges) will be available to companies with 50 or fewer employees, and in some cases to companies with up to 100 employees.

• Part of the costs of providing medical insurance will be defrayed by the government. At present, it looks like 35% of the costs will be covered for the first two years. While it still might be cheaper to pay the $750 per employee fine, the government picking up more than a third of the insurance tab will lower the cost of insuring your employees significantly.

• If you have fewer than 50 employees, you most likely won’t be directly affected or required to provide insurance. As previously noted, though, even if you’re not required to provide it, your employees are going to be required to have it, and in many cases, it will be easier to get a different job with medical insurance than to buy it for themselves.

Small business owners should be watching this closely, both the good and bad parts of it. There is still time to contact your congressman if you have any concerns or suggestions. Health care in this country is going to change, but you can have a voice in molding what that looks like.

Photo via reynolds.james.e