Hospitals are not required to give non-emergency service. This means that all too often, someone with a minor, easy to treat condition will not get care at the emergency room until the health problem is serious and expensive to treat. In general there is increasing awareness that our health care should be more lifestyle oriented, and centered around prevention and wellness. The problem is getting worse. Americans keep demanding more and better medical coverage while Health Insurance Companies try to make bigger profits for their investors.
Disabled people fall somewhere between the two, and sometimes through the cracks.
Drivers who have a lot of accidents are more expensive to cover, and pay higher insurance premiums. Just like bad drivers, elderly and disabled people cost insurance companies more money and those companies are constantly looking for ways to hold down their expenses. If Insurance companies had their choice, they would only cover young healthy consumers who only pay in and do not consume much in the way of medical services. In the next part of this series, we will address some of the causes as wall as explore some of the proposed solutions.