Tell Your HR Administrator Thank You!

Not much time is dedicated to saying thank you- so here’s our way of saying thank you to HR professionals who may not get the daily recognition they deserve.

The American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration (ASHHRA) is dedicated to meeting the professional needs of human resource leaders in health care and make sure to set aside this week in March every year to celebrate them. They’ve compiled a list of activities to do during the week to show appreciation. The list ranges from team building exercises, luncheons or a simple pat on the back! It’s important to maintain healthy relationships within your job environment and your HR administrator is a big part of creating and evolving that environment. Among the numerous other daily tasks they complete, their priority is to keep you happy in the work place. That’s definitely something to appreciate!

Don’t forget if you ever need to take a health lab test for your job, we have you covered. Check out all of the tests we offer and find which one you need easily.

Here’s to you HR Administrators! Thank you.

Taxes & the Affordable Care Act

Tax season is underway; which means you should start thinking about the tax implications on health reform when it comes to the Affordable Care Act.

If you’ve purchased insurance through the health insurance marketplace, you may be eligible for a refundable tax credit. Fox 23 reports that when taxpayers were signing up, the option was available to estimate their 2014 income to see if it was possible to qualify for credit and have it applied in advanced to the cost of premiums. If this is the case for you and your family, it’s important to actively inform the particular exchange you purchased your insurance through of any changes in your situation throughout the year such as having a child or a salary increase.

Make sure you understand what this means for your taxes, especially if you haven’t enrolled in health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and are planning on it. Don’t forget that the deadline is March 31, 2014. Many people think the deadline has already passed, but there’s still plenty of time! Taxes are due just shortly after the 31st and it will be helpful to know exactly what to expect. To learn more about the Affordable Care Act visit our microsite at www.anylabtestnow.com/health-care-reform-and-you/.

Be Crystal Clear When It Comes to Your Policy

Imagine heading to take your semi-yearly cholesterol check and as you go to pay, you are quickly told that your plan only covers a test once every two years. When you are used to your tests being covered twice a year, that’s not a fun situation to be in, which is why it’s so important to make sure you are crystal clear on what the Affordable Care Act covers in your plan when it comes to lab testing.

Preventative Care Services are available at no additional cost to you through the ACA, but some details about that can become a little fuzzy and confusing. Based on your particular insurance policy, some lab testing services may no longer be covered or covered the way they may have been in the past. It’s necessary to double check with your provider so that there aren’t any surprises!

When the time comes and you need a lab test, keep in mind that we are your affordable solution to Take Control of Your Health® and keep your premium costs as low as possible. We WILL help you in the long run when it comes to your health and your wallet.

What’s Up With Health Care Reform?

ANY LAB TEST NOW®’s Health Care Reform & You Education Site

Are you frustrated with keeping up to date with health care reform? Prepare to be educated in the simplest way. We are dedicated to keeping you in the loop on everything you need to know about the latest changes in health reform, so we’ve created our micro site with you in mind.

With ANY LAB TEST NOW® it will be easier to help you Take Control of Your Health® and manage your health care budget. Lab testing is a big part of medical costs and we’re here to help you proactively handle your health by providing direct access to lab testing services. To do so, we have partnered with AmeriDoc Telemedicine Services. This will help you get a lab test, call the doctor on your schedule, receive a consultation with a certified physician over the phone, be able to upload your test results into your personal medical profile and pick up your prescription within hours, helping you save time and money. Learn more details at AmeriDoc.

Chocked full of useful information including articles, visual information, tools and additional resources compiled by industry experts and leaders, ANY LAB TEST NOW®’s Health Care Reform & You Education Site will make your life a whole lot easier.

Check it out and let us know what you think or if you have any questions.

See How We Can Make Your Life Easy When It Comes to the Affordable Care Act

We’re getting excited for Thanksgiving, which is making us extra thankful! We are thankful for you and for our ability to help guide you through the Affordable Care Act. ANY LAB TEST NOW® is now acting as your right hand man when it comes to affordable healthcare. Want to know why? Because we make your life a whole lot easier by making the lab testing process simple, convenient and extremely affordable.

Be prepared because as the new year starts, so does the new health care reform. This means that you will be responsible for managing more of your health care budget. Lab testing can take up a large part of that budget… which is where we come in.

Tests have to be done in order to properly diagnose, so it’s inevitable, but it doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg anymore. ANY LAB TEST NOW is where you can afford your testing. Check out more details and how we can help you here. We shared what we are thankful for, now let’s hear it from you! What are you most thankful for this season?

Be a Quitter

Once you commit, never quit, right? In this case, WRONG!

Join us at ANY LAB TEST NOW® as we celebrate The Great American Smokeout on November 21st to encourage smokers to QUIT! Quit just for the day, or use this day to make a game plan to quit all together.

Did you know that smoking is the number one preventable cause of death? Tobacco use cannot be ignored any longer! Especially now more than ever, because the Affordable Care Act allows insurance companies to charge tobacco users up to 50% more for their monthly premiums. Check out this link to learn more.

This is the perfect time to take a cotinine or nicotine test to give you a chance to look back for several days on tobacco usage. If you’re an employer rewarding tobacco free employees or a parent concerned about your child; this is the test for you! Go to your nearest ANY LAB TEST NOW® to set up your test and get ready for The Great American Smokeout!

Challenge: Create a timeline for your goals, smoking related or not! Use The Great American Smokeout as your start date, and become a healthier you!

Health Insurance Marketplace / Obamacare from a Married 20’Something’s Point of View in GA

By Damire Winn

All of this started when I received a letter in the mail from my current health insurance company in regards to ACA and the changes to come. In this letter they offered me the opportunity to keep my current insurance plan and pay $40 more than what I currently pay. Another option was to keep my current plan with the same premium until the end of the contract and then switch over to an ACA-Compliant plan.

After reading this, my first thought was “let’s see what my options are with the Marketplace.” The way it played in my head was based on what little knowledge I have about the Affordable Care Act, the price for the new insurance plans should be affordable. So the first step to discovering my options was to go on to www.healthcare.gov and create an account.

The process to create an account was beyond frustrating. Why? Because it took me a total of 2 hours to simply enter my basic information and create the account. After 2 hours I decided to give it a rest and try the next day after I cooled off to continue my application, in order to see what my options were. The next day I decide to give one more try. After all, the letter my health insurance company sent me had a deadline for me to provide my answer. So I logged in ready to continue my application and really looking forward to my “affordable” health insurance options. Once logged in, you need to enter all of your taxpayer information. Now I have a considerably fast broadband Internet connection and for some reason each step took a minimum of 20 minutes to be processed. Again frustration started to build at an extremely fast pace.

After two and a half hours frustration won yet again. New plan! Call my health insurance company and have them find out for me. During this phone call, the representative explained to me that if I kept my current plan, all the current benefits would stay the same and they would add in maternity to the benefits. My current plan covers free preventive care, $35 copay for doctor visits, $50 copay for visits to a specialist, prescription coverage and vision. Keeping this plan means that my family (myself and my husband) gets the same coverage plus maternity for $314. But I wanted to know more, so of course I asked about the new ACA-Compliant plans and their costs. He started to explain to me that there were four different tiers of health insurance bronze, silver, gold and platinum (the Cadillac of health insurance plans).

My husband and I are both in our late 20’s and we’re non-smokers, I figured with pre-existing conditions no longer an issue (I have lived with a thyroid condition since childhood), the premiums will be relatively low and maybe we will be able to afford a higher tier than bronze. First the representative explained to me that prices vary by state and that with the new ACA-Compliant plans benefits were still being worked out. The items plans covered in the past might not be covered under the new plans. He gave an example of the bronze tier insurance plan; he said that this plan covers preventive care only if your physician bills the visit as preventive care. In order to get prescription coverage he said that it has to be purchased separately.

So I asked him to tailor a quote to my situation, my state being GA, again both my husband and myself in our late 20’s and non-smokers. I wanted to know what my options were. The quote he gave me almost knocked me out of my seat. He said that for us a bronze tier plan will cost $662/month. After listening to him, I struggled to find the affordable part in the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare.

At the end of our conversation he suggested I take the offer to keep my current plan for $40 more than what I currently pay. With my current plan I already know what my benefits are and he said my current plan is an equivalent of what the Gold or Platinum tier will be in terms of coverage. Then he said something that I could not agree more with, he said, “Hopefully by next year the ACA-Compliant plans will actually be affordable.”

The reality of what ACA has created has sunk in and it’s not pretty. Now Americans will pay more for fewer benefits. How that made sense when they were drafting these laws is beyond me. As for the Health Insurance marketplace it has been two and a half weeks and the portal still has not been able to provide me with options. Needless to say my husband and I kept our current plan and will deal with ACA-Compliant plans next year, though we’re secretly praying that my health insurance provider decides to extend this opportunity another year just in case the prices have not gone down by the end of 2014.

Women’s Health: How to Make the Most of Your Options for Care

Apart from general health issues, women have multiple unique health care concerns throughout their lifespan. Some of these concerns include pregnancy, menopause, breast and reproductive health, and though men and woman share a lot of the same general health concerns, they can affect women very differently. Some of these differences are:

Heart Health – 40% of women do not survive their first heart attack
Mental Health – women are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety
Sexually Transmitted Diseases – the effects of STDs are more serious in women than in men
Bone Density – women make up 80% of the estimated 10 million Americans with osteoporosis
Lupus – women make up 9 out of 10 adults with Lupus

With all of this to consider, it is important for women to remain aware of their state of health with regular visits to the doctor and healthy lifestyle choices, but keeping all of these issues in check can be costly. Between co-pays for doctor’s visits, the cost of lab work and the cost of the follow-up visit, a single check-up could run hundreds, if not thousands of dollars depending on access to health insurance and the level of coverage. To help keep health care costs under control and understanding that women’s health needs are particular, Health Care Reform under the Affordable Care Act has declared a list of eight preventative health services just for women that are available with no cost-sharing or co-payment due upon visit to the doctor*. These services became accessible to women on August 1, 2012 and include:

Breastfeeding: access to breastfeeding supplies as well as comprehensive support and counseling from trained providers for pregnant and nursing women
Contraception: Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling
Domestic and interpersonal violence: screening and counseling for all women
Gestational diabetes: screening for women 24 to 28 weeks pregnant and those at high risk of developing gestational diabetes
Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV): screening and counseling for sexually active women
Human Papillomavirus (HPV) DNA Test: high risk HPV DNA testing every three years for women with normal cytology results who are 30 or older
Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI): screening and counseling for sexually active women
Well-woman visits: to obtain recommended preventive services

*Coverage by doctors within network. Check insurance coverage policies to confirm Along with this increased standard of care it is also important for women to know that they have choices when managing costs and their level of care. For women with low-income that are possibly unable to afford health insurance, options such as Medicaid have been expanded to offer free or low-cost care, the Bronze plan is available within the Health Insurance Marketplace and covers 60% of health care costs with 40% of costs paid for out-of-pocket and Catastrophic Plans are available for those under 30 years of age and are considered healthy but want to have minimum coverage, “just in case.” Eligibility for these plans depend on income and family size. In addition, there are always Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) linked to high-deductable plans and cover most services such as lab tests, telemedicine services and prescriptions. Simple tips for women that want to keep their health and cost for care in check are:

Make healthy lifestyle choices such as healthy eating habits and dedicating to regular, moderate exercise
Create a calendar for the year for all necessary, preventative “Well-Woman” services and include a budget for each visit
Pay for affordable services out of pocket, such as lab testing whenever possible
There is no longer any need to go to your doctor for a baseline of your health – pay for cholesterol, heart health, hormone and wellness tests out-of-pocket or with an HSA or FSA at your local affordable, direct access lab testing facility ANY LAB TEST NOW®.

Take Control of Your Health® and stay up-to-date on the latest in women’s health issues by visiting our site regularly at www.anylabtestnow.com, by “liking” our Facebook Page, or following us on Twitter, and Pinterest.