Why do i need health insurance

In simple terms, Health insurance is a must for all citizens.

When we are talking about Health Insurance, the obvious question does arise who needs health insurance?  It is for everyone, no matter your gender or age, one needs health insurance. 

Perceptibly, health is an important aspect, and no one plans to get sick or hurt but at a certain point in time people need medical care. 

Why Health Insurance?

Healthinsurance protects you from unexpected high medical costs. Health insurance is a device that ensures an individual against financial risks of care in case of illness, as well as a minimum income when the condition deprives the person of work.

In general, health insurance is a type of insurance coverage that pays for medical and surgical expenses that are incurred by the insured.

It is, moreover, one of the fundamental components of social security, and a duty of the State according to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A public health insurance system can be managed by a state agency, delegated to private organizations, or perhaps be mixed. No doubt, high-quality health care helps prevent diseases and improve quality of life.

Concerning a public health insurance system, the insurance premium paid by the insured does not necessarily follow the rules of pure insurance, i.e., it is not based solely on the risk. Indeed, the public system fulfils both a pure insurance function and a distribution function in which the better-off pay the insurance of the most.

History of Health Insurance

Until the eighteenth century, protections against the risks of life are provided by personal wealth, local solidarity or professional and charity.

In the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution concentrated populations in cities where local solidarity can no longer play while the number of accidents at work increased.

Besides, an intellectual and scientific movement is developing which promotes individual foresight [at the origin of private insurance]. The mutual insurance companies that provide collective insurance, and the notion of sacred debt brought by the country revolution of which declaration of the rights of man, and the Citizen recognizes for every national the right to social assistance and social protection, giving rise to social security.

These new concepts are applied now, wishing a strong state, developed the first system of compulsory social insurance with the draft laws on insurance against industrial accidents and social health insurance adopted in 1883 and 1884.

Without Health Insurance

At the federal level [January 2019] health insurance coverage is no longer mandatory and going without health insurance saves you money since you are not paying premiums, but it could put you at financial risk if you get injured or develop a serious illness.

The five major 5 A’s of healthcare are:

• Ask
• Advise
• Assess
• Assist and
• Arrange

Broadly health insurance defines in two types chiefly private and public, or government.

Health insurance typically covers most doctor and hospital visits, prescription drugs, wellness care, and medical devices. 

Most health insurance will not cover elective or cosmetic procedures, beauty treatments, off-label drug use, or brand-new technologies. 

List of Diseases Not Covered Under Health Insurance

• Congenital Diseases/Genetic Disordered
• Cosmetic Surgery
• Health issues due to consumption of drugs, alcohol, and smoking
• IVF and Infertility Treatments
• Pregnancy Treatment
• Voluntary Abortion
• Pre-existing Illnesses
• Self-Inflicted injury

5 Types of Insurance You Don't Need

• Mortgage Life Insurance. There are some insurance agents that will try to convince you that you need mortgage life insurance
• Identity Theft Insurance
• Cancer Insurance
• Payment protection on your credit card
• Collision coverage on older cars

Difference between Health and Medical Insurance

Medical insurance will provide you coverage only for hospitalization, pre-specified ailments and accidents that too for a pre-specified amount while health insurance will provide you with comprehensive coverage against hospitalization expenses, pre-hospitalization and post-hospitalization expenses and ambulance.

Types Of Health Insurance

Healthcare Insurance without Co-Payment

Health insurance Sanitary Assistance: the medical insurance that includes the complete coverage to take care of the family! This medical insurance is a product without co-payments for the use of medical services.

Healthcare Insurance with Co-Payment

It is the insurance that includes the complete coverage to take care of the family and with a special co-payment adjusted to the use of medical services made by the insured, which guarantees a lower premium than what would correspond to another type of insurance.

Healthcare Insurance with The Reduced Copayment

It is the insurance that offers complete coverage for the whole family, paying a reduced copayment. It allows contracting guarantees independently or jointly, according to the needs of each family unit.

Health Care Insurance Choice

The insurance includes all the guarantees of Primary Care and coverage through the Medical Board by presenting the health care and with the best dental coverage! It also facilitates access to the most qualified doctors of all specialties at special prices.

Medical Expenses Reimbursement Insurance

The insurance allows you to freely choose a doctor or hospital anywhere in the world or, if you prefer, go to the services of any Medical Board without having to make any financial outlay.

Compensation

It is the insurance that compensates the income that would be left to obtain for a total temporary disability during the time in which the insured could not exercise their usual work due to illness or accident. There is a daily compensation previously contracted.

The option of Compensation according to Scale can also be contracted [compensation up to the number of days fixed in a scale when the insured suffers a loss for any of the illnesses or injuries included in it].

Essential Compensation

Essential Compensation insurance guarantees the payment of compensation in case of illness or accident. It covers any profession, including unpaid ones. The policy is also indicated for housewives, as an economic complement in case of not being able to face daily tasks due to illness or accident.

Growth in Health and Insurance Costs

Nearly all workers with health insurance provided by the company face additional costs when using the healthcare insurance services out there! Eighty-five per cent of the covered workers in our nation truly have a general yearly deductible which must be truly met before insurance services are reimbursed by their very own health insurance plan.

Even workers without annual deductibles often face other types of cost-sharing when they use services, such as co-payments or co-insurance for office visits and hospitalizations.

The Emergence of Deductible Health Plans

Much has been proclaimed recently about rising franchises under the great Affordable Care Act. The plans are merely the health insurance arrangement or plan with a bit lower premium as well as higher deductibles compared to the conventional health plan.

According to statistics, every year people die because of a lack of health insurance.  It is to be noted that what happens with the rest of the community who does not work, maybe because of disabilities, because they are mothers and have to take care of their children, or because they are elderly people?

Thus, Insurance is a must for all citizens and those who do not have a social security scheme, should voluntarily join, just paying a very cheap annual fee that entitles coverage for medical services during a certain period.  One cannot ignore health services.  Generally, it serves patients, families, communities, and populations. 

Conclusion

Patients are now becoming more sensitive to health care costs because a lot of the costs come from their pockets. Notwithstanding, the industry has not admittedly changed to present patients with financial transparency so that a patient can appraise treatments as well as assess relative costs and benefits.

As we all know Omicron is a new wake-up call.  The world is approaching post-covid challenges and uncertainties still are looming large striving to strike a balance between lives and livelihoods. 

Now they have a sense of consciousness that having health insurance is important because coverage helps get timely medical care and improves their lives and health. 

Tips to Choose a Health Insurance Plan

1. Look for the right coverage
2. Keep it affordable
3. Prefer family over individual health plans
4. Choose a plan with lifetime renewability
5. Compare quotes online
6. Network hospital coverage
7. High claim settlement ratio

There are several examples of countries that have implemented universal health care by providing health insurance for everybody, such as Malaysia, Brazil, Rwanda, Thailand, South Korea and China.

If we all contribute to this cause by paying our taxes and paying special attention to the people in need, this will be no longer just a dream, we can make this a reality for everybody now, we can change our lives.   Nobody has life guaranteed and accidents happen. Life insurance means protection and safety for everybody in need, despite their social class.

Thus, it is important the major players of the insurance say private, public and government and also the policymakers should come to the forefront and bring out the wide range of potential merits rather than drawbacks and facilitate the common people to take the likely benefits from it.  We should give value to Human Life.

Blogging as a teaching tool

In the context of the digitalization and informatization of higher education, the growth of students’ independent work demands researchers to search for suitable teaching tools to organize it effectively based on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and focused on the professional development of future university graduates. 

According to the analysis of scientific and pedagogic literature has shown that one of such tools is a student blog, a website with profession-related content written by a student for a specific amount of time. Despite the high potential of blogging in organizing students’ independent work, the lack of methodology for their use in the professional training of future teachers is evident. 

The obvious question is what is the use of a blog and how it can help?  The use of blogging as a Web technology in teaching is not only the fact that it is effective when students have active interaction with each other. It is also helpful because the modern "digital" generation of students has the basic skills to work with websites and web applications. These skills include fast adaptability to new technologies, the ability to create and keep a profile in social media, and teamwork skills with online interaction. 

However, two features of ICT use must be emphasized. Firstly, even though the new generation of students is called digital natives, it does not at all mean that it is a generation of digital learning natives. Even if it seems to teachers that most of the students embrace new digital means much faster than themselves, this does not hold for all the students, as some of them experience difficulties adapting to basic software. More than that, the ease of embracing these technologies drops as their complexity grows. Therefore, as e- teaching experts recommend, it should not be taken for granted that students have all the skills developed to work with any type of ICTs. Instead, one has to make sure that, to perform a certain task, each student has a sufficient level of skills developed for this. 

Secondly, one must remember that language e-learning tools, blogging in particular, cannot and will not replace human face-to-face interaction. Nonetheless, these and other ICTs combined with the appropriate conditions and methods of organizing students’ learning could form a complex learning environment where students can practice their language skills. 

Thus, blogging is the optimaltool for creating such an environment for language skills development. Students, then, have to publish their content only in a foreign language, while communicating with each other via the comments section to their blog posts. 

Objective

The main purpose of the study is to find out how the potential of student blogging can be used to organize the independent work of students being trained to become teachers. 

Literature review 

Unlike social media tools such as Facebook and Instagram where there is a high chance for students to send and receive messages in their native language, in blogging, if the learning around it is organized properly, the number of such messages can be minimized. This is important because the posts and messages in a native language are interpreted by interacting parties as an asocial behaviour and a lack of literacy towards other members of the language environment. In such a learning activity as blogging the language is viewed only as a tool for performing a communication task. 

The main features of blogging that help to discern it from other websites are as follows: 

Chronology. Each blog post contains the date and time of its publication, with the latest posts at the top of the webpage and the first posts at the bottom. 

Restriction to one topic: Initially, a blog was supposed to be an online diary of a user, but today most authors fill their blogs with content limited by one specific domain or topic. 

Social orientation: Each blog is focused on a specific group of readers, the audience, with respect to which the content of the publication is chosen. 

Commenting: If the author enables this function, readers can leave comments on his or her blog page asking questions and sharing their opinions about the content of these posts. 

Teaching activity, while student blogging, can be as follows:

• Encouraging students to do their exercises, reminding them about the deadlines and goals of this job, praising and using other incentives for timely and high-quality performance

• Providing relevant and authentic content in a foreign language, in some cases – evaluating the quality of materials chosen by students themselves

• Constant improvement of teaching techniques

• Moreover, it is necessary to let students know that blogging as a teaching tool not only makes acquiring a foreign language easier but also develops critical thinking, writing skills and creative abilities.

Suggests the following list of necessary actions a student has to take when preparing for and keeping a blog:

• Choose a topic and a goal for having a blog.

• Determine necessary steps-tasks allowing to reach this goal.

• Search, read, translate, analyze and structure the information based on the algorithms, techniques and tools provided by a teacher.

• Create a blog and fill it with the multimedia content that would be most appropriate to its topic and goal.

• Reflect on the content of one’s blog regularly based on the criteria provided by a teacher and, whenever necessary, make changes in planning or choosing the content.

• Adjust the level of exposure to one’s blog and enable or disable the comments feature.

• Compare and discuss the results of the work with peers, make conclusions and necessary changes in the process of blogging.

 For successful blogging a teacher also must:

1. Provide students with instructions for creating a blog and filling it with content [text, images, audio, video]
2. Organize student blogging as a long-term activity: less teaching the language, more monitoring and identifying the systematic mistakes in the use of linguistic means
3. However possible, organize peer-to-peer interaction, as our-of-classroom work in particular
4. Engage other teachers and/or experts in the blogs’ topics with a sufficient level of professional expertise and language training
5. Depending on the goals of the work, establish minimum restrictions on the choice of style and use of linguistic means to give students more freedom to explore their blog’s domain
6. Help students to adjust notifications about other students’ new posts using RSS or "Newsfeed" embedded in a blogging platform such as WordPress, Blogspot.

Among the advantages of blogging the researchers mention their usability, availability and minimum expenses when introducing it into the learning process. Furthermore, blogging as an ICT tool can be implemented with any of the online platforms most of which support a free version.

Thus, blogging does not require a large amount of knowledge and skills because the software developers of the most popular platforms are usually focused on the end-users who possess only basic ICT skills. For example, to create a blog, the only thing that is required from a user is to have a device with Internet access. Therefore, in the context of our research, blogging is considered to be the optimal tool based on which it is possible to organize students’ independent work.

Methodology

• To assess the quality of student blogs, several criteria were developed and approved using the method of group expert assessment. The blogs of future teachers are assessed according to the following criteria:

• Grammar and vocabulary: guide the development of students’ language skills and practice of the knowledge and skills they acquired in their classes.

• Logical coherence: encourages the clear and logically coherent expression of ideas on the chosen professional topic to help the blog’s audience [e.g., the teachers and native speakers involved, other student-bloggers, other Internet users] to understand its contents.

• Regularity of blogging: helps the teacher to manage students’ independent work and motivate them toward consistent deliberate practice.

• Having links to the sources used: necessary for the transparency of students’ independent work, its management by the teacher, and assessment by the experts.

• Independent thinking [absence of plagiarism]: prohibits students from copy-pasting information from the Internet and encourages their independent thinking.

• The Ability to use professional terminology adequate to the communication situation focuses students’ attention on the development of their professional competence which makes it easier for them to communicate on a professional topic [both inside and outside the classroom].

Relevance of the blog’s topic and its posts: allows students to choose the blog’s topic (from the given list or one’s own) which :

a) motivates a student to do exercises regularly and at a high quality

b) is limited by the range of possible topics within the curriculum of their training

At the end of their independent work, each of the students assessed both one’s own blog (self-assessment) and two of the other students’ blogs (peer-assessment). After that, the survey is organized to ask students about blogging as a teaching tool and the ways it can be used to organize students’ learning. 

Blogging methodology

The key component of this technology is the authors’ methodology of profession-oriented student blogging. It consists of three stages: preparation, activity and reflection.

The preparation stage implies that a student creates a blog and chooses its topic, which is either formulated by the student or chosen from the list. This list is offered by the teacher and must be composed with the curriculum requirements in mind.

Then, at the same stage, students in cooperation with the teacher design their individual trajectories for their independent work. There are two types of possible trajectories: one is scientific which is used to train future masters’ and PhD students, the other is engineering which is chosen by future engineers and technicians at manufacturing facilities. Within each trajectory, each of the students, under the guidance of their teacher, selects authentic information sources which would lay the foundation of their future blog posts, makes a scheduled plan of their publication, and defined the optimal conditions (time, place, method) of one’s independent work.

Moreover, at the preparation stage, the entrance test is conducted to identify the initial level of a student’s competence development (in the context of the thesis research, it is the professional language competence) and make an evidence-based choice of one’s individual educational trajectory. To conduct such a test, a specific set of profession-oriented tasks was designed, which includes the translation of an English text on students’ professional topic, it is abstract writing, and creative problem solving that implies the search and analysis of scientific and technical information on the Internet.

The activity stage means the actual students’ independent work of blogging. Once the blog’s topic is chosen, students study the authentic foreign-language content in different formats (text, audio, video), analyze it and based on it prepare and publish their blog posts. Apart from that, each of the students composes a thesaurus of professional terms used in one’s blog. After the students’ independent work, they prepare and then give a presentation demonstrating the results of their work. The teacher’s role at this stage is to motivate students and guide their regular blogging.

At the reflection stage, the current results of students’ profession-oriented blogging are analyzed by their teacher. Final results are assessed by the expert group, which, among other things, determines how these results correlate with the goals of independent work, based on the criteria above.

At this stage, the teacher organizes regular feedback with students after looking through and analyzing the contents of their blog posts. Also, the mid-course and the final presentation of the results of students’ independent work is organized by the teacher. As a result of this stage, if necessary, certain changes can be made in students’ trajectories to optimize their independent work and increase its quality.

The teacher also encourages student bloggers, foreign-language teachers, practitioners in the field, and native speakers to leave comments in students’ blogs. As students’ reviews show, their very understanding of the fact that their blog posts are read and commented on motivates them to work more and better.

The expected results of this independent students’ work are stimulation of their self-learning and their transition to a higher level of competence development.

Results

• Their writing skills are not sufficient enough
• They experience difficulties when preparing profession-related content for their blog posts independently, by themselves
• They are reluctant to show the results of their work publicly

Analysis of the research results showed that the assessments of Vocational Training students (self- assessment and peer-assessment) correlate with each other and identify a high level of quality of their independent work. However, it is important to point out that most students did not receive the highest score in the criterion "Independent thinking.”

The results of the survey demonstrated that 90% of the future vocational teachers would like to use blogging as a teaching tool in their future teaching jobs. This implies how relevant it is for a teacher to have blogging skills and the ability to organize students’ independent work based on blogging.

As a result of profession-oriented blogging, the students are asked to share their opinions about how important it is to use blogging to organize students’ independent work from both perspectives, as students and teachers. The future teachers have concluded that:

According to the students, these difficulties can be overcome if:

• The independent work of profession-oriented blogging is not an occasional, but systematic and regular activity

• Individual consultations and the management of this independent work are organized by the teacher on a regular basis

• The blog topics not only are focused on the professional activity but also require creativity from students

• The content of blog posts does not duplicate other learning activities, and future teachers use blogging as a way to share the information about the work they did and discuss its results, not as a type of reporting about other assignments.

• Future teachers also have pointed out that blogging is an effective tool to communicate certain types of information.

• The students believe that the ability to communicate with other students online enables them to conduct surveys and do research so that they quickly receive necessary feedback. As a result, profession-oriented blogging, according to most Vocational Training students, stimulates the development of their professional teaching competence.

• At the same time, thinking of a blog as an effective tool to organize students’ independent work, one of the students has emphasized how difficult it is to write blog posts on a regular basis claiming that "one gets tired of it quickly". This opinion proves that it would be reasonable to use blogging for independent work not on an obligatory basis, but only as one of the possible activities that students can choose voluntarily for their additional professional development. 

Conclusion

It is also worth noting that, according to future teachers, having blogging skills and the ability to organize with it their future students’ learning creates many opportunities for an educator. A teacher who is a confident user of ICTs and has experience in blogging can organize students’ feedback effectively, as well as their independent, remote work. This is especially critical today when the teaching community searches for ways to adapt learning and communication with their students in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the optimal information and communication technologies for organizing students’ independent work is blogging.  Furthermore, a teacher with blogging skills could use this tool to improve one’s image and position oneself as a modern and competent specialist.

It is also important that students should think independently and express their opinion.  The ‘independent thinking’ cannot be neglected and should take appropriate steps to help students develop their writing and blogging skills, it is highly recommended to motivate them to take responsibility for their learning and be proactive, create the space for them to express their opinion more often and build their own projects.