Understanding how our healthcare system works is a long and exhausting process. There are many Americans that don’t understand how it works and don’t know where to begin to understand. For someone like myself it is hard to wrap my mind around how it works, but I’m going to try to briefly explain it. For more information contact  professionals that understand it and can help you understand how it operates.

There are many different insurance coverages for Americans to choose from. There is private insurance that people can get through their state’s health exchange, but it isn’t affordable for every individual because the premiums can be too expensive.  Full-time and some part-time employees can get health insurance through their jobs; another term for this kind of insurance is employer sponsored health insurance. The way that employer based insurance works is the employer pays a portion of the coverage that the employee applies for and anything extra is covered by the employee. The employee pays the fees of having the employer insurance through payroll.

In addition to employer sponsored health insurance, there are also public health insurances that anyone can purchase called Medicaid and Medicare. To make it clear, Medicare is for people that are 65 years old and older or people that have disabilities. There are four parts to Medicare insurance: Part A is for hospital stays. Part B is for supplemental insurance for doctor office visits; most enrollees get this part of Medicaid. Part C is Medicare advantage. Medicaid helps families with low income to mid-middle class income to provide health coverage. These insurances are financially supported by state and federal government.

There are two other types of health insurances: veterans health administration and Indian health services. These are designed to help those that are veterans and those that are from Indian cultures living on reservations. The only downfall to the veteran’s health administration is that the enrollees must go to government-owned facilities and be seen by government-employed doctors and, therefore, have no other options unless they have the money to go purchase private health insurance.

There is a large percentage of Americans still with no insurance. The government tries to help the American people by providing public health insurances, and making it a requirement that people have health coverage and if not they will be penalized annually through federal taxes.

Just a reminder: there are agents out there for people that don’t understand how the system works and what to do next. It is helpful to understand the system that is in place. The day someone understands could be the same day it gets changed.