Run your Health like you run your Business- Tax Deductible expenses

Health
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We need for healthy families to be allowed to cash pay for doctors & dentists who do not take insurance, and simply write off the cost of the visits.

As of now, my CPA advises me (as a self employed high earner) to buy the “Cadillac” of health insurance policies because the premium is a write off while the co-pays and deductibles or any cash payments out of network are NOT write offs unless we reach that crisis level of % of income spent on medical bills out of pocket. This is unfair and punishes healthy families and limits our choices. It lines the pockets of insurance companies by motivating us to choose the $2500 per month “Cadillac” policy when we are not even sick. And the providers that take the mainstream insurance do not offer good care! And if we accidentally go to the wrong ER for when a child has a false alarm or needs stitches, we pay out the nose… and that expense is treated the same on our taxes as if we went Go Karting.

Many of the best healthcare professionals are “cash only” due to the broken health insurance system. We need to allow healthy people to choose those doctors/dentists and write off the cost if they pay cash. For example right now I feel my hands are tied because a holistic dentist exists 45 minutes from me but they charge $600 for a first visit. And they do not take insurance. And I pay $1500 a year for dental insurance for my family… if we use in network dentists we pay very little on top of that. Yet the local regular dentists push Fluoride and X-Rays and have no interest in integrative or holistic methods. I am literally avoiding the dentist altogether right now because of this frustration.

I am VERY lucky we have a pediatrician who accepts ANTHEM and is holistic but hardly anyone is that lucky.

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As an aspiring dental professional awaiting admission to dental school and current dental assistant, I absolutely agree that Big Insurance is an absolute scam in terms of coverage for treatment when necessary vs the amount you pay for coverage throughout the year for most people on private insurance. I’m less experienced with the medical insurance side of things, but I’ve heard from plenty in the field that it’s much of the same bs as dental. I also sympathize with the lack of holistic dental care and insurance coverage for that type of approach to patient care. Post COVID, I’ve been questioning everything I know about the medical and dental fields and their traditional approaches to care and how insurance runs the show for both in many aspects. If it’s possible for us to separate more providers from the restrains of insurance and go to “cash only” types of dental/medical offices, I think it should absolutely be done to accommodate those who want the “non-traditional” approach to healthcare and preventive dentistry and medicine, and in a way that doesn’t solely line the pockets of insurance companies. Healthcare should be patient centric and regulated by providers, not insurance companies seeking profit > patient wellness. I sincerely hope that by the time I’m out of school there will be a better structure for patient care that either reforms the way insurance applies to patient care or rids insurance completely and we return to patient first care, holistic or traditional.