Health Insurance for the Self-Employed

Having health insurance and being able to afford it is a great concern for many who leave a corporate job to run their own business.

The national crisis in health coverage is hitting the small business owners especially hard. About 24 million small-business employees and their families are uninsured, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

After you leave your employer you may elect to continue to receive coverage in the employer's group plan at your expense for up to 18 months. The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) is a federal law that requires employers to allow departing workers to buy health insurance through the employer's group plan.

However, the cost of the monthly premiums for COBRA can come as quite a surprise if you're accustomed to you employer picking up most of your health insurance tab.

Luckily starting in 2003, if you work as a consultant, freelance worker, and other self-employed individual you will be allowed to deduct all of your health insurance premiums. This is an increase form the 70% that was deductible in 2002. You can take the self-employed health insurance deduction even if you do not itemize your tax return.

But, even with health insurance the medical expenses that come out of your pocket can overwhelm you. If you have to dip into your retirement savings for certain medical expenses, the best way to do so is to transfer your IRA or previous 401(k) account to a Self-Employed 401(K) plan that you set up. You can then take a loan from that plan. Loans from a Self-Employed 401(k) plan are tax-free and penalty free as long as they are paid back.

By Daniel Lamaute of www.InvestSafe.com Daniel is a retirement plans specialist and owner of Lamaute Capital, (InvestSafe.com) an investment brokerage firm that works with individuals and small businesses.

How to Shop for Individual Health Insurance

Thompson

If you find yourself in the position of shopping for an individual health insurance policy, there are certain things you'll want to keep in mind. Whether you are coming out of a job that covered you before, or are at the end of your COBRA benefits, or simply have never had coverage before there are things you can do to get coverage on yourself and your loved ones.

The basic thing to know is that if you have a shot a group health insurance, whether through a job or an association you're a member of, that is usually much more affordable than buying individual health insurance on your own. First you need to figure out your health insurance goals; in other words, what are you after? If you're young, healthy as a horse, no dependents and not attempting Mt. Everest next week, you may want to opt for a policy that covers only the catastrophes, and cover the rest out-of-pocket. On the flip side of that, if you're the sole bread winner with a family to support, the scenario is different.

The basic choices you'll have are Fee-for-Service, Managed Care Plans, and Association-based health insurance. Fee-for-service is the traditional indemnity plan, harder to acquire, more expensive, but usually great coverage. Managed care plans include most HMO's and PPO's. These offer lower costs but your choices are somewhat limited. Another way to get insured is through a group or association you may already be a member of, such as professional, religious or trade organizations. Often they may offer health insurance. It's worth checking out, as sometimes you can strike gold in this vein.

Things to consider when you're looking for any policy are what's covered on this plan, how much are the monthly premiums, what is the yearly out-of-pocket, what is the deductible, how much are office visits, does it cover preventative medicine, vision, dental? And I'm sure you can come up with many of your own. Sit down before you go shopping and make a list of your needs and wants, and decide in advance what you're willing to give to get. Be aware that once you start getting quotes they can vary as much as 50% for the same person! Remember, you're shopping, and nobody's making you do anything. If one insurer isn't cutting it, move on to another. If you're coming at this cold and have no good recommendations it may be wise to use a broker who represents several companies, as he or she wil be more likely to find the best policy for you, as opposed to selling the company they work for.

Shopping for individual health insurance can be frustrating and time-consuming, but if you come armed with facts you'll be able to navigate this highly competitive and ever-changing field.

Keith Thompson is the webmaster at http://www.health-insurance.giftsforbiz.com,a site geared toward helping you find great individual health insurance!

HIPAA Compliant FTP Hosting

FTP Hosting ? an overview

?File Transfer Protocol?, commonly known as FTP, is a reliable protocol to exchange large volume of digital information from one computer to another. FTP hosting technique has simplified file transfer process over the Internet. FTP hosting comes with two components ? FTP Server and FTP Client. Moreover, each FTP user will get a unique FTP account with user name and password. Irrespective of file type and file size, FTP account holders can upload the files in FTP Server through their FTP account. Similarly, FTP account holders can download copies of the uploaded files from FTP Server.

FTP hosting services provides complete security in file exchange process. Only authorized FTP account holders can view and access the files. Further, you can restrict a FTP account holder to access other FTP accounts. Irrespective of business volume, companies require to transfer files over the Internet. Though it is true that Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) provides the facility to share information over the Internet but due to its limitations, FTP became popular across the globe.

FTP Hosting for Health Care Services

In Medical Transcription or other Health Care Services, medical reports are stored and exchanged in digital format. The growing necessity of exchanging large volume of medical reports and files over the Internet allows the Health care Service providers to use File Transfer Protocol as an alternative of Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. After the introduction of Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996, extra guidelines are drawn for FTP hosting. All types of Health Care Services, who store and exchange medical files and reports over the Internet will fall under this Act and have to follow HIPAA regulation throughout the business process to ensure quality service and security of digital medical files and reports.

HIPAA

Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act, commonly known as HIPAA, is a set rule to protect health related electronic information. The effect of HIPAA rules is applied to all types of health care organizations and support services. According to Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act, all the health care organizations and support services should maintain necessary security measures to protect personal health information.

Medical institutes and support services prepares and stores health information of the patients in digital format. Based on the requirement, these digital reports are exchanged from one computer to another over the Internet. Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act ensures complete security of digital health information that includes ? secure storage system and secure transmission of digital information over the Internet.

HIPAA Compliant FTP Hosting

The growing importance of Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act in health care sector has given the birth of HIPAA compliance FTP hosting services. The objective of HIPAA compliance FTP hosting services is to protect unauthorized people from accessing digital heal information or medical report.

Following are some general features of HIPAA compliance FTP hosting service:

• HIPAA compliance FTP servers are considered as highly secured data centers.
• The system will automatically generate and run several threads during transferring digital medical files from one location to another. This is known as Multi-thread File Transfer and makes the process faster than normal File Transfer Protocol.
• HIPAA compliance FTP hosting service comes with 128-bit transfer encryption. Digital files are transferred in the encrypted form. There is also another process ? symmetric or secret key encryption, which encrypt files and upload them in the server with a unique ?key?. The system will store the encrypted data in HIPAA compliance FTP server. Only the authorized person, who has that ?key?, can download the encrypted digital medical report from the server.
• Like general FTP hosting services, the methods of uploading and downloading digital medical files are user friendly.
• HIPAA compliance FTP hosting services allow the users to apply FTP services with existing firewalls.
• Unique user name and password for HIPAA compliance FTP account holders.
• HIPAA compliance FTP hosting services restrict anonymous FTP account holder from accessing the server.
• Some HIPAA compliance FTP hosting services provides ultimate security by using ?Intrusion Detection System? and other security tools, which are compatible with all types of operating systems.

Advantages of HIPAA compliance FTP Hosting

The main advantage of HIPAA compliance FTP hosting services is data encryption. HIPAA compliance FTP hosting services will encrypt each data files in separate pieces of data, which are known as ?key?. You have to use the software xTyFTP during the process of uploading medical records in the FTP server. The software will encrypt the digital file in the computer and provide the ?key? to the authorized user decrypt.

HIPAA compliance hosting services will store the encrypted file in the server. However, if any unauthorized user accesses the file from the FTP server, he/she will get the encrypted form and the content will remain hidden without the right ?key?.

Apart from data encryption, which is considered as the core feature of HIPAA regulation, HIPAA compliance FTP hosting service requires secure procedure in data handling and serious maintenance of necessary policies, e.g., restricting unauthorized users from damaging digital information.

Adam is a Network Engineer with "InstantFTPsites.com". You can learn more about "FTP Hosting" services online at http://www.InstantFTPsites.com.

? 2006 InstantFTPsites http://www.InstantFTPsites.com You may reprint this article online and in print provided the links remain live and the content remains unaltered (including the "Author Biography").

Are you HIPAA Compliant?

A closer look at HIPAA
By - Matt Sears, Senior Vice President
Athens Benefits Insurance Services, Inc.
A division of The Jenkins Athens Group

HIPAA. Perhaps one of the most significant laws in recent memory; certainly one of the most complex. While this short article won't make anyone an expert, it will, hopefully, demystify this wide ranging set of laws and put you on the path towards compliance.

First, let's answer the question; “What is HIPAA?" HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Protection Act of 1996. Although it purports to regulate health insurance, HIPAA provisions extend far beyond insurance. HIPAA introduced broad disclosure and privacy requirements. It also established civil and criminal penalties for each violation (up to $25,000 per person per year in civil penalties and up to $250,000 in criminal fines - along with imprisonment).

Title I of HIPAA deals with portability and special enrollment rights for health plans. Those conditions must have been incorporated into your plans by now (original compliance date was 1997). Title II of HIPAA governs a wide ranging set of conditions called, “Administrative Simplification". For those charged with compliance, the notion that HIPAA simplifies anything qualifies as “dark humor". Administrative simplification attempts to create a uniform system for processing and retention of health information and ensuring the security of that information.

For the purposes of this article, we're only concerned with those portions of the law impacting most employers...privacy. Notably the privacy of personal data defined by HIPAA as “Protected Health Information" or “PHI" - information that is personally identifiable. In the broadest summary possible, key components of HIPAA privacy requirements for a plan sponsor are fairly straightforward:

Generally, the employer (Plan Sponsor) is not a HIPAA “Covered Entity" - the Health Plan is. For fully insured plans, this typically means the health insurer, HMO, EAP provider, etc.
As the Covered Entities, health plans bear the brunt of compliance requirements (your responsibilities become exponentially larger as the quantity of data you receive increases)
Meet with every service provider, or ensure that your broker or consultant has reviewed compliance requirements with each
Use protected health information only for needed administration of the benefit programs (HIPAAspeak: “Treatment, Payment and Health Care Operations)
Collect (and release) only the minimum data required to “do the job" (e.g. enroll an employee, file claims, etc.)
Restrict the data to those persons who absolutely must use it
Establish “firewalls" and safeguards to protect the data (separate locked files, restricted access, password protect systems)
Appoint a Privacy Official (not required for fully insured plans that never receive PHI)
Create a Privacy Policy and distribute a Privacy Notice to participants
“Scrub" personally identifiable data from communications pieces, ID Cards, etc.

HIPAA, like COBRA before it, will continually change as new rules and regulations are released (for example, the U.S. Dept. of HHS has yet to release enforcement rules for HIPAA). Ongoing compliance will require vigilance in remaining up to date on the changing laws. It's vital your broker/consultant proactively work with your organization to review plans, identify problems and provide ongoing education to maximize the performance of your benefit plans.

HIPAA and the Internet: Requirements for Intranet Collaboration Software

Sharing private health information over the internet can be a risky business. Unfortunately, as people become accustomed to doing most if not all of their personal business online, the demand for accessing this information online will grow to the point that health care providers will have no choice but to either provide access to this private health information or lose their customers.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted to assure the confidentiality of patient information. This requires that health care providers employ stringent measures to assure that information shared on the internet is protected from unauthorized access.

The HIPAA Act requires health-providing entities to:

 

 

 

• Assign responsibility for security to a person or organization.

   

   

• Assess security risks and determine the major threats to the security and privacy of protected health information.

   

   

• Establish a program to address physical security, personnel security, technical security controls, and security incident response and disaster recovery.

   

   

• Certify the effectiveness of security controls.

   

   

• Develop policies, procedures and guidelines for use of personal computing devices (workstations, laptops, hand-held devices), and for ensuring mechanisms are in place that allow, restrict and terminate access (access control lists, user accounts, etc.) appropriate to an individual's status, change of status or termination.

   

   

• Implement access controls that may include encryption, context-based access, role-based access, or user-based access; audit control mechanisms, data authentication, and entity authentication

 

This law has serious implications for organizations that allow unauthorized access resulting in a breach in confidentiality.

Security is the key

Since the HIPAA law provides for both civil and criminal penalties for violations, data and access security is of the utmost importance. To assure HIPAA compliance, online document management must include a number of security features:

 

 

 

• Secure web server – a server running secure socket layers is the minimum needed.

   

   

• Encrypted database – all data must be encrypted. Software is available that will encrypted all data sent between two computer over the internet.

   

   

• Secure access control -- in addition to a traditional user id and password, it may be a good idea to use a strong password or smart card as additional security.

   

   

• Session timeout – this assures that confidential data is not left on an unattended screen.

   

   

• Server monitoring – the secure web server needs to be strictly monitored to detect break-in attempts.

   

   

• Regular security audits – regular audits are required to make sure all security precautions are working properly.

   

   

• Personnel – system maintenance should be in the hands of qualified personnel familiar with HIPPA requiremen

  Rick Mosenkis is the President and CEO of Trichys, the creators of WorkZone hosted intranet and extranet software, including a higher-security version for HIPAA compliance. With customers around the world, among large and small companies, Trichys develops easy-to-use web-based software that allows non-technical business professionals to leverage the power of the Internet without IT support.