|
|
Should Health Indemnity Really Cover Massage Therapy In Australia?
There has been a lot of fuss developed about Health Care Rebates in Australia for massage therapists over the last 5 to 8 years. Some individuals and some massage schools seem to think this is one of the most important scenes of a persons massage training criteria. We at Brandon Raynor's School of instinctual Therapies often get asked the question "Can I give Health Care Rebates to clients after completing your massage course?"
I would like to discuss why I have an opposing point of view to many in the industry as to the importance and relevance of these rebates.
Insurance for most things is generally to cover an unexpected event that is very costly. For example a motorcar accident, a ship sinks, your house catching on fire. These are generally events with a low likelihood of occurring but with very costly effects when they do occur. Having indemnity generally spreads the risk that these events will bankrupt a person or company out to many people. In other words customers of an indemnity company all pay a certain amount of money to create a pool of money (Minus the indemnity companies fees) in prescribes to pay for some unexpected valuable event.
This was also the archetype idea behind health insurance. Pay the insurance company some money so that if you have a heart attack then you can get the best treatment without a huge sum coming out of your account all at once.
This idea does not fit with the massage industry. Massage is Preventative medicine, in its best form, and only sometimes used to treat specific injuries. What's more, even if used in its non preventative form, massage is not a high cost treatment like many medical procedures. Even getting 50 massage treatments may only price $3000 or less, which is the amount many souls will spend on a automobile whenever it blows a head gasket or has some other problem.
Let me discuss this further. Preventative medicine is things that you do to keep you healthy, for example, eating healthy foods, exercise, relaxation, meditation, yoga, and massage. Stress is a part of everyone's life. It only really becomes a major problem whenever it builds up too much. Preventative medicine techniques such as massage stop that build up happening.
This is a predictable event, just as getting hungry is a predictable event. This should not be covered through insurance, as I mentioned before, as insurance covering predictable regular events is not its intended purpose. In fact, when insurance covers predictable regular events like getting a massage to keep stress levels down and prevent muscle tightness from developing then it adds an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy and cost to the transaction.
So instead of a person doing a simple financial transaction through paying a practitioner $60 for a massage, which only takes about 3 minutes or less of administrative time, a person has to get a receipt, take it to their health fund, get them to refund the money etc. Not only that but the practitioner has a lot of compliance time and money wasted through having to fulfil the criteria that the health fund hope in prescribe to get a provider number etc.
In other words something economically simple has become economically complicated but achieves nothing more. A lot more people being paid to put pens to paper, and more tension created complying with regulations but the real actual produce was still one massage treatment. Not only that but the government has gotten involved by subsidizing health funds so now we have more tax money taken out of our pockets to pay bureaucrats to keep this preposterous system going.
Imagine whenever we did that for every other simple economic transaction that goes into preventative medicine. Every time I go to the health food workshop I get the receipts mail them off to an indemnity company and get them to pay me backward some of the money (minus fees) that I just recently sent them for my indemnity reportage. It's crazy.
The way this has all come about is because the medical industry is not preventative based and some souls in the natural health industry have very low self esteem about what they are doing and feel that they want to be "recognized" through the medical industry to be respectable. So we have this crazy system of a preventative medicine technique such as massage fitting into a system that is designed for acute care.
The orthodox medical profession is planned mostly to treat sudden onset troubles such as heart attacks and motorcar accidents and this of course it does better than preventative medicine and these can be very dear. However it is not as successful in keeping souls healthy as a preventative medicine system.
So the major use of massage in a health system should be to keep individuals distressed and well but even if massage is also used for souls that have injuries or chronic problems massage is not so pricy that having insurance is needed.
As I mentioned earlier very few people, even when really not well, would need more than 50 1 hour massage treatments. Even if they needed this many it would only price $3000 at $60 a treatment. Considering also those 50 treatments would be spread out over various months this is hardly an unbearable expense for most souls. Certainly not more than the cost of many common problems that occurs periodically with automobiles.
So this is why I do not subscribe to being part of this crazy system nor do I want to encourage it.
I also believe that there is a danger to this system in that many people when they choose their training options think that this is very significant. The reality is its not. The most important thing for a person whenever they consider their coaching options are the calibre of the massage course that they want to undertake. Actually less than 20% of people have even subscribed to the highest levels of reportage with health funds and there is no benefit to the practitioner from these patients having this reportage anyway.
The only thing the practitioner has to be concerned about in his early stages of having a clinic is not to lose potential clients. What we recommend is that souls can offer a discount for the first treatment to these souls to get them "in the door" so to speak, and then give them such a adept treatment that they will desire to come back, even if they don't get their $10 rearward from their health fund. So compete on the base of giving a calibre treatment rather than on whether you can fit into an insane bureaucratic system of health rebates.
If a person focuses on becoming an outstanding practitioner and having excellent customer service skills, then they will soon have more clients than they can treat. They will no longer be so desperate for clients that they require to offer discounts to get souls "in the door". They will be able to choose their clients or even raise their rates whenever they desire.
A massage course that trains souls to be excellent therapists is what souls should look for when picking out a massage course to undertake for their coaching and that's what we aspire to in our massage training techniques.
About the Author Uchenna Ani-Okoye is an internet marketing advisor For further information on life insurance policies as well as product recommendations and services, I suggest you check out: Cheap Insurance Life Policy
|
 |
Please Rate: |
|
Rating: |
 Processing ... |
(Average: Not rated) |
| Views: | 37 | |
|
| More Articles from Insurance | | |
| Top Articles in Insurance | | |
|
