March 2012 Newsletter
What´s New at Savon
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Quote Of The Month: "How to store your baby walker: First, remove baby." - Anonymous Manufacturer.
Congratulations To:
R. Callaghan of Cave Creek, Arizona Winner of our February early payment drawing for 1 free additional year of membership.
Congratulations to our winner and thank you to everyone that entered the drawing.
Keeping Fit With Jourdin Hendershot:
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Flu Fighting Foods!
Well it‘s that time of year the flu is going around and running its course. But did you know there are some foods that you eat, that can help fight off the flu and start you on your recovery process?
- Sweet Potatoes: - Sweet potatoes are high in potassium, vitamin A and C and along with calcium!
- Garlic: - Garlic helps prevent the flu from spreading and helps protect from other infections that may arise.
- Red Bell Pepper: - Red Bell Peppers are high in vitamin C and can help with dehydration due to the amount of water they contain.
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- Honey: - Honey is very helpful because it helps your cough. Just simply add a little to your water or tea for a warm tasty drink!
- Water: - Drink, drink and keep drinking! You need to stay hydrated while you are sick. Do avoid drinks that will dehydrate your body such as sodas.
*These remedies will not cure the flu, these foods and drinks can help improve your immune system!
If you have questions you would like to discuss with Jourdin, feel free to drop her an email by clicking here.
Grandma's Kitchen With Grandma C.:
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Grilled Sausage & Pineapple Skewers
Ingredients
- 1 or 2 pkg's Kielbasa Sausage, sliced into 1 inch slices
- 1½ cups of fresh Pineapple chunks (large chunks)
- Green Bell Pepper (sliced into 1 inch slices (lengthwise) and halved)
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Begin with sausage, placing it on the skewer lengthwise, so you'll be skewering through the skin. Follow with a chunk of pineapple, then bell pepper. Repeat as many times as you can, and end with a piece of sausage. Grill on Medium heat for approx 10 minutes, then serve. This recipe can be done with BBQ sauce or even Sweet and Sour sauce for added flavor!
Tips*
- If you're using wooden skewers, soak them first in water for a half hour or so. This prevents the skewer from burning on the grill.
- Use either Pork or Beef sausage but remember, Kielbasa tends to be a little greasy, so watch it on the grill!
If you have a recipe that you would like to share with Grandma C., drop her an email by clicking here.
To Your Health: with Meri Osborne
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Home Remedies For Pain- Straight From Your Kitchen!
That‘s right! More home remedies!! This month we‘re focusing on home remedies for pain. Whether it be a simple leg cramp or a full on migraine, the remedy is in your kitchen! Take a look:
- Ginger - 1 teaspoon dry, or two teaspoons chopped added to any meal once a day can help keep achy muscles at bay.
- Clove - Chewing on one can help keep a toothache away for about 2 hours.
- Cider Vinegar - 1 tablespoon mixed with 8oz of water can help soothe heartburn.
- Garlic - Can cure an ear infection in 5 days by administering 2 drops of warm garlic oil in the ear twice daily.
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- Cherries - 20 a day will keep arthritis, gout or chronic headache pain at bay!
- Fish - 18oz of fish weekly can help ease the pain of Irritable Bowel Syndrome and inflammatory bowel diseases.
- Salt - Regular salt soaks can cure an ingrown toenail infection. Mix 1 teaspoon per cup of water used. Heat the water to your desired temperature and soak affected area twice daily.
- Peppermint - 10 drops to a warm bath can soothe muscle pain and knots.
- Grapes - Eating a heaping cup a day can ease back pain.
- Blueberries - A cup a day (raw, frozen or juiced) can keep a urinary tract infection away!
- Honey - Just a dab of unpasteurized honey can cure a canker or cold sore 43% faster than prescription strength cream.
- Tomato Juice - 10oz a day can stop leg cramps and muscle spasms.
This is just a taste of some of the super foods that beneficial to our daily health and comfort. Stay tuned for more next month!
The above health material is provided as an information service. It should not be used for diagnostic purposes nor is it intended to take the place of the important relationship between you and your doctor.
News You Can Use: News From Inside Your Dental Plan
Dental Care For Americans In a Crisis
According to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the United States is in the midst of a major dental crisis. There are 130 million Americans who have no dental insurance. One-fourth of adults age 65 or older have lost all their teeth. Only 45 percent of Americans age 2 and older had a dental visit in the last 12 months, and more than 16 million low-income children go each year without seeing a dentist.
Dental care is about more than a pretty smile. People with dental problems can be forced to live with extreme pain, and a mouth without teeth often makes it difficult to find and keep a job. Dental problems can have a significant impact on overall health and can:
- increase the risk of diabetes
- heart disease
- digestive problems
- and contribute to poor birth outcomes
In some cases, dental conditions can result in death, including the well-publicized tragedy of 12-year-old Deamonte Driver of Maryland, who died five years ago.
One-third of Americans do not have dental coverage. Traditional Medicare does not cover dental services for the elderly, and states can choose whether their Medicaid programs provide coverage for dental care for low-income adults. Children with Medicaid or CHIP are required to have coverage for dental services, but insurance alone does not guarantee access. Only 38 percent of children with Medicaid in the U.S. see a dentist during a year. Sadly, while dental pain is one of the major causes of school absenteeism, many families cannot find a dentist to treat their children.
Addressing access to dental care will not only help to relieve pain and improve health for millions, but it will save money too. The Pew Center on the States recently released a report that said that there were 830,000 visits to emergency rooms across the country for preventable dental conditions in 2009, a 16 percent increase from 2006. Emergency room care is extremely expensive. Access to dental care can cut back on these visits and save significant sums of money.
Here at Savon we are doing everything we can to make dental care affordable to everyone that needs it. We work very hard to keep the cost of dental care as low as possible. We currently offer seven different plans and have two more in the works.
If you know of anyone that doesn't have dental coverage and needs dental care, remember to tell them about your dental plan.... Savon
Contents of this article are reprinted without permission from The Dentists News Network
Fun Facts:
Crazy, Zany Facts About Saint Patrick's Day We Bet You Didn't Know
- St. Patrick‘s Day is observed on March 17 because that is the feast day of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. It is believed that he died on March 17 in the year 461 AD. It is also a worldwide celebration of Irish culture and history. St. Patrick‘s Day is a national holiday in Ireland, and a provincial holiday in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador
- St. Patrick was born in 385 AD somewhere along the west coast of Britain, possibly in the Welsh town of Banwen. At age 16, he was captured and sold into slavery to a sheep farmer. He escaped when he was 22 and spent the next 12 years in a monastery. In his 30s he returned to Ireland as a Christian missionary. He died at Saul in 461 AD and is buried at Downpatrick.
- 34 million Americans have Irish ancestry, according to the 2003 US Census. That‘s almost nine times the population of Ireland, which has 4.1 million people.
- Some American towns have “Irish” names. You could visit: Mount Gay-Shamrock, West Virginia; Shamrock Lakes, Indiana; Shamrock, Oklahoma; Shamrock, Texas; Dublin, California and Dublin, Ohio.
- The harp is the symbol of Ireland. The color green is also commonly associated with Ireland, also known as “the Emerald Isle.”
- The Irish flag is green, white and orange. The green symbolizes the people of the south, and orange, the people of the north. White represents the peace that brings them together as a nation.
- The name “lephrechaun” has several origins. It could be from the Irish Gaelic word “leipreachan,” which means “a kind of aqueous sprite.” Or, it could be from “leath bhrogan,” which means “shoemaker.”
- According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the highest number of leaves found on a clover is 14!
- One estimate suggests that there are about 10 000 regular three-leaf clovers for every lucky four-leaf clover.
- Legend says that each leaf of the clover means something: the first is for hope, the second for faith, the third for love and the fourth for luck.
Have a Happy Saint Patrick's Day and come back for more in next months issue!
Dental Talk - A Member Blog Forum:
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Come blog with us! Dental Talk with Savon is a fun forum to post your interesting topics! Your comments are welcome, it‘s free to use and no membership is required.
Some of the topics include;
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These are just a few of the topics. Our blog site contains many other interesting topics. Please join us!!
Insurance Insight: - With June Shaffer
from Arizona Life Lines
Understanding Insurance Language - Part Two Of An Eight Part Series
This is a continuation of our February 2012 series dealing with breaking down of some of the more commonly misunderstood phrases and definitions encountered in the search for adequate health coverage. You may already be familiar with several, but please read on - some of these definitions go beyond the written word.
- PREMIUM RATES (Male vs Female): Some carriers rate women of the same age at a higher premium rate than they rate men. Why? Because, the carriers maintain, women have more "plumbing" which can break down. (And supposedly, women go to the doctor more frequently.) That may be true, but then it would seem only fair that a female who has had a hysterectomy would get a discount. With most carriers, rates for women do start coming down (comparative to male rates) between age 50 and 55. Industry experience has been that while women may go to a doctor more frequently, men will often wait until something is so bad that a doctor's visit isn't enough, and they become hospitalized or have to undergo extensive (read: "expensive") tests. There are a few carriers who rate both sexes in the same age bracket identically.
- CO-INSURANCE (as in "80/20"): While you are paying your 20%, the insurance company is paying 80%, on that amount over the deductible as described earlier. This is called co- insurance, because both parties share in the cost. There are 90/10, 70/30 and 50/50 plans available also. The higher the portion of your obligation (i.e., the 10, or 30, or 50), the lower the premium. (Obviously, higher deductibles mean lower premiums.)
- CO-PAY (as in Dr. Visits, etc.): If you have a PPO (Preferred Provider Organization....more later), you might have what are called "$25 co-pay doctor visits." This means you pay $25 and the insurance company pays the rest. You might also have $15, $25 or $50 prescription co-pays; same thing. Usually, there is no deductible associated with doctor visits or prescriptions where there is a co-pay, and no claims to be filed; the providers do it for you.
- "80/20 to $5,000": What this means is that, after the deductible amount, you pay 20%, the insurance company pays 80%. Also, they do it simultaneously; the insurance company doesn't wait for you to pay 20% before it pays the other 80%. For every $20 you are obligated to pay, the carrier is obligated to pay $80. As in the earlier definition, the carrier may pay their entire portion before you even start to pay yours. A 50/50 to $5,000 means you each pay 50% OF that $5,000. How high can co-pays go or coinsurance go? As high as the insurance company wants to make them, but you usually have a choice.
- STOP LOSS: This is the amount of expenses which have to be incurred before the insurance company will pick up 100%. Usually, you have your deductible, then your co-pay. So, a $1000 with an 80/20 to $5,000 means you have a total obligation of $2,000, and the insurance company picks up everything else (assuming "everything else" relates to eligible charges....more later on that phrase). And, of course, as with the word "deductible", "stop loss" refers to expenses incurred within a calendar year.
- CALENDAR YEAR DEDUCTIBLE: There are two general types of deductible: "per year" and "per occurrence". You can imagine what havoc the "per occurrence" type can do to a family budget: little Johnny has strep throat in January, a burst appendix in April, a broken leg in July and the flu in November. There are four deductibles to be paid here, all separate from the other. Watch out for those words "per occurrence": they're usually in little letters that can't be seen with the naked eye, glossed over by the agent, or in a place in the policy where most people never get - after all, how many pages of a health policy can you read and still maintain unblurred vision? "Per occurrence" deductibles are good on supplemental plans, but not on basic health coverage. Luckily, there are few carriers that offer “per occurrence” deductibles.
Join us next month when we cover Cap • Usual, Customary, Reasonable • and Pre-Existing Condition
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