AIDS In Canada – Protect Your Loved Ones and Finances With Good Health Insurance

 

This year, December 1st was AIDS awareness day, but just because the day has passed doesn’t mean the education should stop. It’s extremely important that we are all fully aware of the disease, how to prevent it, and how we can continue to live our lives if we one day have it. A big part of that is making sure that you are properly insured.

Canada has one of the greatest healthcare systems in the world. Nonetheless, you don’t want to wait until the day you are diagnosed with a serious disease to seek out insurance. Securing quality health insurance should be at the top of your list of priorities if you have not already done so. The goal is to have health insurance before you actually need it so that you can avoid unnecessary expenses that come along with pre-existing conditions.

Before diving into the specifics of health insurance for patients with AIDs, let’s step back and take a look at the disease itself. What is it? How many people are affected by it? And how big a problem is the disease in Canada?

A Brief Overview Of AIDS In Canada

AIDs, or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, is a disease that is caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus(HIV). A person may be infected with HIV without developing AIDS. For this reason, AIDS is sometimes referred to as stage 3 HIV. It is entirely possible for serious treatment to prevent the HIV infection from progressing to stage 3.

More than 63,000 people were living in Canada with an HIV infection https://www.catie.ca/en/pif/spring-2018/fast-facts-new-hiv-diagnoses-canada] in the year 2016. Unfortunately, that number has continually increased over the past 30 years. There was an increase of five percent between the two years of 2014 and 2016 alone.

Days like December 1st are intended to raise awareness about the disease in hopes that more people will take steps to protect themselves and prevent the disease from spreading. This can be particularly difficult when a large portion of the people who have HIV are completely unaware that they are infected. Luckily, the preventative practices that work best for patients with HIV are the same practices that those without the disease should be taking.

It’s important that all Canadian citizens who are having sex outside of marriage take steps to prevent the spread of HIV regardless of whether they believe they have the disease. And even if they have recently been tested, those preventative measures will protect them from sexual partners who unknowingly have the disease.

There are numerous stereotypes about the disease that people may use to validate ignoring safety. For example, some people believe that AIDS only affects gay or bisexual men. Though this does make up for roughly 50 percent of Canadian HIV cases, it is entirely possible to contract the disease regardless of your sexual preference.

There is even a small percentage of patients who have been infected without any cause related to sexual intercourse or drugs. They may have been infected via a blood transfusion, via hereditary factors, or by an accidental needle stick at work.

Hopefully, spreading information and awareness will encourage people to avoid the “this couldn’t happen to me” attitude and to take the necessary steps to protect themselves. Even so, accidents can still happen just as with the patients who contracted the disease without sexual intercourse or drug use. That’s why it’s always best to be prepared with a quality health insurance plan.

The Importance Of Health Insurance

Not only is AIDS a very serious and dangerous disease, but it’s also a very expensive disease. Even with all of the government and public healthcare programs available, constant treatment for AIDS is far too expensive for the average person to pay out of pocket. That’s where health insurance comes into play.

The cost of healthcare for a person with AIDS in Canada in the year 2009 was estimated to be $250,000. That’s nearly $100,000 more expensive than it was to treat a person with the disease in 1999, which was estimated around $169,000 [http://www.gpiatlantic.org/pdf/health/costofaids.pdf]. What this shows is that treating AIDS is very expensive and it’s becoming more and more expensive with time.

At a certain point, it may become entirely impossible for a patient with AIDS to work a normal job or have a normal schedule. The idea of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for their treatment seems impossible. A far better solution is to make monthly payments to a health insurance provider that will, in turn, pay for the treatments.

There is one problem with this solution. Health insurance companies are running a business, and they want to make a profit. They know that treating AIDS is expensive and that it’s risky. After all, AIDS can be fatal, and it is possible the patient will die before the company can make a profit. If a patient approaches them for health insurance and they already have the disease, then the health insurance provider is either going to deny them or charge them an extremely high rate.

In comparison, a person who does not have HIV or AIDS would find it much easier to receive an affordable health insurance policy. This is assuming there are no other pre-existing conditions with a high risk involved. And if that person later contracts the disease, the health insurance provider cannot spike their rates to compensate for the new risk. The patient now has an affordable and realistic way of paying for an otherwise expensive treatment.

AIDS Awareness And Health Insurance

Information is one of the most powerful tools available for fighting a disease of any sort. Knowing how to protect yourself and others can prevent global disasters. Even so, accidents can happen and it’s always better to be prepared than to be caught off guard. That’s why you need to have a quality health insurance plan on file as soon as possible. A health insurance policy will ensure that you are prepared for the future and can afford to pay for any unexpected treatments.