Intermountain Health Care (Cedar City: insurance, house, military)

[SergeantL]

I need to change from my current medical insurance carrier, since Kaiser has no facilities in Utah. I don't like Blue Cross because of all the forms. Someone told me that Intermountain is much like Kaiser. Can any of you tell me about this system?

[chazcrew]

I had IHC for several years, and I was happy with them. We only switched because my husband's employer switched carriers. I wish we had IHC back; they have a bit of a monopoly going on, which means I now have to bypass the emergency room 5 minutes from my house and go to one 20 minutes away, because the close one is an IHC hospital. So for sheer convenience, I prefer IHC.

I'm not sure what you want to know about how they work. It was pretty straightforward for us: pay premiums every month. Go to the doctor, pay a $20 copay. $30 for instacare, $50 for ER. All the usual stuff covered (preventative visits, maternity care, etc.). I don't know anything about Kaiser, so I couldn't compare the two.

[SergeantL]

Originally Posted by chazcrew

I had IHC for several years, and I was happy with them. We only switched because my husband's employer switched carriers. I wish we had IHC back; they have a bit of a monopoly going on, which means I now have to bypass the emergency room 5 minutes from my house and go to one 20 minutes away, because the close one is an IHC hospital. So for sheer convenience, I prefer IHC.

I'm not sure what you want to know about how they work. It was pretty straightforward for us: pay premiums every month. Go to the doctor, pay a $20 copay. $30 for instacare, $50 for ER. All the usual stuff covered (preventative visits, maternity care, etc.). I don't know anything about Kaiser, so I couldn't compare the two.

Chaz--

Kaiser is a flat monthly fee for incredible coverage. My plan does not have a co pay on visits, but it does have a $5.00 charge on prescriptions and a $50 charge on ER visits. Everything else is covered under the monthly fee, major surgery, tests, etc. It does force one to use only Kaiser Hospitals throughout the state, unless it is an emergency and no Kaiser Hospital is near. It sounds as if Intermountain is similar.

Do you feel that the service you received at Intermountain was good? Many folks here in California don't like Kaiser; they feel it's too much like military medicine. I, on the other hand, don't care whether I have a personal physician. Just treating whatever is wrong with me is fine.

[chazcrew]

Yes, I felt like I got good service with IHC. It's such a widespread insurer in this area that pretty much everybody accepts them, so no problem finding the doctors and specialists you want. On our plan we didn't have to have a primary care physician approve specialist visits, so I felt like we had plenty of freedom to see whoever we wanted to. There were some billing problems, but not very many, and most of them were actually problems on the doctor's end. They always resolved them to my satisfaction.

I liked being able to use the Instacares instead of paying for the ER for things like stitches and after-hours illnesses. You do have to use their facilities so far as urgent and emergent care, unless it's life-threatening (same as Kaiser, probably). I've had a few different plans, and IHC was one of my favorites.

[toby04]

I can't tell you much about insurance and billing, we pay cash being self employed. I can say that every time we have used IHC has been positive. I just took DH yesterday after he fell down the stairs, thought his ankle was broken. Had to use ER on a Sunday morning. Everyone was helpful and pleasant as usual. The hospital is a clean, bright modern facility ( Cedar City). I had surgery years ago in SLC and had same experience.