Kaiser Permanente Insurance

Health insurance is an issue and need for everyone. There are, for people who can afford them, many choices. For those without resources, the choices are far more limited but, under some circumstances, a good plan may be available to impoverished people through various 'partnerships' with public agencies. No matter what your circumstances, choices need to be discovered, examined and evaluated - good decisions for you and your family need be made. This review is a summary of one of the more comprehensive choices now available in a number of states including California (where it began), Hawaii, Oregon, Ohio, Colorado and several others, Kaiser Permanente. My family and I have been a Kaiser patients ourselves for well over thirty years, our child and grandchildren were born there, my wife and I have had surgeries, gotten eyeglasses, multiple procedures and prescriptions as functions of our membership and I have actually been employed as a Provider with them (a Clinical Social Worker in Psychiatry) for the past seven years, so I have experienced this system of services both as a consumer as well as someone on the 'inside', a care provider. These comments reflect my aggregate understanding of Kaiser, it's values and drawbacks, who it works well for and who it doesn't and it's merits relative to other insurance choices. Should you find yourself in that seminally important choice making that important decision, it is my hope that this brief discourse will be of some help to you.