Health care law encompasses the laws and regulations governing hospital and health care administration, and an understanding of health care insurance is integral to it. There are significant differences in the types and amount of coverage provided by various private insurance policies, such as HMOs, PPOs, disability insurance, and hospital indemnity insurance, just as there are important differences in the cost to the purchasers of health insurance. There are also public health care insurance programs. Elderly and disabled persons may be eligible for coverage through the federal Medicare program. The joint state-federal Medicaid program helps certain individuals, including disabled persons and low-income elderly persons, pay for long-term care and in-home health care.
Ballentine is an unincorporated community in Richland County, South Carolina, United States. It is part of the Columbia, South Carolina Metropolitan Statistical Area. The town was recently in the planning stages of being incorporated. Ballentine would be the seventh incorporated community in Richland County if it were to be incorporated. It would be the first created in the area since Arcadia Lakes was formed in 1959, according to the Municipal Association of South Carolina. The town would have had a population of about 2,500 people, however, the recent vote for incorporation was not successful.. The town's desire to incorporate was partially driven by the encroachment of nearby Irmo, South Carolina. Ballentine is located on Lake Murray, a large reservoir formed in the 1930s by the Dreher Shoals Dam, which at the time was the largest earthen dam in the world. Ballentine refers to itself on the signs leading into town as "The Gateway To Lake Murray". The community experienced much growth during the late twentieth century, sparked by the combination of its lakefront location and its proximity to the city of Columbia. In the twenty-first century, Ballentine has been transformed by the addition of two large, new, middle-class subdivisions and by some new commercial development as well as a new elementary school. It is now an affluent suburb of Columbia although it maintains something of a rural feel in many areas.