Don’t ya just love shelling out hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars for medical expenses? Or spending the big bucks on those fabulous stays at luxury hospitals. You’d think hospitals are like a five-star hotel based on the price tag!
Here’s Three Tips on How to Pay for Health Expenses
1.Take a deep breath
It’s shocking hearing that you have health issues that need to be taken care of. If you’re like me, my face turned green, and I about fainted in the doctor’s office (no joke). When processing information, take a deep breath! Breathe in and out!
When processing bad news you can experience high stress, high blood pressure, and increased heart rate. WebMD states that deep breathing is one of the best ways to lower stress in your body. Taking deep breaths will help you to reduce tension, relax, and move forward with a clear mind to make big decisions about your health.
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2. Refamiliarize yourself with your insurance plan
The lingo with health insurance can be very confusing. Call your insurance company to get a refresher on your policy and coverage. Find out what your deductible is, how much of your deductible you’ve already met for the year, and your coinsurance is the percentage you will pay after the deductible is met. Here’s more on how health insurance plans work.
3. Be Proactive
Once you’ve got the basics down of your health coverage, be proactive in finding out the specific costs. As soon as you have mentally processed that you will need a surgery or treatment, find out the procedure code and get an estimate of the cost of surgery from your insurance company and your doctor’s office. Take notes and get an estimate for doctor’s fees, facility fees (which are often significantly more than the doctor’s fees), and other fees for anesthesiologists, pathologists, or lab work.
Also be proactive and find out when exactly the payment is due. For scheduled surgery you are often expected to pay for everything up front. After the surgery, you may have had more or less procedures than originally anticipated. Follow-up afterwards to make sure you didn’t over or under pay and look out for errors in your bill as one in ten medical bills contain an error.
I hope you are as healthy as can be right now! If you don’t have any appointments or doctor’s visits start building an emergency fund to prepare; here’s an easy guide to emergency funds.
Use those three tips on how to pay for health expenses.
