How To Save Money On Healthcare

These days, you really need to be shopping around for your healthcare and low cost health insurance just like you do for any other purchase. When you buy a new computer, you probably don’t walk in to the nearest store and buy what’s on the shelf. You check several stores, and maybe even check on-line to find the best price for the exact same product that you plan to buy.

Many people don’t realize that you can, and should do the same thing for healthcare related services and low cost health insurance. The reason most people don’t think of this is that for most services you receive, you just pay a co-pay and that’s it. Once you pay your co-pay, you don’t really care what it costs, and neither does the doctor. However, depending on where you receive the service and how it’s billed, may be covered by a co-pay, or it may go towards your deductible (which means you’ll have to pay for it out-of-pocket).

Let me give you a recent PERSONAL example of this. My wife was told by her doctor that she needed to go have a CT scan done. The doctor scheduled the appointment for her at an imaging center owned by the same hospital network that he worked for. Now this was after we had told him that we wanted to have to test covered by a co-pay if possible, and not have it go towards our deductible. We also told him that she had previously had some imaging done at a certain center where we knew it was covered by a co-pay. We thought that was the place he had scheduled the appointment. When we arrived at the imaging center for her appointment, she was not on the schedule. They made some phone calls and found out that she was scheduled at another nearby imaging center, the one owned by the same hospital network that my wife’s doctor was in. So we went over there and spoke to them, and found out that if she had the scan done there, it would go towards her deductible and would cost us about $2,000 out-of-pocket. But if she had the scan done at the other imaging center that was not part of that hospital network, all it would cost us is a $15 co-pay. What a difference!

This is why we have a page about low cost health insurance on this personal financial planning site. Health care costs have become a huge part of a person’s finances, and it’s very important for everyone to understand how to save money on these services. The more you can save on healthcare and on low cost health insurance, the more you’ll have to pay off debt or invest for you future retirement. Healthcare professionals and hospitals are running businesses, and are trying to make them as profitable as possible. This recession is hurting the healthcare industry just like everyone else. Because of this, you really should not assume that your doctor is going to always act in your financial best interest. You need to take responsibility to do your homework and shop around to make sure you’re getting the best possible price for the service you will receive.

The fact that the same service could cost your either $2,000 or $15 depending on where you get it is ridiculous and should tell you that there is a lot of work to be done to straighten out our healthcare system. That would take a whole other web site to cover that topic.