As a person who doesn’t have health insurance, I am very aware of how expensive a visit to the doctor could potentially be. As a result, I have had to learn what I can do in order to keep the cost of receiving medical care, and prescription medication, as low as possible. Here is what worked for me.
I am among the millions of Americans who cannot afford to purchase private health insurance. Like most Americans, I do not have the type of job that offers employer sponsored health insurance. So far, I haven’t been able to qualify for (most types of) public health insurance.
Ideally, health insurance is supposed to provide a form of financial protection for people who have purchased it. The health insurance works as a “go between”, and is supposed to coordinate billing between your doctor, the insurance company, and you. It is also required to cover the cost of many types of preventative care.
Since I don’t have health insurance, I have to become my own advocate in this arena. My experience has enabled me to learn some tips and tricks that can help keep the cost of health care down, (at least a little bit).
Make it clear that you do not have health insurance. Tell the person who answers the phone when you make an appointment that you don’t have health insurance. Remind the receptionist who checks you in. Answer the questions the nurse asks you, but point out that you don’t have health insurance.
The more you repeat that important piece of information, the less likely you are to be treated for things that you don’t actually need. Doctors, like everyone else, want to be paid for the work they do. If they know that you are going to have serious difficulty paying for their services, they might decide to “work with you”.
My doctor was able to choose from a few different codes to describe the treatment that I was given. She selected the one that would be the least expensive for me. She knew that the form, and the bill, would never go to an insurance company, so my guess is that this gave her some leeway that she might not have had if she had to work with a health plan.
Ask for the generic. Prescription medication can be very expensive. If you can get a generic version of the drug that your doctor wants you to take, it almost always will cost less than the non-generic version.
Since it is the same drug, there is no logical reason to pay extra for the name brand version. In my case, I was prescribed the generic version of an antibiotic that my doctor and I know works very well for me when I have a sinus infection.
Today, my visit to the doctor cost around $55.00. Last time, before I put in effort to point out that I did not have health insurance, the visit cost $100.00. The generic version of the medication I required cost around $40.00. Suddenly, my visit to the doctor became a lot more affordable than it had been in the past.
Image by Quinn Dombrowski on Flickr