Health care can be an expensive necessity for your
family, and it can be challenging to find a balance between feeling reassured
that your family’s health is taken care of and managing the stress of high
bills. Luckily, there are ways to make health care more affordable. This list
runs through some of them.
1. Revise Plans Frequently
Insurance plans change every year, so throughout the year make a note of how much you use your health insurance (prescriptions, dentistry, check-ups). At the end of the year, use this information to help guide your health insurance plan with this new information. Call up different insurers and try to negotiate the price – insurance is one of the few industries where price haggling is still common and accepted.
2. Change Your Deductibles
Some families are blessed with better health than others. If that is you, you can pick a health plan with higher deductible options and save a lot of money due to lower premiums. If you do pick a higher deductible plan, make sure you pick one that allows you to create a health savings account, where you can save money to pay insurance premiums as well as deductible costs without paying tax on your money first.
3. Dentistry Tricks
Dentistry can be costly, so when you need dental work done, make sure you choose somewhere that offers affordable dental financing. Lump sums can be much harder to deal with than spread-out payments, so you should avoid them wherever possible, providing the interest is affordable. You might also want to consider a dental discount card like those given by AmeriPlan, in which you pay a monthly fee and receive a significant discount on your dentistry costs (up to 60%).
4. Try to Join the Farm Bureau
You can join the farm bureau of your state without even being a farmer. It involves annual membership costs that are typically quite low and in return, gives you benefits like health insurance discounts. The degree of benefits changes state by state, so do some research and decide whether it makes sense for you.
5. If You Have an FSA, Use it!
If you have a flexible spending account as a benefit from your place of employment, you should familiarize yourself with the concept and use it as much as possible! An FSA provides a tax-shelter for payments like prescriptions, dental hygienist cleanings or even contact lenses.
6. Comb Through Expenses with a Careful Eye
Did you know that as much as 50% of medical bills could feature mistakes that add to your costs? It is a good practice when you are speaking to a doctor to ask questions about everything, as they make mistakes more often than we’d like to think. Sometimes mistaken advice can cost you money as well, so it’s essential to at least understand everything that your doctor tells you and repeat through their advice at the end of any consultatio
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