I hope this post helps you Spin Your Healthcare Your Way!

Check out how more information on how to choose insurance in our new book,Easy Healthcare: Choose Your Health Insurance.

Available for download NOW!

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That seems silly, doesn’t it?  But the nurse is right!

This isn’t the doctor’s rule but rather an insurance rule.  Your insurance will normally cover a “preventive” visit once a year.  This “preventive” visit is to check your blood pressure, weight, and other general indicators of how healthy you are.  If you’re a woman, you may get your annual pap smear and mammogram.  If you are a man, you may get your prostate checked along with a colonoscopy.  These “preventive” visits are different than an appointment you make to see the doctor for a specific problem.  If you have a problem, the doctor will bill your insurance as a regular visit.  If you have a co-pay, you will have to pay out-of-pocket for a portion of the visit.  The amount that you pay will depend on your insurance plan.

It’s important to understand this because the doctor can’t just mark down the visit as “preventive” if it’s not.  Many patients call the doctor’s office after the visit to say they want the billing for the visit or service changed to “preventive” so the insurance company will pay for the entire visit or service.  The doctor can’t do this.  If they do change the billing, they are committing “fraud” and can get in trouble.

The best way to handle how you are charged is to call your insurance company beforehand and ask what preventive services are fully paid for by the insurance company.  You can ask your doctor; however, there are a lot of different insurance plans and the doctor’s office might not have the right answer for your plan.

Tell us how you  make sure you know what’s covered for you and your family under preventive services. We’d love to hear from you!

For more information about your health insurance, see HealthSpin’s Easy Healthcare: Choosing Your Health Insurance.

We hope we’re helping you “Spin Your Healthcare Your Way!

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My friend Sally is super friendly, smart and has a great job.  Sally recently explained to me that she is very annoyed with her doctor’s office.  Why?

She was at her doctor’s office last week and she was trying to figure out whether one of the healthcare services she wanted was going to be “paid for” entirely by insurance.  

She kept asking the doctor’s billing people, “Is that covered?”  Although the billing people said “yes,” she later got a big bill from her doctor.  How could this be?

Healthcare has a lot of specific language that you need to understand.  If you ask the wrong question, you might not get the answer you were looking for.

“Covered” services: are healthcare services that your health insurance “covers” under your health plan.  So you might think, “If it’s covered, I won’t have any out-of-pocket costs.”  Think again!

Most insurance plans have co-pays and deductibles.  If you haven’t met your deductible for the year, you will likely have to pay for the whole service even though it’s a “covered” service.  Until you meet your deductible, you will have to pay for the services yourself.

Likewise, most insurance plans have co-pays for certain services.  For example, the cost of your doctor’s visit may “covered” but you may have to pay between $5-20/visit because that is your co-pay for the service.

Again, if you only ask, “Is this service covered?”  You are not likely to get the answer you are looking for.

Asking the right question can help you get the answer you are looking for.

Let us know what you are annoyed with your doctor about.  Leave us a comment below and let us know what is on your mind.

For more information about your health insurance, see HealthSpin’s Easy Healthcare: Choosing Your Health Insurance.

Helping you “Spin Your Healthcare Your Way!

The post Are You Annoyed With Your Doctor? appeared first on MyHealthSpin.

I hope this post helps you Spin Your Healthcare Your Way!

Check out how more information on how to choose insurance in our new book, Easy Healthcare: Choose Your Health Insurance.

Available for download NOW!

The post How To Compare Health Insurance Plans appeared first on MyHealthSpin.

As you try to determine which health insurance plan works best for you and your family, you need to decide:

1. How healthy is my family?
2. Do I love my doctor?
3. Would I rather pay less now and possibly more later?

These are the questions I asked my friend, Linda who was trying to decide which insurance plan to pick for her family.  Linda is a very busy mom who is constantly balancing the demands of her job and her family.  She has 2 young children and both she and her husband work.  Linda has high blood pressure and her husband is diabetic.  Linda and her husband struggle to eat healthy and almost never have time to exercise.

To Linda, the health plan choices seemed daunting.  Too many choices, no information.  

So we asked our 3 questions:  

1.  How healthy is my family?

In order to easily understand Linda’s family’s health issues, we started by completing her Medical Life list (which you can get for FREE in our ebook What To Do First when you sign up for myhealthspin.com blog).

Once Linda had all her health information at her fingertips, we knew that all the members of her family had some health issues so insurance coverage was important.

Next, we asked:

2.  Do I love my doctor?

Linda and her husband were often too busy to go to the doctor.  If anyone in the family got sick, they relied on Urgent Care or a local clinic.  Having access to an internist and a pediatrician would make Linda’s life easier since her family could get better care.

Whether you have a doctor you love is important to know because when you pick an insurance plan  – each plan will have a list of doctors that are “in network.”  The cost of the doctor’s visit will be less if you pick one who is in the network of providers for the insurance plan.  Since Linda’s family did not have a regular doctor, she could pick any of the plans available that had a doctor that was located nearby.

Lastly, we looked at Linda’s budget and asked:

3.  Would I rather pay less now or more later?

As we looked at the insurance plans she could choose from, some cost more per month and some cost less.  But of course, the plans that had a lower premium, also covered less.  We decided that the middle plan was the best option.  It cost a little more per month but Linda’s out-of-pocket cost would be less over the year.

By asking these 3 simple questions, Linda picked her health plan and had confidence she made the right choice.

Stay tuned for my easy information about how to choose insurance in our upcoming book, Choose Your Health Insurance.

I hope this post helps you Spin Your Healthcare Your Way!

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