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Being a person with a chronic illness gives us enough to think about. With doctor’s appointments, therapy sessions, bad flare days, and more, the last thing that we want to have on our minds is medical bills. But it happens. The best we can do as chronic pain patients is to help ourselves with the bills and create a budget amidst medical bills.
Creating a budget can be easy and straightforward. But the first thing that you have to prioritize is your health. That is the most important thing. Never put off an important test or doctor’s appointment because if you need to go, then you should go.
Learn more about how to consolidate your medical bills and more over at PositivityPain.com! Click To TweetYou can speak to them and ask them to bill you if you do not have the money upfront. Many doctor’s offices will do this for their patients. Alternatively, if you visit a hospital, you always have the option of applying for financial assistance.
Medical bills are a special kind of bill. You can think about them as a bill that is open to negotiation. What is on your bill and what you end up paying maybe two different things entirely? When you call up a billing center, many times, if you speak to them and tell them that you may not have all the money to pay the bill upfront, they will usually split them up for you.
By splitting them up, you can pay on the balance of the bill over time, rather than all at once. That makes it a lot easier to tackle, right? This is honestly what I have done with the medical bills that I have incurred, and it was so helpful to be able to pay a little bit at a time; it was much more manageable for me, and I was able to fit it into my monthly budget.
If you are not in a huge rush but need to see a doctor, all the same, try speaking to different doctor’s offices. They will be able to tell you what a visit costs, and you will be able to find the doctor that is best for you. They might even have a sliding-scale payment system that allows one to pay based on the income that you bring in. It never hurts to ask. I have learned that over the past 17 years that I have been ill. And, I’m learning to ask even more questions. Because, essentially, that’s the only way we are going to really find out things.
Next, I’m going to talk a little bit about FSAs and HSAs. With certain health insurances, there are two different kinds of accounts that allow you or your partner (whoever is the primary card holder) to put away small amounts of money from their paycheck into one of these two accounts. Both Flexible Spending Accounts and Health Savings Accounts allow you to save up money, which is typically readily available, should you need to use it. Many FSA and HSA cards are great for spending on things like your prescriptions, doctor’s co-pays, etc. They are very useful to have.
Alternatively, if you are facing a bill that is threatening to put a load of debt over your head if you do not pay it in full, and won’t take payments, you can take out a personal loan. That way, you can use that money to keep your credit great, while having the convenience of paying the loan back over time. While you will incur interest on the loan, it is a much better option than having to declare bankruptcy over your medical bills.
No matter what, you have options when it comes to medical bills. If you would like to learn more about debt consolidation surrounding medical bills, click here.