Tuesday Tip: Shop around & consider paying cash for health tests and procedures

Happy Tuesday. It’s time for tidbit Tuesday’s again, this week, I’m really excited because I have a great new tool that I want to share with you.

There’s a new website, I don’t know how new it is, but it’s new to me, called assisthealthgroup.com. What it does, is it helps people find affordable testing, lab work, and different kinds of procedures. It is a really helpful service. It is a concierge service where you call a number after you’ve got your health orders from your doctor, whatever it is that you need; an MRI, a mammogram, lab work, and you tell them what you are looking for. They will find a place nearby that is inexpensive.

I’m really excited about this. An example is the labs. I’ve already seen some of the savings people have gotten. For a lipid panel, which tests your cholesterol, you can pay $4 for that test instead of $80 using a recommendation from this site.

So why would you not do that? Well, that kind of depends on what insurance you have. I talk about this all the time with people, you know, we always want to make sure you have the health insurance that you need. Let’s say you have a plan with a deductible. If you’re just going for regular checkups, and you know you are healthy, then you are probably not going to meet your deductible every year. If you have a deductible, in my opinion, why would you go show your insurance card and all those charges are going get applied to your deductible, and you’re going to be out of pocket, likely hundreds of dollars, if not more. By using the most cost-effective place you can find, you can pay as a cash patient, but save hundreds to thousands of dollars.

What’s even more awesome, is there are a couple of private insurance plans that allow you to be a cash pay patient and send in your receipt and get reimbursed if you used an in-network place. Not necessarily 100% reimbursed, but it all counts. And there are even times where you get more than 100% back, so you actually make money. I have this happen all the time to ladies who get mammograms. They’ll go get their cash price mammogram for $214. Their plan pays $250. And they’ve just made $36 by getting a mammogram.

One of my goals is to teach you ways to save money. I believe that it comes down to transparency. If you actually know what things cost, you can make educated decisions about where to have your procedures done. You can shop around. There’s nothing wrong with shopping around for procedures. You want to go to a doctor that you can trust, I get that. But when you need an extra chest X-ray, it doesn’t matter where you go. So why would you pay $300 for that when you could get it for $30?

If you’d like more information on this, you can go schedule an appointment with me. My mission truly is to help people save money on their health care.