How to Lower Your Healthcare Costs

Unfortunately, it’s a fact that in order to get the best treatment when you are ill, you must have some type of health insurance. This is made worse by the increasing costs of treatment and consequently health insurance premiums. However, no one wants to show up at a hospital, needing treatment, and be forced to pay the heavy expenses out of pocket.

And, let’s face it most people don’t have that kind of money to just dish out or have the connections to get free treatment. So, like most of us you will have to pay in some way, whether it is to the hospital or to the insurance company. The cheapest way would be to have the health insurance company pay most of the bill. However, you must pay monthly payments to have health insurance, called monthly premiums. So, the strategy is to get good quality, cheap health insurance.
Fortunately, with the advancement of the internet, it is easier than ever to find cheap, relatively affordable health insurance.
The following is a list of tips on how to find cheap health insurance online:

  1. Use competition to your benefit. Once you find the lowest quote for what you are looking for, call up an insurance agent, and see if he/she is able to find any special promotions from other companies that you may not have noticed. This follows the basic law of capitalism, competition lowers prices.
  2. Make a list of all of the necessary coverage that you must have. The second list should be of coverage you would like to have. The third list should be of coverage you would take for free. You can then use these lists to try to create your health care insurance plans. Eliminating the coverage you don’t really want nor need, you can save a lot of money on your premiums.
  3. Call an insurance company yourself. By doing this you can attempt to negotiate a lower rate. This is very easy to do because most companies have their information online. Also, it may be helpful to have a copy of a quote that you like from another company, because this will foster competition between the companies.
  4. Take advantage of tax deductions. If an expense is greater than 7.5% of your adjusted gross income, then it is possible to deduct those expenses before tax.
  5. Look over your medical bills. Hospitals are run by people; therefore there is always a possibility of error on your medical bill. Just doing this simple step could save you a lot of money.
  6. Make sure you understand your health plan. Most people don’t know what their insurance company covers. You wouldn’t want to have to pay for your prescription drug yourself, if you could have received a nearly identical one that would have been covered, would you?
  7. Last but not least, PREVENTION. This is probably the single most important aspect in lowering your health care costs. If you don’t need treatment in the first place, then you won’t have to pay for any amount of the treatment.