My son is off visiting his grandmother this week and of course the first night he is there he calls home 5 times in the middle of the night to speak with Mom. Dad, after all, is pretty much the call of last resort when it comes to these kinds of things, and goodness knows, he wasn’t going to walk down the hall and wake Nana.
The next morning after a bit of cajoling, my mom takes his temperature and sure enough he’s got a 102+ fever and we are thinking oink flu. As luck would have it my mom lives in the middle of nowhere and the closest walk-in clinic is Clemson Urgent Care over by Clemson University.
My mom and my son finally got out of the waiting room and into one of those ice box examining rooms. At that point I finally was able to reach my mom by cell phone. As luck would have it, the urgent care facility was outside of the Humana network, so I knew I was going to have to swallow one big fat horse pill of a bill.
Here is the advice I gave my mom. First I advised her that when she went to check out that she was to ask them “what the discount would be for paying for the services today.” She was very nervous about this but I suggested that there was no harm in asking. Logically speaking, they should be open to the idea since they would still be making more $ than going through insurance, they would be getting their money faster and there would be no hassle of paperwork with the insurance company.
Second I advised her to ask the doctor to write any prescriptions as generics. And finally, I asked her to fill the prescription at Wal-Mart on her way back home rather than at the pharmacy at the clinic.
Just for asking for a discount she got 15% off the office visit which on a $200 tab (ouch!) was $30. She got a generic prescription for an antibiotic which she had filled at Wal-Mart for $4.00. Of course I will be able to reimburse myself from my HSA.
I was not real pleased with my insurance company’s lack of coverage, but under the circumstances the out of pocked cost could have been $30+ more. This is but one example of Consumer Driven Health Care at work.
The moral of the story is. SPEAK UP, ASK FOR DISCOUNTS, GENERICS, AND KNOW YOUR OPTIONS WHEN IT COMES TO FILLING PRESCRIPTIONS. It costs nothing and might yield some real savings
Filed under: business, health, health insurance, health savings accounts, healthcare, healthcare finance, high deductible health plan, hsa education | Tagged: cdh, clemson university, hdhp, health care, hsa
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