Cut your health care cost

Reduce your health care cost?

Make smart informed choices and decisions to save health care cost. We all can do something for ourselves to reduce health care costs.

Here is how:

1. Don’t get sick.

This sounds silly. How can anyone not get sick? Indeed we cannot stop sickness from happening if it is going to happen. But we can certainly minimize the risk or slow down its onset by leading a healthy lifestyle of regular exercise, watching our weight, not smoking, not drinking and having adequate rest.

2. Build a good relationship with your doctor.

Cultivate a good doctor to patient relationship. Make your primary care doctor the gatekeeper if you need to see a specialist or go to the hospital. Ask your primary care doctor to recommend you someone he knows. Keep him informed of your condition so that he can keep track of things. He may even be able to share the care with the specialist and lower your healthcare cost by keeping you out of hospital.
Don’t walk straight into a specialist clinic without first consulting your primary care doctor. There are many conditions which could easily be managed by your GP.

3. Spend money on prevention.

Go for health screening regularly. Diseases, if detected early can be treated more effectively, affordably and less painfully.

4. Spend money on health protection.

Have you been vaccinated against infectious diseases like Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Chicken Pox, Influenza, Typhoid, Tetanus, Polio and Measles? It is cheaper to protect yourselves against these diseases than to seek treatment later. Younger women should consider getting vaccinated against cervical cancer as well.

5. Check your own health.

Learn more about the conditions that you are suffering from your doctor. Ask your doctor to show you how you could monitor the condition at home. Buy a glucometer and blood pressure meter and check your own readings regularly and chart them to show your doctors if you are suffering from Diabetes and Hypertension. You do not need to visit your doctor just to get these readings check every month. See your doctor when these readings fall outside the normal range.

6. Go for time tested Generic drugs!

Contrary to popular belief, the latest branded medications may not be the best for you. Look at what happened to the new painkiller call Vioxx. It was marketed as a breakthrough and it costs almost 1000 times more than the common pain killers. But it has to be withdrawn from the market within a few years because of adverse effects. If you are on long term medications, you should ask your doctor to switch you from branded to generic drug to cut down the cost of medication. Expensive branded medications do not necessarily help you to control your chronic conditions like high cholesterol, diabetes or hypertension better. Time tested generic drugs are just as effective and they are definitely safer than the newer ones in the market which are much more expensive. You still need to do your part by watching your diet, exercising, quitting smoking and drinking.

7. Don’t ever try to cut cost by skipping medications.

That is the most fool hardy thing to do. You will end up spending more money to treat the complications caused by the disease.

8. Cut down on the unnecessary vitamins

Unless the food supplements or vitamins are prescribed by your doctor to treat a specific condition (e.g. Iron supplement for Anaemia), there is really no need to spend so much money on vitamins. All you need is regular exercise, fresh air, sun shine, adequate rest and a balance diet to keep your strong and healthy.

9. Be smart with your insurance dollars.

Buy the shield plans with your CPF savings while you are still young and healthy. Purchase it even if your employer pays for your medical bills. Don’t wait until you retire or get retrenched before looking to buy medical insurance. Make sure the insurance continues to cover you for life.
Go for insurance that has a higher deductible and copayment so that you can cut down on the premiums.
Pay for the package based on what you really need to have and not on what is good to have. The purpose of investing in insurance is to cover you against the worse case scenario which you cannot afford to encounter.

10. Stay in restructured hospitals

If you need to be hospitalized, ask to go to restructured hospital. Avoid being warded in a private hospital unless your current insurer or medical benefits program paid by your employer covers these hospitals. A hospital is not a resort and there is no need to go for the most expensive ward. Staying in a lower class ward does NOT mean that you will be taken care of by junior doctors. Doctors in restructured hospitals work in teams and each team is supervised by a very senior doctor. Difficult procedures and surgeries are usually done only by senior and experience doctors even in the lower class ward.