As the executive director at NuVision Medspa, a boutique medical spa in Manhattan, Matthew Pruitt has been working with LASIK technology since 1995. He has evaluated and assisted in more than 30,000 procedures and helped countless patients regain their natural sight through LASIK. Here he discusses how to get major savings on LASIK procedures through your health insurance plan.
Many patients who are interested in LASIK don’t know this, but there is a little known health insurance benefit that is not often publicized, commercialized, or advertised that can specifically benefit those seeking to undergo the LASIK procedure.
If a patient chooses to have his LASIK procedure performed by a doctor who is a preferred provider for a number of major health insurance carriers, he may be able to save anywhere from 15% to 25% off the cost of their LASIK procedure, which is a huge savings that can easily save a patient hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Not only is this the case for those who already have supplemental vision insurance, but even people who just have basic healthcare coverage through providers such as Blue Cross, Blue Shield, or Aetna, could qualify for the savings so long as his doctor is a preferred provider who qualifies within his network and his individual plan.
Since the recession began, these types of large purchases such as LASIK and other elective medical procedures have become difficult for a lot of people to afford. But at the same time, vision correction is still just as life altering and important as ever. So consistently across the board, our mission at NuVision has always been to make LASIK affordable for everyone, and matching these little-known types of insurance programs for people is just another way of us being able to do help our patients get the procedures they need.
A perfect example of this savings is a patient who may have VSP, a type of eye care insurance that offers, depending on your plan, 15% to 25% off the cost of LASIK. So once it’s all totaled up, people can save 30% to 50% off the cost of their procedure by using the insurance plans that they are already paying for anyway.
Another example, for someone who may not have vision coverage, is someone who just has standard healthcare insurance. Dr. Jackson [NuVision's medical director] is a preferred ophthalmologist of Aetna. So, for instance, if you call your insurance carrier you can find out which doctors are preferred providers—like Dr. Jackson is with Aetna—and then match that list up with the ophthalmologists who offer LASIK in your area, then you could qualify for significant savings even without having any prior vision insurance coverage.
For the best chance of securing this type of deal, patients should call their insurance providers first to determine which doctors are covered. Then, when they come into the doctor’s office, they should let the staff know all the insurance plans they currently have. This way, the office’s staff can go ahead and provide the patient with the best benefits to maximize their savings.
Flexible Spending and FSA Accounts
The other thing that goes along with health insurance is FSA or flexible spending accounts, which people can use specifically for medical procedures. A lot of people use these accounts when they have small children. But if they have deductibles, then they can actually pull this money out pre-tax and use that money toward medical procedures—and LASIK is an approved medical procedure for an FSA.
And a lot of people aren’t aware of that because they think LASIK is considered cosmetic surgery. Although that is the case for some insurance carriers—simply because they don’t want to have out-of-pocket costs—the government considers LASIK something that is refundable and appropriate for use with flexible spending accounts.
A lot of this talk about health insurance coverage and LASIK has come up due to the health are debate in Congress where people are talking about bringing down the cost of care for patients. Between the recession and talk about bringing down the cost of the care, it’s becoming clear that a lot of people are missing out on savings that they could otherwise be getting simply because they don’t know that they qualify.
The information in the article is not intended to substitute for the medical expertise and advice of your healthcare provider. We encourage you to discuss any decisions about treatment or care with an appropriate healthcare provider.
