It is almost impossible to have a conversation about American healthcare without including the influence of money on the healthcare we get. With the exception of the symptoms we experience, every other aspect of our care is tightly related to money, from making appointments with our providers, to getting tested, to pursuing a diagnosis, to the options we have for treatment.
This important relationship between healthcare and money then, logically, becomes a relationship between healthcare and our credit. That relationship goes in two directions:
First, our healthcare is affected by our ability to pay for it, which may mean we must have good credit to pay for an expensive problem, or good credit to pay for any problem at all if we don't have insurance. Without the means to pay for good care, either through insurance or from our pockets, we usually don't get it. Granted, having a lot of money in savings might assure we'll get the care we need. But more often the reason someone doesn't have insurance is because they can't afford it. That may mean they don't have a lot of money saved either. And if either is the case, then they won't be able to afford to get the good care they deserve. One estimate says that more than 100,000 Americans die each year because they couldn't afford to pay for care.
And second - vice versa. Our credit is affected by our need for healthcare services and how difficult it may be for us to pay for them. When we are able to find care, but don't have the means to pay for it, the bills start coming and we can't keep up. If you have outstanding bills, some doctors will turn you away and won't help you. More than half the bankruptcies filed in the United States each year are due to medical debt. And, of course, a bankruptcy is the ultimate black mark on a credit score.
Here are additional ties among healthcare, money and credit for your consideration:
Health Insurance
Your ability to get health insurance will be affected by many money and credit related matters. Once you apply for health insurance, the potential insurer will start a process of reviewing many aspects of who you are as a person to determine whether they want to insure you or not. The review process is called "underwriting" and the goal is to expose every important detail about your health and your credit so they can determine how much to charge you for premiums, how much your care will cost them, and so they can keep their profits, too.
Among the details they review are your Medical Information Bureau report, your medication adherence score, your drug prescription history and any other information they can get a hold of.
Hospital Care
Your credit score can affect your experience with hospital care in a few different ways. Because hospitals are too often stuck with unpaid bills, expecially from people who access the hospital through the emergency room because they don't have insurance, hospitals are becoming savvier about how they deliver care and then bill for it later.
The new rules of the Affordable Care Act will affect our ability to access hospitals as a function of our credit in a new way. One new ACA rule encourages hospitals to buy up more and more doctors' practices, so that doctors are no longer working for themselves in private practice; they are now part of the hospital's roster of doctors.
While hospitals can't always turn patients away, doctors are under no obligation to accept patients into their practices. Doctors turn patients away every day; they either don't accept a patient's insurance, or they refuse to accept a patient who has no insurance. More than ever before, these newly hospital-employed doctors will be the gatekeepers to their hospitals, and if patients can't become patients of those doctors, they may also stay away from those hospitals.
Medical Identity Theft
When medical information is stolen, it's not the patients' medical history thieves are interested in. What they are looking for are the insurance numbers, dates of birth, social security numbers and anything else that can be sold. Of course, the moment that information is stolen and sold, it presents not just a medical nightmare for the patient whose information has been violated. Medical Identity Theft can create a huge credit and financial burden, too.
Privacy Issues
Of course, every time money, credit and healthcare come together to make our lives difficult, privacy issues become a problem, too. Smart patients understand how all these aspects of managing our lives intersect and when possible, they take steps to prevent them from becoming any more of a problem than is necessary.
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There is very little we patients can do to stop the effect of credit and money matters on our healthcare, or vice versa. But we can make some smart choices.
Smart choice #1 is to be sure to review your records and fix any errors you find - both your medical records themselves and your financial records, including doctor bills and hospital bills.
Smart choice #2 is to to be sure to choose the right health insurance each year. Depending on the status of your health, and your family members' health, you may have to pay higher premiums in order to save money overall. If your circumstances warrant, then choose a high deductible plan and put money into a health savings acount.
