Funding for Tubal Reversal - Ways to Do It
June 10, 2008
To find funding for tubal reversal leaves the woman and her family wanting it searching high and low. As the surgery can be very costly and most of us don’t have a few thousand or ten thousand lying around to be used for this, we have to find other means. So the financing becomes a major obstacle to getting her tubes untied.
Among the fees that will have to be paid to have the surgery are the post-op tests, the surgeon’s fees, the surgical facility fees, the staff including the anesthesiologist and any needed travel expenses if doing the surgery out of town in order to get the best doctor. In this article we have included a few different ways to try to come up with the cash needed to get the job done.
First is the good old saving for a rainy day. You simply begin to put the extra money you have every month aside in a savings account. I would go so far as to even suggest a savings account just for the purpose of saving for this procedure. If you mix it up into your regular savings account, you just might “accidentally” spend in on whatever comes up. If you don’t have extra or think you don’t, then it’s time to look into the various budget cutting and controlling methods that abound on the web. Do you really need cable TV or that extra latte every day?
One good way to add to your fund is to get a job, whether it’s babysitting if you’re a stay at home mom or a Walmart cashier if you can get away from home. One of you might even consider getting a second job if you both work now, however hard that might be. It will only be for a little while till you have the amount your need.
If you use a top notch surgeon like Dr. Gary S. Berger of Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center, you will be able to create a payment plan with his office. This begins with an initial payment of $250 to open the account. After that, you send in payments of any amount you want or can as often as you would like. If you can, do it weekly. That gets the money out of your hands and into a special account where you can’t dip into it for the winter snow tires or whatever. Think of it as a special baby layaway plan.
One way to get a big chunk of money to add to your fund is to use your income tax refund. If you depend upon this alone, you could find it takes a few years to save up the money you need and things have a way of happening to make the money disappear. That’s where something like the payment plan mentioned last paragraph comes in handy. Send in the tax refund and it’s out of your hands and not so easy to spend.
Usually the first place you will look for funding for tubal reversal is your health insurance provider. However, most will not cover this type of elective procedure though some may cover some of the initial testing. I hate to say it, but it all depends. It will really take a call to your company to get the real scoop and even then two different people there may tell you two opposite answers. If you do get someone to tell you a tubal reversal is covered, then get it in writing. You don’t want to be surprised after the surgery and find you have to pay it all with no reimbursement.
As this is an elective procedure you probably won’t get insurance coverage for it. But there just might be a way around it. You could try having your primary care physician state in writing that you need to have your tubes repaired. This might work if your reason for a tubal ligation reversal is due to post tubal ligation syndrome and your doctor is willing to help you. Repair work on your tubes, rather than a tubal reversal, might just be the secret words. Then again, if your insurance has a cap on how much you have to pay toward your health expenses, it might pick up whatever amount over that cap the surgery puts you. These are by no means sure methods, but they just might work.
Another account you might find useful is your flexible spending account available through your job. These allow money to be taken from your paycheck before taxes, so you not only get the benefit of money piling up, it means you pay less taxes. You will have to find out the way your particular flex spending account works and sign up during your enrollment period if you aren’t already in one.
Yet one other source of funding for tubal reversal is your, or your husband’s, IRA or 401(k). Penalties will have to be paid for early withdrawal and you are robbing your retirement as well. But it is one more method that you can consider.
Of course, no talk of financing would be complete without addressing using credit cards. Unlike most of what we discussed above, this one will put you into debt. You will have to decide if it is good debt or bad debt. If your physician won’t accept your credit card, you could try taking out a cash advance. Some credit cards will even give you checks you can write out just like a normal check but the amount you write it out for will be added to your credit card balance. Check and see what interest rates you will be paying for these checks or a cash advance.
Hopefully one of the above ideas will be the right funding for tubal reversal for you. Decide upon the one that best fits your lifestyle and situation. Only you know what is right for you.
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