Cancer Treatment and Health Insurance Policies
When a person is diagnosed with cancer it is very important for them to understand their insurance plan. A person will need to read the entire plan so that there will not be any surprises later. When a person knows exactly what their insurance company will or will not cover will help them when choosing the right options for treatment. Chemotherapy can cost over $10,000 per treatment. Most health insurance plans will cover chemotherapy, but they will not cover alternative treatments that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. A patient will also need to know whether they have a Health Maintenance Plan or a Preferred Provider Organization Plan. They will also need to know if they have a fee for service plan, so that they can plan accordingly. Cancer patients may have many questions. Some of the questions may be:
Can a person go out of their network plan to receive treatment? How do they go about getting a second opinion? Can a patient choose their own specialist? Do treatments need to be preauthorized? When do treatments need to be preauthorized? Can a patient switch doctors? Contact information for the Insurance Company What treatments are covered?
Record Keeping
According to Lorre's Insurance, in order to answer these important questions a person will need to be their own record keeper and manage their insurance plan. They may have to fight for many treatments or other health care issues to be preauthorized. Some insurance companies are easier to deal with and others are harder to work with. Knowing which type of insurance company a person has will help them to know what they are up against.
Keeping a Journal
Patients should keep a journal with all of their conversations with any insurance and health care provider. Keeping notes will help to go back to many conversations so that they can be prepared. They should also keep all insurance papers. Even insurance papers that may not seem important should be kept. The most difficult thing about insurance papers is that they are hard to understand, so some people may throw important papers away that could be crucial to their over all care.
Get it In Writing
Patients should also get everything in writing. That means anything that is promised to a patient from a health care or insurance provider should be in writing. Insurance templates are also very beneficial to have when trying to organize their papers and keep track of documents in writing.
Being an Advocate
A patient should be their own advocate. They should lobby themselves and fight for the treatments that they need. They may have support from all of their family members, friends, and doctors, but they also need support from their insurance providers. This means that patients should get to know their insurance providers by introducing themselves. They can do this by calling them once they know who their provider will be. Patients will also need to learn how to be great negotiators, trouble shooters, and assertive. There are places, such as The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship that will have great audio tapes and tools to listen to and learn how to fight for themselves. It will give them tricks to learn how to talk to insurance providers about their case.
HIPAA
When a cancer patient is too sick to work and may have to quit their job, which in turn may cause them to lose their health insurance, there is an organization called HIPAA, which stands for Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act. This organization was created to protect people when moving their insurance plans to another plan. A person can still buy individual health plans outside of their work and be protected by HIPAA, which will not allow people to lose the treatments that they need while moving to another plan.