Is anybody else as surprised as I am the year is nearly gone? I’m over here like where in the heck did this year go? Chuckling….I swear we were just in January a few days ago!
That being said, as a medical coder I see this every year, the panic of what’s coming for next year.
Here’s how to avoid the panic next year, now…….
Start gathering your receipts for how much you spent on procedures, medications (people forget this one all the time, don’t be one of them). I’ve seen many surprised looks over the years when I remind people the end of the year is coming, start preparing for next year NOW. It’ll save tears later…just saying. You can also adjust the spending if one part got more use than others. That’s why I’m telling you to go gather your receipts. Don’t know where half of the receipts are? Get a file folder at the beginning of the new year to put all the receipts in for the flexible spending folder, that way you won’t have to tear the house or your office apart looking for all those receipts at the end of next year! Everything will be waiting for you in the folder, right when you need them.
Start tallying all that cost of doctor visits, surgeries, glasses, crutches, prescriptions (people forget to add the prescriptions drug costs for the family) and do a ball park figure of how much you’re going to need for next year’s flex plan spending. If you have a child or children that is also on the plan, budget an extra $200 for each child to give yourself a cushion for things that come up unexpectedly (and they will, I see it all the time from my vantage point in the back office) Your human resource department is going to be sending out a letter soon that they need that ball park figure number so they can do their paperwork on their end and get that ball park figure cost into the system, so it’s nice to be ready for them ahead of time. An old co-worker of mine did this and budgeted and extra $200 per child on top of what she already had calculated and it literally saved the family budget. (All three of her kids, in one year, ended up needing braces, at the same time). If my old co-worker hadn’t have done that, the entire family would have been in a financial pinch that year because an unexpected medical thing of all three kids needing braces at the same time occurred.
If you have some money left in your flexible spending that’s needing to be used for THIS YEAR, start using it up. This year’s flexible spending total DOES NOT roll over to next year. As the saying goes, if you don’t use it, you lose it. This is true of the remaining money still unused in your flexible spending. Use it up because it’s certainly not going to roll over into next year’s flexible spending! I’ve had more shocked looks over the years from people who assumed the money they didn’t use the previous year would roll into the new year. Sorry, nope, the money simply doesn’t roll over into the new year. Although most people in the world wish the money would roll over to the new year, it just isn’t gonna happen!
Make sure your doctors are still taking your insurance plan for next year. It’s never a nice surprise when you go in at the beginning of the year on your first appointment of the year and you suddenly get told the doctor no longer takes your insurance! And I have seen it more than once over the years. I’ve even had to call people before the new year telling them that they will be paying out of pocket for appointments because the doctor no longer took their insurance for coverage. That was never a fun phone call to make…..
Start doing your Living Will. If you don’t have one, start making one. You never want to be in a position of having others call the shots if you can no longer tell people what you want for medical care if you can no longer speak or are otherwise. Nobody ever wants to agonize over medical decisions and they worry that they did not respect your wishes because they had no clue whatsoever what your wishes for medical care and wants are! And if you do think of doing a living will, make sure the doctor gets a copy. Most doctors are now starting to ask their patients if they do indeed have a living will made out, just in case….it’s no longer a case of wham bam thank ya ma’am and they give you the forms and then the forms just sit in a drawer gathering dust somewhere in the house. The doctors are actually asking to see them come back. By next year, it will become a common question of “can I see the living will?” and it’s no longer going to be a thing where you get the forms and they sit in a drawer gathering dust and never get used or filled out. Those days are swiftly dwindling.
If you have a surgery coming up in the first three months of the new year, make sure it’s still covered! If you have new insurance that begins on January 1st, make sure they cover the surgery, or at least know why you need the surgery in the first place. The new health insurance plan won’t have all your health history like the old one does. Don’t go blindsiding the new insurance by scheduling surgery and then they refuse to cover it because they don’t know “the why” behind the fact you need this surgery. Most people forget to mention to the new insurance company they have surgery planned and then in the new year, I don’t want to be the one calling you saying the insurance won’t pay for the surgery, or worse, the surgery isn’t even covered, period. That’s never a call I like to make, because it reduces the person on the other end of the phone to tears. And sometimes a needed surgery has to be rescheduled to a different month while the insurance catches up ion your health history. Don’t get on the wrong foot with the insurance on stuff like this, it always backfires on people. I’ve seen enough backfires over the years to last a life time. That’s why I’m saying this now, so you won’t have to be blindsided by the insurance!
Check on your prescriptions!! It happens every year that insurance changes what prescriptions to different tiers and if they will cover the current medications at all in the coming new year. Avoid being blindsided by the insurance by checking all of that out now. Also let the insurance know if you’re allergic to certain things. When things get switched over for a new year or you have a new insurance, information like that tends to get lost in the shuffle, although it’s not intentional. I lost a dear friend a few years ago due to her insurance insisting she had to take an insulin her body just couldn’t handle, and as a result, I had to help her family plan her funeral. Her family sued the insurance and won, because the allergy to a certain ingredient in a couple brands of insulin was all over the doctor notes, with dire warnings of what would happen if she had to use a certain insulin that had the ingredient she was allergic to. The insurance ignored the warnings and ended up having to pay my friend’s family lots of money. I was in line for picking up my medicine a few days ago and a lady ahead of me commented that she was shocked her medicine wouldn’t be covered the next year. I told her to call up the insurance and see if it was going on a different tier, or just not covered. She looked at me in shock, she replied, “I can do that?” “Absolutely! Call the insurance when you get home and ask them. it’s better than finding out the hard way when you have to be denied medicine you need”. I answered her. It’s never too late to check and see if your medicine will be on a different tier or not covered next year. And trust me, you don’t want to know what some of the medications cost! I’ve had to catch many people while standing in line waiting for my prescription, when they get the shock of their life at how much their medicine cost.
So now that we’re winding down the year, start doing all these things to make sure getting into next year is a piece of cake and stress free. You’ll be ahead of the game in the long run!
Leave a Reply