OPD or COST SAVINGS INSTEAD

[sailorjon]

I'm 60.  Finally getting health insurance.  I'm on a budget.  I've pretty much decided on a Pacific Cross plan.

I've read and the helpful agent also advises not to get OPD too costly for the benefits.  with the plan I'm looking at it's about 10000 more per year.

 

However, I had a health emergency that saw me rush to the emergency room in great pain and required many tests for them to try to diagnose what was happening.  This even led to a 21000 bt CTscan.  Total cost was over 30000.  This was all done in the emergency room, I had no insurance.

 

So, my concern is if I don't get OPD benefits I could get stuck with very expensive bills in a similar situation.

 

If anyone has some advice on this topic I would appreciate it very much.  Thanks.  It's very challenging trying to sort all this out and seems in the end like a roll of the dice.

[lopburi3]

The general consensus seems to be OPD is not nearly as important as actual hospital (which makes sense) but as you have found OPD can indeed amount to a very high amount if not done on the cheap.  I have had several 25k skin cancer removals and IOL operations ran higher.  A Pet/CT scan was in the 60k range this year.  So in my case OPD would probably be well worth an extra 10k per year (it is part of my insurance - but this is a US group policy).  In most cases the big OPD expense is medication and for that you can go outside to buy most at cheaper pharmacy prices.  

[sailorjon]

Thanks for that confirmation lobburi.  As I thought.  I'm willing to spend 10kbt/year just in case of a repeat of these kind of situations.  I've found my experiences with hospitals here to be very tricky as regards fees and I can't afford to be left hanging in an emergency.

[Sheryl]

Most inpatient only policies will cover daycare in a hospital including care in an ER (if you spend a vfew houyrs there for observation) , as well as CTs and MRIs. Whether this is true of the policy you are looking at, I don't know, but it is true of most of them.

[sailorjon]

Tx Sheryl.  I'll check it out.  I'm talking with the AA broker people about a Pacific Cross policy.  

[David B in Thailand]

Out patient often has a low benefit to cost ratio.  My experience with Thai Health Insurance Company, when I had Out Patient Coverage with that company, that is we could exceed the coverage limit on each visit by a wide margin. I do know that with both Thai Health Insurance in patient policy, and BUPA in patient coverage you can have a slew of tests done the same day, and not spend the night,. if your hospital stay is a certain number of hours minimum and the patient has at least one meal on the bill.  I've done so at Bumrungrad, and in Surin at the private hospital. AA broker should be able to send you coverage in English to help you compare your options. 

[Tony125]

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