by Sandra Wilson
Many, many women regret their tubal ligation each year for one reason or another. Once they have decided upon having a reversal surgery done, finding funding for tubal reversal becomes the biggest part of their lives as well as picking the best doctor to do the surgery. As these reversal can be quite costly, there usually is no other option but to seek out ways to scratch up the fees.
This means most women will be searching for some other way to come up with the requisite money to pay the doctor’s fees and all other associated costs such as the anesthesiologist and surgical facility. While having the full amount in one’s bank account would be the best scenario, it usually doesn’t happen that way. There are more or less eight ways to come up with the amount of your tubal reversal costs.
Let’s start our list with a special savings account just for your tubal reversal. I think it best to set up a separate one from your existing one. And make a rule that they only time anything is withdrawn from this account is to pay the surgeon. Come up with ways to start putting money into this account. What are you paying for that is just an extra that you can give up? Do it and put that money into your savings account instead. Take a good hard look at how you spend your money and you could be surprised to find that you are able to add $50, $100 or even $200 to your special account each month. After all, what’s more important, getting that tubal reversal or going to Starbucks every day?
A variation or addition to the first method is to get a job. This could be a second job if you work now or a regular job if you don’t work now. Take as much of this as you possibly can and add it to your savings. If you are making ends meet now without it, then you should be able to put most of it away into your special fund.
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.
Many people will think about insurance paying for the procedure as their first thought when looking at funding for tubal reversal. Some insurance companies will cover the surgery as part of their plan. However, if someone at your insurance carrier says they will, get it in writing. You may find that one person at the company says, “Yes”, and then the next will say, “No.” There are too many cases of a woman going in for the surgery thinking it was covered only to find out after wards that the insurance would pay nothing. Get it in writing!
While still talking about health insurance there are two ways that you just might, that it’s just possible, you can get them to provide the funding for tubal reversal. If you suffer from post tubal ligation syndrome and you can get your primary doctor on board, he/she could state in writing for your insurance company that you need your tubes repaired. Not that you need a tubal reversal but that you need your tubes repaired. The second way you might get some money returned to you is if your insurance has a health expenses cap and you go over it with the surgery.
Another method you might investigate is if you or your spouse has a flexible spending account available through your place of employment. With some, you can spend the money ahead of time before you actually have it all in the account. As this is pulled from your paycheck before you even see it, it could be a good way to come up with some of the money. One concern though is any limits on the amount and whether it will roll over from one year to the next or how much will roll over. Check out the particulars of your own account during your enrollment season.
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.
The last method we will mention is simply using your credit card. You can ask if your surgeon will accept a credit card and hope he takes yours. You could get a cash advance. Some credit cards offer special deals on cash advances to get you to apply for their card. Others charge very high interest rates. Be sure to know what you are getting into there.
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.