Program offers affordable finance option to pay for a patient’s out of pocket medical costs.
Charleston, SC – January 20, 2016. SimpleSelect Patient Finance® announces that it will begin beta testing a deductible finance program that can be used by patients to pay for out-of-pocket medical costs associated with a surgery, procedure, or treatment covered by their insurance policy. The program’s objective is to help patients and practices deal with rising insurance deductibles and other related patient-pay medical expenses.
Since the Affordable Care Act or ACA was signed into law, the number of insured has been on the rise and so have the associated deductibles. The average deductible for an unsubsidized Bronze plan under the ACA is $5,731. For a middle-income family, a deductible of this size may not be affordable and can potentially deplete an emergency fund or savings account. Due to out-of-pocket costs, an insured person may choose to put off covered treatment, which may not be in the best interest of the patient.
To address this problem, SimpleSelect has put together a special program where a participating practice’s patients can securely apply online for a closed-end, fixed-rate loan to cover the patient-pay portion of their medical expenses. The company’s hope is that practices will use the program to offer patients with larger balances a safe and convenient finance option.
“Our focus has always been on financing elective medical procedures not covered by insurance, but that started to change last year,” said Daniel O’Connor, CEO. “We had a number of medical practices asking us if we had a program for financing deductibles so we began exploring the idea. It was new to us, but we were confident we could make it work and developed a program based on the feedback we received from providers. A SimpleSelect loan is the safest and most financially-smart patient finance option in the industry and we are excited to be able to provide that option to a much larger patient demographic.”
SimpleSelect Patient Finance® will begin beta testing the program as early as January 2016 with select medical providers across the US with a larger rollout expected this summer. Mr. O’Connor concluded by saying, “because we know the demand is high, we want to make sure we get things right. We will need to fine tune the program before making it widely available.”