Does Insurance Cover the Cost of LASIK?

For too long, as you’ve made your way through life and its most memorable events, you’ve experienced less than perfect vision. Grinning faces haven’t been in perfect focus, your seaside excursions and winding mountain hikes may have been hindered ever so slightly by a limited field of vision.

Perhaps prescription eyeglasses or contact lenses have long been your go-to choice for vision improvement. But now, these, too, are getting a bit old, a bit cumbersome, or even a bit annoying as you take them off or out daily and have to have their strengths and prescriptions updated too frequently to be frugal.

Alas, you’ve come across LASIK eye surgery and have heard success after success of how it has changed the lives of so many. Ten million people, in fact, since its FDA approval in 1999.

LASIK eye surgery is a procedure that produces lifelong change and can even improve your eyesight beyond 20/20 vision.

But for all these reasons and more, it is also an expensive procedure.

Does Insurance Cover the Cost of LASIK?

Insurance covers most of our modern medical expenses and plenty of great arguments support the fact it should also cover LASIK. Unfortunately, however, a majority of health and vision insurance plans do not cover the cost of LASIK.

The reason? If you think back to your earlier family celebrations and excursions to the time you had glasses perched on your nose or contact lenses set in your eyes, you come to understand that from an insurance provider’s perspective, that there are numerous methods of improving your vision that are less expensive than a surgery like LASIK.

Because prescription eyeglasses and contact lenses do effectively treat vision problems, they are often preferred by insurance providers over a more costly alternative than LASIK.

Exemptions

This isn’t to say that LASIK is never covered by insurance, as each provider and plan is different. For instance, members of certain professions (such as firefighters or police officers), as well as patients with certain eye conditions that make LASIK more of a medical necessity (such as severe dry eyes or severe allergies), might be able to present a case convincingly enough to their provider to have insurance cover their LASIK eye surgery.

Financing LASIK Eye Surgery

Because LASIK has only grown in popularity since its inception, and because it is expensive out of necessity, companies started to provide financing options for it that may make the procedure more accessible to you.

Whether in the form of a loan of a certain dollar amount, or a virtually open-ended credit card exclusively for elective medical procedures, these finance providers extend a line of credit to potential patients at varying APRs (annual percentage yields) in amounts that many banks typically may not offer.

An HSA, or Health Savings Account, is another way that LASIK eye surgery can be paid for tax-free. And you may even qualify for a tax credit or increased return in the year of your LASIK procedure.

This information is provided to help you make the most educated choice possible as you plan out and arrange for LASIK. Please consult your financial advisor or tax professional on related matters. And for more information on LASIK, please contact us for a personal consultation. We can help you get your life in focus.