Preventative care is one of the best ways to keep your health insurance costs down. Many insurance companies will even reward you for taking steps towards maintaining your health. Staying healthy is much less expensive than trying to get healthy again after a sickness or injury, and preventative care can also help you catch serious illnesses before they become too serious to treat inexpensively.
What kind of preventative care do I need?
Many people will only go to the doctor when they know they are sick. They skip checkups and regular visits, believing that if they feel fine, everything must be fine. And that’s often true. But preventative care is about more than just going to the doctor. Washing your hands, not using tobacco, exercising, and eating a healthy diet all fall under the umbrella of preventative care.
Do I need to see a doctor?
The short answer is yes, probably. A regular checkup can catch high blood pressure before it becomes hypertension, for example. Some people might not even know they have high blood pressure until they have a heart attack, if they have not seen a doctor in the last five years. It is important to discuss your health with someone who knows you and your history.
The normal screenings that are part of checkups can catch a small issue before it has the chance to snowball into a larger one. High blood pressure is only one example. Blood tests can also catch cancer, heart disease, and other chronic, fatal illnesses before they become too big and too serious to effectively treat. Having the routine vaccinations that your doctor offers can also be beneficial. When you avoid the flu, whooping cough, and other highly infectious diseases, you have no chance of developing a one of the more serious infections that come along with these diseases.
Preventative care can also help you rest easy. You might worry, for example, about a health issue other members of your family have had. If you regularly see your doctor, you won’t have to worry about that issue sneaking up on you.
Insurance companies love preventative care because it prevents their customers from requiring expensive, protracted treatments in the future. Taking a few steps now to stay healthy can postpone or eliminate the prospect of serious illness later on.
