How can women find health insurance that suits their needs and is affordable? Including those folks with pre-existing conditions?
While health insurance is undeniably a headache — and an expensive one, too! — it is the key to unlocking access to core, covered preventive healthcare services for women. To get a sense of what a typical woman's cost of care would be with and without insurance, check out Tia's Vagina Benefits tool. We made this last year after Trump rolled back the birth control mandate to help women understand quite literally the price tag of having a vagina and the central role insurance has in caring for it!
Once you've decided that you do want to invest the time and money in buying insurance as an individual, the next challenge is to think about what insurance to buy. Joany is an amazing tool you can use to get a personalized insurance plan recommendation based on you and your needs and make sense of things like deductibles, out-of-pocket costs, and what you get with each "tier" of the plan.
What are your top healthcare tips for freelancers?
The biggest challenge for freelancers who don't have employer paid-for health insurance is figuring out what to spend on. At Tia, we recommend setting an annual healthcare budget that may include everything from insurance premiums, to therapy or wellness services that may not be covered, to supplements you may take or even your green juice habits! If you think of your health through a more holistic lens, it can be helpful to think about why you may be comfortable spending a certain amount of money on an exercise class but not a doctor's office visit, and shift your budget accordingly so you can invest in the things you value and most directly impact your health.
Are there any misperceptions or misunderstandings about healthcare that you think are particularly unfortunate? And how would you clear them up?
That women's health is just your "lady parts!" At Tia, we practice a unique blend of integrative care that aims to treat the whole woman, and not a disparate set of body parts.
Yes, women need core preventive healthcare screenings like Pap smears and breast exams, but we believe that optimal health is much broader than that — it's your mental and emotional health, your sexual health, your digestive health — and that women need a "one-stop shop" that addresses them as a person end-to-end and connects the dots between things.
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