One of the perks of being an employee is having a health card or HMO card. Most of the companies today offer HMO or health card to their employee as part of their benefits. Let me share you a personal story about the advantage and benefits of having an HMO that helped us saved almost P8,000 in hospital bill.
What is HMO?
HMO means health maintenance organization(HMO). It is an organization that provides or arranges managed care for health insurance, self-funded health care benefit plans, individuals, and other entities and acts as a liaison with health care providers (hospitals, doctors, etc.) on a prepaid basis. – Wikipedia.
In the Philippines, there are many HMO providing services to the Filipino people. You can enroll individually or privately or as I mentioned above, it can be one of the benefits when you’re working as an employee.
Here’s the list of HMO in the Philippines that are a member of Association of HMO in the Philippines Org.
How my HMO helped us saved P8,000
Almost 4 weeks ago, I accidentally wounded my inner left ear while cleaning it. It happened by accident. It didn’t hurt too much that night but the issue came later in the morning when I took a bath. Water got inside my left ear and helped the infection get worse.
A couple of hours after, I hear echoing sound and not feeling well. There’s also a small amount of water leaking out my left ear. There’s pain. It’s not good.
The echoing sound and the feeling of anxiety continued. It’s not really good. I thought it’s going to be ok on its own but I was wrong. The day after it’s still the same. I and my wife decided to have it check in the hospital.
Since I have HMO provided by our company, check up and lab was covered. When the ENT Doctor checked it up, we found out that there was a small hole in my left eardrum. He put his tool on my ear and were able to see in on the monitor.
My left eardrum was wounded. Maybe it was because of the cleaning I did the other night. Not only that, there’s also an infection that made the situation worse. A small amount of water is leaking and there’s this pain I can’t explain and an echoing sound that’s really freaking me out. :/ It’s not really ok.
As advised by the ENT doctor, I need to take medication. He also advised that a “nasal endoscopy” is needed to make sure that there’s no “cyst” or tumor inside my nasal connecting to my ear that sometimes causes of cases like this. If that happens, it needs an operation.
Check up and lab costs money. And it’s not cheap. Good thing our HMO covered all those checkup and labs, including the nasal endoscopy(cost almost P4,000).
All in all, it cost nearing to P8,000. Medicines were the only expenses we had from our pocket. Sigh.
After all the series of check up and medication, good thing no cyst or tumor found. It’s also getting normal and ok now. Thank God.
Once again, I realized the advantage and benefits of having an HMO. It is a good source of protection that can help in case of emergencies – aside from your emergency fund.
If you already have an emergency fund, this can serve as an initial line of defense so you don’t need to spend or even touch that emergency fund in a case like this. Imagine, we could have spent almost P8,000 from our emergency fund if I don’t have HMO.
Thanks to our HMO. It’s maxicare by the way. 🙂
What can you say? Can you share your HMO – money saving moment? Thank you for your time. Cheers!
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