How to Save Money in Spite of an Exploitative Healthcare System

Healthcare is only expensive within the system

This is a crash-course in the top ways that I save my patients time and money for their healthcare.

Before I dive into this, I am now offering affordable annual plans at my practice. We will help you save money by helping you get the right labs, supplements, medications, and more. We can provide superbills that allow you to recoup some of your investment from your employer - a recent patient was reimbursed almost 50% of the cost of one year of services.

These plans are only available in Florida and New York, or for patients who are willing to travel to see us in Clearwater Beach, Florida, once yearly. If you’d like us to expand to your state, drop your location in the comments!

We have three plans - one for individuals, couples, and a third for families (including two adults and up to three kids).

You can learn more about these plans by scheduling a meet and greet with me. You can also schedule a discovery call with Molly, who handles enrollments in these plans.

Here are my top tips for saving money in an exploitive healthcare system.

1. Stop paying top-dollar for insurance. Some of you are locked into employer plans, but for those of you who are not, I would suggest you consider a healthcare sharing ministry.

2. Don't get price-gouged on imaging studies. An ultrasound, CT scan, MRI, or x-ray should never cost more than $50 to $400. Combinations of them (such as an MRI of your cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spine) may run considerably over that. On the other hand, given that most imaging is completely unnecessary, you're best served by getting guidance from a physician (sign up for an annual plan!) rather than trying to figure out what you need yourself. However, there are plenty of cases where patients hear from a doctor that they need an MRI, spend months waiting for it and then get billed thousands of dollars for it, when they could easily have just booked it themselves for a tenth of the cost!

3. Shop around for your labs. I've seen patients billed $100 for a lab that I get for $2. This doesn't make any sense. Patients often come to me with labs from third parties, having bought them when they were on, "sale." Most people, despite the best of intentions, buy the wrong lab or leave out an important lab. Second, without a proper interpretation, what do your labs really mean? You will never beat my lab prices - we always come in under the cost of our competitors. By becoming a patient at my practice, you could easily save yourself the cost of your membership in lab fees alone!

4. Bargain down your bills. Medical practices who bill you after services are rendered will inflate the price of everything in the hopes of collecting as much as possible from you. You don't have to pay any healthcare bill that you get sent, and they aren't likely to send you to collections for a very, very long time. The first thing to do is to demand an itemized receipt. This way you can see what the prices are. Then look up the fair-market value of what they are billing you for. Then tell them that you're willing to pay that, and not their inflated price. A $400 x-ray becomes a $50 x-ray. A $5 tablet of Advil becomes a 5 cent tablet of Advil. And so on and so forth.

5. Let food be thy medicine! Many of you are over-consuming supplements. You just haven’t learned which ones you truly need. You can economize your supplement purchases with the right guidance.

   This is what I do in my practice. If you want to learn more about how to get your nutrition from food, ask me in a Q&A or drop a request in the comments for the next Masterclass!

6. Buy your supplements from me. I carefully curate my supplement dispensary so that my patients know what to buy and why. You can see what I recommend that you keep in your medicine cabinet:

   What I Keep in My Medicine Cabinet

   Rarely, if ever, will you find something on Amazon that is more affordable than what we are offering. What if you can't find a supplement you want in my dispensary? Then there's a good chance you have no real need for it. I stock what works in my dispensary - and NOTHING else. I might have missed something - if you think I have, post it in the comments.

7. Buy healthy food in bulk. My favorite vendors are Nuts.com, Maine Cost Sea Vegetables, Mountain Rose Herbs, and Great River Organic Milling. For meat, go to the local supplier and buy in bulk. For seafood, try something like Vital Choice seafood.

8. Practice mind-body medicine every single day. My favorite two meditation routines are the Roy Masters meditation ("Cure Stress") and Joe Dispenza's routines in his book, "Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself." I’m now dabbling in EMDR therapy (more on this later).

9. Know which labs to order and why. I check these labs on practically everyone at least once a year. Why does checking these save you money? Because if you FIX these numbers, you are going to be healthier.

10. When you have a question about health and wellness, search for information in this Substack. My content largely addresses how to fix your labs and optimize your health so that you don't get sick. You’ll find a lot of the best material behind the paywall - your premium subscriptions help me to make free content, so please consider upgrading if you’re reading for free! My goal with my content is to save you the cost of your subscription every year, so your subscription is a no-brainer. If you don't save the cost of your subscription each year, ask me on a Q&A and we’ll find a way to do it.

Until next time, be well,

Dr. Stillman