Major Surgery
If you are facing major surgery, you should become fully informed of the Health Plan benefits covering hospitals and surgery. Also, if you have not already done so, you should make sure that you have made arrangements for financial matters such as power of attorney for health care, general power of attorney, will, and designations of beneficiaries.
Plan Checklist
Items regarding the Health Plans apply only to participants in the Southern California IBEW-NECA Health Plans. However, if you participate in another electrician health plan, it is likely that similar considerations will apply.
- If you are covered through Kaiser or UnitedHealthcare, all scheduled surgeries are arranged through your HMO.
- If you are covered though Blue Shield, you have access to Blue Shield's PPO Network of
physicians and hospitals. If you use a PPO hospital, the $200 additional hospitalization deductible is waived. In addition, it will be preferable for you to use a PPO surgeon and anesthesiologist in order to reduce your out-of-pocket expenses for the procedure.
- For all scheduled surgeries, you must comply with the Hospital Preadmission procedure. Failure to do so results in a penalty of lower reimbursement from the Plan.
Also Consider...
Planning Notes:
There is risk involved any time you perform an action. There is a certain risk involved in going out your front door and driving to work. There is undeniably a greater level of risk involved in having a major surgery than in normal day-to-day activities. While it is not beneficial to exaggerate the risks involved, financial planners do recommend that people preparing to undergo scheduled major surgery should at least review several documents which would come into play in the event of death. If you have a family and/or you have assets, you should already have considered these. But if you have sufficient time before surgery, this is an appropriate point to begin working on these. Here are the items which you may wish to update, revise, or consider prior to surgery: