What Is the Difference between Vision Insurance and Medical Insurance?
Through daily communication with our patients, the team at Access Eye understands how tricky it can be to figure out the differences between vision insurance and medical insurance. To help you navigate this difficult subject, our staff has prepared the following guide:
Covered by Vision Insurance
As you have probably already discovered, standard eye care appointments and services are not included in most medical insurance plans. Therefore, if you have or need a prescription to correct your imperfect vision. Some patients elect to purchase eye insurance to cover some of the costs of eyeglass frames, contact lenses and a yearly eye exam.
Even with vision insurance, co-pays and out-of-pocket expenses should be expected. Your individual plan determines those precise costs. Pricier plans that offer more coverage may provide transition lenses or scratch-resistant coating on the lenses. While eye insurance doesn’t cover an elective procedure like LASIK, you may find some that offer a discount to their policy holders.
Covered by Medical Insurance
Medical insurance can be critical when medical problems develop in your eyes. In most cases, issues that pose a problem to your ocular health or constitute a medical emergency are covered by medical insurance. That includes conditions like dry eye, a foreign body, allergies, conjunctivitis, and more serious ocular conditions such as glaucoma, cataracts, and macular degeneration. It also means physical trauma to the eye or vision impairment that has been caused by another health issue in your body such as heart disease or diabetes.
Remembering the Differences
To oversimplify (and unfortunately insurance plans are rarely simple), vision insurance covers regular eye exams and eyewear prescriptions while medical insurance is available for ocular health developments.
We encourage patients to review their respective policies ahead of their appointments, to become familiar with what is and is not covered so that they avoid unexpected charges.
Access Eye
Our Fredericksburg, Stafford, King George and Spotsylvania patients have a variety of vision and medical insurance plans. The dedicated team at Access Eye is accustomed to helping patients navigate through policies to determine which type of insurance will be most beneficial for a particular appointment or procedure.
