The cost of cell therapy is something patients ask about all the time and understandably so. We constantly make decisions everyday based on what it costs and we measure this against what we really value. Cost and value play this constant game of tug of war in our conscious and even subconscious to create either our perception of customer satisfaction if we purchase the item, or anxiety if we really want it, but can’t afford it. If you consider this internal process, it is amazing that we remain sane with all the ads and enticements we are presented every single day. Our job here is to help you sort out these conflicting feelings and make an educated decision on the best value for your health care. At Cellular Healing we understand that you are looking for a value in health care and we work very hard to provide the best product with the best results in a customer friendly environment.
We strongly feel that using your own cells for your own healing is a basic human right similar to the basic rights of food, water, shelter and dignity. However, the current health market has not yet discovered the true value of these therapies and as such medicare and other health insurance organizations do not cover these therapies. Despite the fact that there is substantial scientific evidence that these therapies are safe and effective (see our medical studies library), all of the traditional insurance carriers have not approved these procedures as a covered benefit. Every covered benefit has an unique billing code which is issued from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Currently, there are no codes to issue to any traditional insurance company. Although you may have commercial insurance such as Blue Cross, they all follow the exact same coding system. This does not mean that they do not see the value of these cost effective treatments, but rather, they live by the rule of no code..no payment. However, the good news is that if you have a non-traditional health insurance plan such as a health sharing plan, stem cell therapy may be covered since the cost of this procedure is much lower than a joint replacement. Most health sharing plans are affiliated with a religious organization and you must choose this rather than Affordable Care Act (ACA) sanctioned plan. In addition, if you have a health spending account, through your employer, the expenses associated with this procedure may be offset by these accounts.
We are also asked all the time if we know when medicare and other insurance plans will cover these therapies. Although, it may seem that it would be nice and convenient for medicare to issue a code to cover these therapies, rarely do nice and convenient end up being the best for our society. For example, the pharmaceutical industry made it nice and convenient for almost anyone from the age of 4 to 94 to pick up a prescription of narcotic medication to take away all our aches and pains. However, we have now suffered greatly as a society from this nice and convenient policy where doctors wrote over 250,000,000 prescriptions in 2012 for narcotics which is 81 narcotic scripts for every 100 Americans. This has resulted in a doubling of our deaths by prescription narcotics from 2010 to 2016. (Hedegaard H, Warner M, Miniño AM. Drug overdose deaths in the United States, 1999–2016. NCHS Data Brief, no 294. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2017.)
This is a hard and painful lesson we learned on the principle of nice and convenient. Not only does nice and convenient lead to abuse and harm, but it also leads to higher costs and little incentive for improvements. A great example is Lasik surgery for correcting your vision. This is a procedure we can look at as a case study of how our wonderful market economy shapes and molds a procedure to make it accessible to everyone without government intervention and subsidy. This procedure began in the 1970’s as radial keratotomy where the lens of the eye was cut and shaped according to a mathematical formula. No insurance company covered this because they felt it was a cosmetic decision. The initial cost was high at around $5,000 per eye and about 70% of the patients receiving this procedure were able to function without eyeglasses. (https://nei.nih.gov/news/pressreleases/perkpressrelease) However, the US healthcare market demanded a procedure which was lower in cost , safe and with better results. Although many politicians and naysayers of the American industrial complex feel that we are no longer competitive in the many areas of trade, the LASIK procedure really proved them wrong. Through intense internal competition, innovation and good old American ingenuity, our country has totally responded to the demand of patients and they now provide LASIK laser aided surgery at a cost from $700 to $1,000 with over 90% success rates. It is hard to identify procedures covered by Medicare which have continually reduced their costs and improved their results. The Lasik story is also the story for cell based therapies. Many cell based therapies in 2005 were priced anywhere from $7,500 to $15,000, and they were administered by a wide variety of physicians with little formalized training in unconventional manners with varied results. Today, we can offer quality cell based therapies from $500 to $6,000 by experienced and well trained physicians using standardized, proven techniques. It is hard to identify many or even any medicare covered procedures where the results are significantly improved with lower costs. So, our wonderful free market model in the United States provides an unique environment for our innovators to provide all of us with a better product at a lower price. This is what we as Americans do better than anyone else period!
At Cellular Healing, we are constantly looking for methods to reduce the cost while improving the outcomes of this procedure and overall, our costs have been reduced substantially over the past few years. We also realize that not all patients are the same and some may be able to benefit from lower cost harvesting and processing devices. Furthermore, some patients are requesting comprehensive treatment packages including exercise, nutrition and adjunctive health promoting therapies. Thus, we offer a wide variety of options to fit every patient’s arthritic condition and desires for additional, adjunctive proven therapies. We can review these options with you one-on-one to find the best fit based on your condition and desires. However, we have very effective platelet rich plasma injections starting at $500 and bone marrow stem cell therapies starting at $2,750. Our ultimate stem cell therapy package offers state of the art stem cell processing and two additional, customized platelet rich plasma injections coupled with nutrition optimization and whole body vibration as well as low level laser therapy. So, you have a wide variety of options to help you return to a life with reduced pain and increased activity. If you would like to learn more about these plans, please visit our Services pages or contact us for an immediate consultation.