Botox and Insurance – is it driving you crazy?
On the bright side, some people are being helped by Botox treatment for migraine. And that’s great.
But the common complaints of cost and insurance complications continue to put a wrinkle in the treatment that’s been such a media darling.
Dr. Allan Block weighed in on the topic in Clinical Neurology News yesterday, explaining how these complications have brought his affair with Botox to an end.
You can read his article, Botox no longer worth the headaches, but here’s one comment he makes:
In the last 2 years, the process of getting it approved became increasingly difficult. Insurance companies put up more and more restrictions to a point that it became near impossible to get it covered. Between the paperwork and rising costs, I had more and more patients deciding to stop.
Have you given up on Botox – or avoided it altogether – because of the cost and/or insurance restrictions? If you’re a doctor, what have you struggled with? Are a million insurance exceptions going to be the death of this migraine treatment?
26 April 2014 @ 8:41 am
Thanks for addressing the “Botox” topic. I am a brain aneurysm survivor and have chronic migraines directly related to the rupture..the Botox treatment is somewhat effective in keeping the amount of migraines lower on a monthly basis, but does nothing for the intensity of pain. My issue is the insurance company will pay one month and then hold off on paying the following month, leaving me with a huge debt owing at the end of each year. I am not comfortable with growing debt. I like to pay my bills as they arrive. After two years of treatment I have stopped as of this year, because of the lag of payment by insurance.