In the UK medical care is provided for free, but there are private hospitals where you can get treatment should you want to. Some people take out insurance, either individually or through their employer to have access to this private care and others will pay for treatment as and when they need it. The advantages of paying are that you can get treated more quickly and some people feel that they get a better quality of treatment as well. Some treatments such as some fertility treatments and cosmetic surgery procedures are not available for free and so have to be paid for.
We may have different reasons for wanting private medical care. It may be that we want children, want to change how we look, want to be out of pain or want to have a condition treated more quickly so that we can be well again. All of these not only have physical implications but also emotional ones and if we are emotional in a situation it can be difficult to make wise decisions. This is why if you are thinking of borrowing money for medical care of some sort, then it would be good to discuss it with friends and family first.
It is worth thinking about the consequences of being in debt as well as the consequences of the treatment. You will of course expect to feel a lot better health wise as a result of having the treatment or you will gain emotionally from having children or feeling that you look better. However, you will g into this happier phase in your life with a debt hanging over you.
Having debt is never easy. You will always know that you owe money and that you should be earning more or spending less to pay it back as quickly as you can. Some people feel it is a big burden for them and always fear the debt hanging over them until it is paid off. Others will feel more relaxed towards it but may still worry about having the money available to repay it when necessary. It can be difficult finding that extra money each month to make the necessary repayments.
If you are recovering from medical treatment, whatever it might be that you paid for, you may not be able to work. You may be able to take some sick leave, but you may not get sick pay or only statutory sick pay which may mean that you are short of money. It could be that you miss out on overtime extras or on call money which would mean that your pay is lower until you have recovered. This means that you will need to be finding extra money to make repayments on a loan when you have a lower income and so it could be extremely difficult for you to manage financially.
Stress is also a really important factor to consider. When you are recovering you will not want to expose yourself to unnecessary stress. There is evidence that stress can slow healing, can lower the immune system and cause inflammation in the body. This will not be good for anyone who is trying to improve their health and so it is best to avoid it if you can. If you have a loan to repay and you are concerned about the cost of borrowing and how you will manage the repayments then you could easily become stressed. Therefore you need to consider how you will feel about borrowing and how you will manage the repayments before borrowing the money to make sure that the stress does not cause problems for you.
It can be very difficult deciding whether to borrow money is the right thing to do in any circumstances. In this situation it can be even more difficult to make a decision as you need to think about whether you could wait and have the medical treatment for free and whether you think you could cope better with that than the stress of borrowing money. If you are having a treatment that isn’t available for free then you have to decide whether you can wait and save up or whether you want it right away. Think about whether it will be better to wait and not have the stress of the loan or have the treatment and try to manage the stress.