If I haven't yet met my deductible?
1 Answer
From HealthCare.gov (emphasis added):
Deductible
The amount you pay for covered health care services before your insurance plan starts to pay. With a $2,000 deductible, for example, you pay the first $2,000 of covered services yourself.
So expenses that are not covered by your health insurance do not get applied toward your deductible (or your out-of-pocket maximum).
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1Just to expand on this perfectly accurate answer, all accumulators of any kind on any health plan (deductible and out of pocket but also lifetime maximums, and things like visits per year, etc) only ever include covered services. Practically, this is because covered services are the only ones that are explicitly defined by the plan. You can't really include something that you can't define.– dwizumCommented Jan 10, 2020 at 16:30
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Just to add some complexity, many plans have two different deductibles for in-network vs out-of-network.– TTTCommented Jan 10, 2020 at 17:37
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@TTT Good point, although that applies to providers. Services are either covered or not; whether the service is in-network or not depends on the provider (it's irrelevant for an uncovered service). Not refuting you, just distinguishing the two. Commented Jan 10, 2020 at 17:40
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@DStanley - I agree. It's not relevant to the question. I only mentioned it because covered services may have more than 1 deductible. It's probably not relevant for the answer either. :)– TTTCommented Jan 10, 2020 at 17:45