Medical Loan vs Personal Loan: Key Differences Explained

What Happens When Patients Need Money to Receive Healthcare

Most of the time when you need money for medical expenses it feels like an emergency. With the way the American healthcare system is set up, patients unfortunately often are required to come up with at least some of the money on their own. Some providers run patients’ insurance through and even require patients to pay before treatment.

This puts you in a difficult place if you don’t have the money on hand because it is almost always better to have treatment done as soon as possible. Unless you have family who can help you out, you might feel stuck. Luckily, it is possible to use medical loans for health care expenses. You can get medical loans for bad credit and for no credit, in order to meet your personal needs.

Personal Loans vs. Medical Loans

Technically, a medical loan is one of the kinds of unsecured personal installment loans. However, a loan for medical bills can be treated more favorably by the lender because of its purpose. Like a regular personal loan, a medical loan is unsecured, meaning that you don’t have to offer collateral in order to receive it. Collateral can be property, a vehicle, or stocks and bonds.

Medical loans are fast to process, so you can usually get the money when you need it. Because they are for medical expenses, you might be able to get a medical loan for a smaller interest rate. Once you have your loan, you can pay it off over a comfortable period of time at a rate you can afford.

Reasons to Use a Medical Loan

There are many legitimate medical reasons that might force you to explore medical finance:

  • Urgent care — There is a difference now between emergency care and urgent care, and both you and your insurance company can save money in the long run by using urgent care for many important medical needs. These may include X-rays, stitches, bloodwork and animal bites. Urgent care facilities usually demand the money at the time of treatment, so this is one of the top reasons to use a medical loan.
  • Surgery — After your doctor runs your insurance, you can find out the balance and make payment arrangements ahead of time with a medical loan.
  • LASIK and other kinds of vision surgery — Even if you have vision insurance, it probably covers little to nothing on procedures like LASIK. A medical loan can help you get the surgery you need with plenty of time to pay off the loan.
  • Hearing aids and treatment — This is another area not usually covered by insurance, but hearing aids often cost at least a few thousand dollars. A medical loan can help you get your new hearing aid so you can get back to your normal life again as soon as possible.
  • Medical bill consolidation — Another of the biggest reasons to use a medical loan is to pay off all your medical bills at once. You can have all your bills consolidated so you have one monthly payment with plenty of time to pay it off.

How to Get a Loan for Medical Bills

The trick when getting the most favorable loan for your specific needs is to find a place online that will let you do personal loan shopping and compare rates from different lenders. There are different lenders online who offer quick cash loans, and you can use online tools to figure out how much you need and what your terms will be like. You want to make sure you can afford the loan before you take it out.

You can get cash loans bad credit when you go through the process of searching for what you need. If you have a medical need but weren’t sure how you were going to pay for it, you shouldn’t wait any longer to get personal loan online.