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If you have decided that you want your tubes untied to either have another child or for relief of post tubal ligation syndrome, then funding for tubal reversal becomes one of your major considerations. With tubal reversals being in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars, most women cannot afford to pay the costs out of pocket.

Among the fees that will have to be paid to have the surgery are the post-op tests, the surgeon’s fees, the surgical facility fees, the staff including the anesthesiologist and any needed travel expenses if doing the surgery out of town in order to get the best doctor. In this article we have included a few different ways to try to come up with the cash needed to get the job done.

Let’s start our list with a special savings account just for your tubal reversal. I think it best to set up a separate one from your existing one. And make a rule that they only time anything is withdrawn from this account is to pay the surgeon. Come up with ways to start putting money into this account. What are you paying for that is just an extra that you can give up? Do it and put that money into your savings account instead. Take a good hard look at how you spend your money and you could be surprised to find that you are able to add $50, $100 or even $200 to your special account each month. After all, what’s more important, getting that tubal reversal or going to Starbucks every day?

A variation or addition to the first method is to get a job. This could be a second job if you work now or a regular job if you don’t work now. Take as much of this as you possibly can and add it to your savings. If you are making ends meet now without it, then you should be able to put most of it away into your special fund.

If you use a top notch surgeon like Dr. Gary S. Berger of Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center, you will be able to create a payment plan with his office. This begins with an initial payment of $250 to open the account. After that, you send in payments of any amount you want or can as often as you would like. If you can, do it weekly. That gets the money out of your hands and into a special account where you can’t dip into it for the winter snow tires or whatever. Think of it as a special baby layaway plan.

One way to get a big chunk of money to add to your fund is to use your income tax refund. If you depend upon this alone, you could find it takes a few years to save up the money you need and things have a way of happening to make the money disappear. That’s where something like the payment plan mentioned last paragraph comes in handy. Send in the tax refund and it’s out of your hands and not so easy to spend.

When you begin thinking of funding for tubal reversal, the first thought is usually, “Will my health insurance pay for it?” This will vary from provider to provider and state to state. You can try reading through your insurance policy but may still not know the answer. Most often, insurance will not pay for it but some might pay for parts. Even calling your insurance company could get you the run around with one person saying yes and another saying no. If you do get a person on the other end of the phone saying yes then make darn sure you get that in writing before going in for surgery thinking it’s all covered. Be sure.

As this is an elective procedure you probably won’t get insurance coverage for it. But there just might be a way around it. You could try having your primary care physician state in writing that you need to have your tubes repaired. This might work if your reason for a tubal ligation reversal is due to post tubal ligation syndrome and your doctor is willing to help you. Repair work on your tubes, rather than a tubal reversal, might just be the secret words. Then again, if your insurance has a cap on how much you have to pay toward your health expenses, it might pick up whatever amount over that cap the surgery puts you. These are by no means sure methods, but they just might work.

Another method you might investigate is if you or your spouse has a flexible spending account available through your place of employment. With some, you can spend the money ahead of time before you actually have it all in the account. As this is pulled from your paycheck before you even see it, it could be a good way to come up with some of the money. One concern though is any limits on the amount and whether it will roll over from one year to the next or how much will roll over. Check out the particulars of your own account during your enrollment season.

Yet one other source of funding for tubal reversal is your, or your husband’s, IRA or 401(k). Penalties will have to be paid for early withdrawal and you are robbing your retirement as well. But it is one more method that you can consider.

Of course, no talk of financing would be complete without addressing using credit cards. Unlike most of what we discussed above, this one will put you into debt. You will have to decide if it is good debt or bad debt. If your physician won’t accept your credit card, you could try taking out a cash advance. Some credit cards will even give you checks you can write out just like a normal check but the amount you write it out for will be added to your credit card balance. Check and see what interest rates you will be paying for these checks or a cash advance.

Hopefully one of the above ideas will be the right funding for tubal reversal for you. Decide upon the one that best fits your lifestyle and situation. Only you know what is right for you.

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