Bill Woods is joined by Bruno Muraca, Personal Insurance Claims Advocate, to discuss the recent bottleneck in public hospital elective surgeries which has seen the concerning rise of the Self Pay Surgery payment model which encourages frustrated patients to leverage one of the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) platforms like Zip, Openpay or Humm.

This conveniently packages up the surgery cost and treatment, but once the patient signs up, has the surgery, and leaves hospital, they’re faced with a daunting contractual agreement to contend with.

Patients can be left with a $30,000 out of pocket expense for a hip replacement with recovery time taking up to six months.

If they can’t work, how are they expected to pay these funds back including interest?

A recent YouGov survey revealed that one-third of BNPL users have fallen behind on their scheduled payments which can incur late fees and bad credit ratings.

When it comes to healthcare – who is the Self Pay Surgery model really benefiting?

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