A not-so-recent survey (2005) about the “wealth” of consumers undergoing cosmetic procedures such as BOTOX®Cosmetic or cosmetic surgery like breast augmentation, showed that they aren’t in actuality, very wealthy. So how do patients afford plastic surgery – with plastic surgery financing!
The survey above came from a poll of 644 people, performed by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. The poll found that all respondents were considering plastic surgery within the next two years. It also found that nearly 30 percent reported household incomes of less than $30,000, while another 41 percent had incomes ranging between $31,000 and $60,000. Sixteen percent reported annual household incomes of $61,000 to $90,000. Just 13 percent had average household incomes of more than $90,000 a year.
I’m not sure what your idea of wealthy is but I think most would agree that a man or woman making around $90,000 does not meet our stereotype of the “average plastic surgery patient”. Our stereotype is more along the lines of these patients:
The stats above are a little surprising. Before I was a plastic surgeon, I too would have thought most patients undergoing cosmetic procedures were wealthy but after being in practice these last several years, patients come from all walks of life. If you remember several years ago, Congress was debating whether they should place a tax on cosmetic procedures to help pay for the Affordable Care Act. You may remember it’s alternative name – the BOTAX! Anyway, once CongressMEN realized a tax on cosmetic procedures would preferentially burden women and people making $90,000 or less, they quickly reversed course. They recognized that they did not want to see their face in future competitor’s campaign commercials as the Congressman that supported taxes on women and the middle class.
Plastic surgery financing comes in many forms. Currently the most common is CareCredit®, as subsidiary of GE Capital. If you go to the CareCredit® site by clicking here, you can find a doctor that participates and you can also apply for a line of credit to pay for whatever procedure you’re interested in. It’s also pretty cool because you can apply for credit with a specific doctor and that doctor will be alerted to your inquiry and can follow up with you from there.
The only problem is that you won’t necessarily know how much the procedure costs before your consultation, so how do you know how much to apply for? If you need a ballpark estimate on a procedure or combination of procedures, go to www.buildmybod.com/pricing and you’ll find a list of doctors that provide their pricing information online. After adding procedures to your “wishlist”, submit the wishlist and you’ll get a total cost estimate for your procedures, including doctor’s fees, OR fees, implant fees, etc. My listing on the BuildMyBod site will actually allow you to apply for CareCredit® immediately from BuildMyBod.com after submitting your wishlist. But even if you can’t apply for credit for every doctor through the BuildMyBod site, you can still apply for a line of credit on CareCredit® once you’ve gotten an idea of the cost from BuildMyBod.
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