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Before December 31: Using the Health Benefits You Have Already Paid For

For most plans, the clock resets on 1 January. Whatever you have already paid toward your deductible this year stops counting, and any allowance you have not used is usually gone.

That is a real deadline with real money attached, and almost nobody mentions it to you. It is also the single most useful reason to do the thing you have been postponing all year — better than a new year’s resolution, because the resolution starts on the first of January and this one expires on the thirty-first of December.

The four things to check

1. Have you met your deductible? If you have — through surgery, a hospital stay, imaging, or a chronic condition — you are in the cheapest part of your plan year right now. Anything you have been deferring is likely to cost you less in December than in January. This is the single biggest one, and it is worth actually checking rather than assuming.

2. Do you have an FSA with money in it? A flexible spending account is usually use-it-or-lose-it. Some plans allow a limited carryover or a short grace period into the new year and many do not. Unspent money in an FSA generally goes back to the employer, which is a genuinely bad outcome for something that came out of your pay.

FSA funds typically cover far more than people realise — prescriptions, glasses and contact lenses, dental work, copays, first aid supplies, sunscreen, blood pressure monitors, thermometers. Check your plan’s eligible list rather than guessing, and do not leave it to the last week when everything is booked.

An HSA is different and there is no rush — that money is yours and it rolls over.

3. Have you used the preventive care that costs you nothing? Most plans cover a set of preventive services at no cost to you, separately from the deductible — the annual visit, several screenings, immunizations. If you have not had your annual visit this year, that is the appointment to make, and for many people it is free.

4. Is there a referral, a prescription, or a test sitting unfinished? The referral you never booked, the imaging you deferred, the specialist follow-up, the mole you have been meaning to have looked at. Those are the ones that cost you twice if a new deductible starts before they happen.

What is worth booking now

Not a list of everything. The things where the timing genuinely matters:

And the honest scheduling note: December fills up. Between the deductible reset, the holidays and everyone else having the same idea, the second half of December is the hardest time of year to get an appointment. The useful month is November.

Two things not to do

Do not have something done purely because it is cheap this month. A test you do not need is not a bargain — it can produce findings that lead to more tests, more worry and more cost. Ask us whether something is worth doing, not just whether it is covered. Those are different questions and only one of them is about your health.

And do not skip something genuinely needed because the deductible has reset. If January arrives and something matters, it still matters. Tell us if cost is the obstacle — there are usually options, and we would much rather have that conversation than have you not come.

While you are looking at it anyway

November is a reasonable moment for the small administrative things that only get done when something prompts them: