For Dr Di Saia's Patients

For those interested in financing their surgery with Dr Di Saia, you have a few choices. We have a few programs in the office to which we can help you apply to get your procedure financed. In that case, please call to make an appointment for a consultation and we can go from there. There are also internet-based options explained below to which anyone may apply. In that case read on:

Background: The History Of Cosmetic Surgery Financing

To make things easier on everyone concerned, most surgeons started developing global fees for commonly performed cosmetic operations in the eighties. What's a global fee?

A Global fee is an all inclusive fee paid for all (or most ) everything needed in a particular procedure. Things to ask about relative to such fees are:

• Is post-operative care (visits) included? For how long?
• Are post-operative garments (e.g bra) included?
• Are post-operative medications included?

At this point most people were paying cash or using standard credit for their procedures.

> Enter The Cosmetic Surgery Finance Company

In the nineties, specialty plastic surgery financing companies entered the market of cosmetic surgery financing. Today's companies operate very similarly. They advertise themselves as your friend. They are going to help you get the surgery you want. Similarly, they present themselves to surgeons as the service to get their patients funded. Everybody does not win here.

Prospective clients generally apply for these loans at the doctor's office and the loan is offered for work done in that office only. Many of these companies offer credit to people who would have otherwise not qualified. As you might expect there is always some kind of catch here.

The most common of these involves the design of these loans. The physician is set-up as the original lender and the financing company buys the loan at a discount...often 15-25%. So say you need $5000 in liposuction financing. The doctor's office is paid $3750-4250. You are required however to pay off the entire $5000 at a high interest rate. So the financing company does well, the doctor's office takes a hit and the patient pays off a loan on more than was paid for the surgery at a high rate.

So what have many doctor's offices starting doing in response to this loss of revenue? A couple of things:

• Stop using all or the majority of these cosmetic surgery financing companies
• Increase fees or require cash deposits to reduce the lost revenue in the cases in which these cosmetic surgery financing companies are involved. Note that this makes the patient's financial burden even greater!

We have seen interest rates on these loans as high as 29.99%! So just like in any other transaction involving a line of credit

We spend time filtering through offers from these companies, but cannot guarantee the nature of the loans they make with you. We have excluded some of the trickier programs though. We want the best for our patients.

Online Credit Card Companies...An Alternative

Well, you can use the internet to investigate a few options.

The companies represented in the table below offer standard credit. You deal with them directly. It is simpler if you can qualify. You can apply right now to one or all of them by clicking the links. See what they offer and take that which seems the best. This credit can be used where you want not being bound to one surgeon's office. Most of us take standard credit cards.

The companies are listed below according to your credit history, the credit line offered and interest rates. Take into account that the better packages tend to be offered those with better credit history. Bad credit history makes cosmetic surgery financing more difficult and credit repair advisable. At the time these companies were reviewed none of them required a fee to apply. Several companies have been removed as their offerings seemed poor. Read the "Terms and Conditions" section of each carrier to review their current offerings.

Company	Your Credit History	Interest Rates/Credit Extended
Chase Free Cash Rewards Platinum VISA ®	fair to good	low/high [Up To 12 Months 0% Intro Interest on Balance Transfers and Purchases and Cash Back] VERY HIGH APPROVAL RATE
Chase (R) Flexible Rewards Platinum VISA	fair to good	low/high [Up To 12 Months 0% Intro Interest on Balance Transfers and Purchases and Cash Back]
Chase Business Rebate VISA Card	good to fair	low/high [Up to 12 Months 0% Intro Interest on Balance Transfers and Purchases] Got a business?
CHASE Platinum VISA	good	low/high
Chase Perfect MasterCard	good	low/high [0% Intro Interest and Rewards Program] Popular Offer
Free Cash Rewards Platinum Visa®	good to fair	low/high [Up to 12 Months 0% Intro Interest on Purchases and Balance Transfers and Rewards Program] New Offer
WIRED MASTERCARD  This one has an application fee, but will consider poor risk credit. Read carefully	good to poor	medium/medium
Credit Repair	Credit repair service - for credit history that's really bad	N/A
Credit & Debt	Credit repair service - for credit history that's really bad	N/A