How to Get Custom Orthotics Shoe for Free

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Get Custom Orthotics Shoe for Free

If you are having back or knee or foot pain, often proper arch support for your feet would go a long way in relieving pressure. Most name-brand shoes are terrible when it comes to arch support. Before you invest in expensive, clumsy looking, orthopedic shoes, consider getting custom made orthotics prescription from a podiatrist.

Custom foot orthotics is a cost-effective treatment for many foot and lower extremity conditions, and are often covered by healthcare insurance plans.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Step 1

Call your health care insurance and find out custom orthotics are covered. If so, find out whether they are covered 100%, 80% or such. There might be year or life time based restrictions on how many pairs you can order.
Step 2

Make an appointment with a podiatrist that is covered by your insurance plan. Your podiatrist would take a custom non-weight bearing mold of your feet and design orthotics device to control alignment and function of your foot, in order to treat or prevent injury-causing motions such as pronation (rolling-in) and supination (rolling-out).
Step 3

Your insurance will often allow one orthotics support for running, exercise shoes and a separate one for dress shoes. Women in particular would love the dress shoe arch support. Your podiatrist can custom fit it for your shoes, even for your high heels shoe!
Step 4

Enjoy the perfect arch support and wonder how you walked without it until now! Best part is, if you were lucky, you didn't even spend a dime on it!

Tips & Warnings

When ordering your orthotics, do one at a time. I.e. order your running shoe first and wear it for a period of 2-3 weeks. If you need adjustment, your podiatrist would be able to tweak it. Once comfortable order the second pair for you dress shoes. This is important as your insurance would cover only one order per kind for a given amount of time, usually one year.
If you do need to pay out of pocket deductible, try setting up flexible spending account at your work place such that you can cover your expense from pre-tax dollar. This can be very handy if you are paying a good portion of the expense
Until you get used to wearing your orthotics, you might want to play it safe by carrying your old shoe arch insert with you, just in case if you are feeling uncomfortable you can switch the inserts.