Let me describe the situation the other person is talking about, with two examples that happened to me in the past year.
1. I scheduled a colonoscopy with a hospital. They charged me $300 for the procedure, which I paid up front. Everything went smoothly and there were no delays, complications, or followups. A week later they sent me a bill for over $1k. They had not applied my $300 payment towards the total. They had not waited for insurance to reimburse them. They simply decided they could arbitrarily charge me more, and they did. Fortunately, my wife is somewhat familiar with medical billing and we did not pay. Insurance reimbursed them, then we called them and told them to apply the $300 we had already paid, at which point we owed nothing. If we had paid the $1k+ bill, I am sure we would not have been reimbursed.
2. I went to a clinic for a minor sports injury. They charged me a $60 consultation fee which I paid up front; I then spoke to the doctor for 15 minutes and got a prescription. A week later, I got a bill demanding an additional $180, and in that bill they claimed they had already been paid by my insurance. I checked with my insurance provider and found they had not even filed the claim yet. I ignored the bill, insurance reimbursed them, and they have not contacted me since.
Your characterization is ignorant of how scummy medical billing actually is.
I'll provide an example...while heavily medicated after breaking both of my legs I signed something on an Ipad, once. I asked for a copy and they weren't able to provide me one. After more than a dozen phone calls I was finally able to get a copy. But that involved figuring out whether it was the company that rented me the wheelchair, the company that billed me, the company that billed my insurance, or the company that owned all of those companies. They provided me three documents I had signed with not the same signature on them. Then when I asked them to pickup the 'rental' that they never told me was a rental, it took five phone calls and over two weeks (during which time they billed me and my insurance for another month of renal). They finally came and picked it up within three hours when I had the news reporter who covered my accident get in touch with the CEO's office.
I reported all this, with call recordings, logs, notes, etc. to my insurance's fraud hotline and they closed the file without doing anything.
Much of health care in the US is wrapped in a blanket of outright fraud. You can't agree to be a victim of fraud. Until I get to charge them for the time I spend correcting their billing mistakes I am totally fine deciding what bill is appropriate and what bill is not on my own.
I can count on one hand the number of times in my entire life that I've agreed to a price for a healthcare service in advance and they actually billed me the agreed upon price and no more.
> nothing better than someone who agrees to a service then decides later that they aren’t going to pay because now the deal is “unfair.”
I would agree for any medical transaction where the price for the service was disclosed prior to the transaction. Hell, I’d even agree if an estimate with a low and a high range were provided.
I don’t know about you, but in my lifetime the number of times this has happened rounds to 0%. And I ask for the price at a rate significantly higher than the average medical consumer.
So, since the entire industry has completely and totally failed at price transparency, then I’m completely on the side of someone who makes this decision.
When they agreed to the service 12+ years ago, were they shown the costs? Would you say their purchase was fully informed? Hell for all we know it was an ER visit and they had absolutely no say in the matter.
You standing on this system like it is worth defending is pathetic. You are lower than a worm if you can't see the inhumanity of the system and how defending it is anti-human. If I heard you say something like this in person you wouldn't do it again.
Until our latest insurance, Ive never had a medical interaction in the US that didn't involve my wife fighting some midwit over the phone for an hour over billing mistakes.
She's probably saved us $5-10k, probably $50k for her extended family (about five nuclear families)
doubleg72|2 years ago
[deleted]
bloaf|2 years ago
1. I scheduled a colonoscopy with a hospital. They charged me $300 for the procedure, which I paid up front. Everything went smoothly and there were no delays, complications, or followups. A week later they sent me a bill for over $1k. They had not applied my $300 payment towards the total. They had not waited for insurance to reimburse them. They simply decided they could arbitrarily charge me more, and they did. Fortunately, my wife is somewhat familiar with medical billing and we did not pay. Insurance reimbursed them, then we called them and told them to apply the $300 we had already paid, at which point we owed nothing. If we had paid the $1k+ bill, I am sure we would not have been reimbursed.
2. I went to a clinic for a minor sports injury. They charged me a $60 consultation fee which I paid up front; I then spoke to the doctor for 15 minutes and got a prescription. A week later, I got a bill demanding an additional $180, and in that bill they claimed they had already been paid by my insurance. I checked with my insurance provider and found they had not even filed the claim yet. I ignored the bill, insurance reimbursed them, and they have not contacted me since.
Your characterization is ignorant of how scummy medical billing actually is.
avs733|2 years ago
I reported all this, with call recordings, logs, notes, etc. to my insurance's fraud hotline and they closed the file without doing anything.
Much of health care in the US is wrapped in a blanket of outright fraud. You can't agree to be a victim of fraud. Until I get to charge them for the time I spend correcting their billing mistakes I am totally fine deciding what bill is appropriate and what bill is not on my own.
khuey|2 years ago
ncallaway|2 years ago
I would agree for any medical transaction where the price for the service was disclosed prior to the transaction. Hell, I’d even agree if an estimate with a low and a high range were provided.
I don’t know about you, but in my lifetime the number of times this has happened rounds to 0%. And I ask for the price at a rate significantly higher than the average medical consumer.
So, since the entire industry has completely and totally failed at price transparency, then I’m completely on the side of someone who makes this decision.
Forgeties79|2 years ago
abxytg|2 years ago
thsksbd|2 years ago
She's probably saved us $5-10k, probably $50k for her extended family (about five nuclear families)