There is an interesting article in today's New York Times about a service that now exists to help recovering patients make their way through all the false charges on their hospital bills. These self titled "medical advocates" charge to help you navigate the language of the insurance companies and hopefully spot instances of double billing and fraud. That's the premise anyway. The article offers examples of such charges. For instance:
According to some surveys, as many as 9 out of 10 bills from medical providers include errors, according to the Medical Billing Advocates of America. Often these errors have to do with billing for services that were not provided. Lin Osborn, a medical advocate in Westchester County, N.Y., says she has seen several cases in which patients were charged a separate fee for closing a surgical incision.
In other words, one fee for making the incision. Another fee for closing it. Now that is some creative billing. Think of the financial windfalls this approach could provide for the rest of us. Restaurants: One fee for cooking your food, another fee for allowing you to eat it! Prostitutes: One fee for allowing john to enter my body. Another fee for permitting removal of penis! Hotels: One fee for renting a room, another fee for being permitted to leave. Writers: One fee for writing the work. Another for allowing you to read it. Okay, that just wishful thinking. This kind of maneuver never works out in favor of writers. But my favorite part of the article details the new phrases that the hospitals have invented to help disguise the over charging.
Then there are the well-publicized overcharges like $11 for a box of tissues, itemized as "a disposable mucus recovery system" or a $15 bag of ice listed as "thermal therapy."
"Thermal therapy" for ice is very good, I agree. That was some fancy thinking. But DISPOSABLE MUCUS RECOVERY SYSTEM is brilliant. I am so impressed.
Despite the fact that our current health care set up has evidently been great for creativity in the field of billing, I sure hope congress manages to push through a health care bill. Otherwise I might have no choice but to put my 401K into mucous recovery.
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Since nurses (predomina
And, yes, they are paid somewhere around $30-$50/hr plus benefits to prioritize life-savin
I reiterate the need for sensible reform of the healthcare system.
1. A specialist in Denver wants to test my blood every three months. They do the testing in-house, instead of using an outside lab, but not to save money - to charge more. Their extras:
- the act of drawing the blood itself $95 - not covered by insurance
- the "specialis
- the "specializ
I refused to pay the $95 or $295, and (once I understood what they were doing), chose to go to my Primary Care physician and Quest Diagnostic
2. A different specialist in Denver also has an in-house lab, and charged us $95 for each monthly blood draw on my wife. None were covered, so they deducted our co-pays ($30 each visit) from each charge, wrote off the $65 (tax deduction)
I could go on, the point being that both doctors and insurers work hard to stiff the insured. Yet this is a system that doesn't need reform?
3. I was hospitaliz
4. I saw a specialist
. My wife was hospitaliz
6. I was hospitaliz
They found a charge that needed "clarifica
The English language explanatio
The X-Ray department was backed up when the patient arrived.
The gurney was "parked" in the hallway while the patient was waiting for the X-Ray.
We charge for the "Parking Space" in the hallway.
I don't know why doctors bother. They could have become US Senators instead. With their talent for creative billing they'd have no problems slapping pork into bills.
Excuse me, did I say pork? I meant Bill Augmentati
hospitals are not for heath care but for profit maximizati
when harvard MBA types run schools and colleges,
schools and colleges are not for education but for profit maximizati
when harvard law types run DC,
DC is not in the business of the people's welbeing but in the business of justifying profit maximizati
I was unemployed with no insurance and needed my gall bladder removed.
All of the doctors were kind enough to give me a break on their fees if I paid in advance. Which I did and they did a bang up job an kept their promise!
The admitting office at a north suburban hospital in Denver where the operation was done agreed to charge me only 50% of the cost if I paid in advance so I paid them also.
After the operation I got a bill from the hospital for the rest of the cost in the mail.
I called the hospital and asked why I was being billed and was told that they (the billing department
I said that I wasn't going to pay the bill because I had a written agreement that specified the fee. The hospital said fine, they would place a lean on our house and ruin my credit but they would get the money!
The short story is I paid the rest of the fee plus a late fee for not paying the entire bill on admission.
Simply put hospitals and their management will never get any sympathy from me!
"just go to the emergency room" for free, "uncompens
Without healthcare reform, my options are a policy with premiums and deductible
And how are the illegals being held to this commitment
The cost of one generic non prescripti
disgusting
Individual
I was in Germany in 2000. If you paid for an ultrasound it was $35 usd. Here it was $350.
lets clean this mess up........
I recall the bill for some surgery I had: $18,000 reduced to $11,000 because the hospital and surgeon were preferred providers under my medical plan. That got my attention because I knew they wouldn't negotiate a preferred provider price that didn't allow them to make a profit. So that indicated that if you didn't have insurance, MORE THAN $9,000 of the steep price you paid would have been PURE PROFIT. How many industries have a bottom line like that! Even at the inflated salaries of doctors, I doubt their cost was more than $5,000.
My outpatient doc, who assisted in the surgery, stopped by my room to chat for 5 minutes on the evening of the surgery. The visit was so casual I thought it was a social visit. Wrong. She billed my insurance over $500 for that 5 minutes. I bet she really enjoys dropping by the hospital for a half hour in the evenings to pick up a few thousand in fees!
Providers are gouging us because they control the market, and we are desperate to have the surgeries and other care we need.
on making up bullsh*t TERMINOLOG
It sounds like PENTAGON bills for that $4500 "hammer".
I have insurance, and with my coverage, out-of-poc