Posted on 01/06/2014 10:28:50 PM PST by Daffynition
It says that 44k was covered by Aetna insurance. In reality, Aetna probably paid far less than that and he could probably settle the 11k balance for much less as well.
That is a simple procedure in most cases.
My son had an appendectomy the right after college. He had no insurance. The county picked up the bill. I think it was $4500 or something like that. He was at that time indigent.
He had to sign papers that he would repay the county...
A year later he had a software developer job,and was making good money.
Checkbook in hand, he tried to settle up and found that there was no protocol for accepting his check. Apparently no one had ever done that before.
(they finally did accept his money however)
How can you find out what Aetna actually paid? A FOI?
His insurer might tell him.
The Freedom of Information Act deals with government, not private companies.
That's not the point.
The point is, there should have been a hi-res McDonald's menu board in the admitting office showing the hospital's internet price list of what each procedure costs. Gonzales should have been able to put "appendectomy" into Google Shopping and get a price list. It should have been like shopping for a smart phone.
when a doctors office or hospital gets an insurance card their eyes light up like they just won the lottery , even if you just came in for a prescription for antibiotics it will cost the insurance company about $1500 for the 15 minutes of service they provided
It depends on how acute his appendicitis was. Did he have time to shop around? Did he know that his doctors would want a $7,000 CT scan?
Actually, in California the law says that once the provider has accepted payment from the insurer, the provider can no longer pursue payment of the remaining balance from the patient.
Should have flown to Thailand, India and had it done for $7500 including hotel & flight.
I know...I was taken by ambulance to hospital after suffering a heat stroke and first thing they wanted me to show the insurance card.
Now that's funny right there, I don't care who you are. And it's funny because so far from reality as to be laughable! My happens to be a CPC ( certified professional coder) and does medical billing for both physicians and what Doctors receive from insurance companies for services is so far your number as to be silly, and you seem to not consider that the Doctor has to pay ridiculous malpractice insurance rates, office and equipment fees, payroll for their employees, etc.
Why is it that Obama, Pelosi, and Reid chose to push the health care in exactly the wrong direction?
Government toilet seats famously cost $600. How can any market run by the government provide us with accurate prices?
I blame the hospital more than the doctor. I love how many hospitals now present you with a gift basket full of little things you might need like Kleenex and Tylenol and gauzes and soap but what they don’t tell you is that cheap little basket with under $5 bucks of true value they will charge something outrageous like $500 to your insurer. The Tylenol alone will be priced at more than $100 for two tablets.
I understand the hospitals get screwed in their own ways but there is just no excuse for that type of built-in fraud.
My wife needed surgery for carpel tunnel syndrome. I don’t remember the total cost, but I do remember the billing “procedure.” When we showed up at the hospital, we pre-paid an “estimated copay” as they claimed they didn’t know exactly how much the insurance company would pay and how much we would pay.
The surgery itself went very well — including the time spend for the anesthetic to wear off, she spent about 5 hours there, just long enough for lunch. Within 30 days, we received the hospital bill showing a list of charges, how much the insurance covered and how much we owed (much less than our prepayment).
A few weeks later [so almost two months after the surgery], the hospital called my wife to confirm that the cost “was less than we estimated” and mailed us a check for the difference.
A month later [now three months after the surgery], we received another bill from the hospital showing charges for “anesthetic” with how much the insurance covered, and how much we owed (since we no longer had a prepaid balance). I wrote them a check.
A month later [now four months after the surgery], we received another bill from the hosptial for “nursing services” apparently for the 5-hour use of their facilities and eating their lunch. This bill also showed how much the insurance covered, how much we owed, and I wrote them another check.
At this point my wife asked me how many more bills we were going to get from the hospital, whether our total amount was now larger than, smaller than, or equal to their original estimate, and why they couldn’t send us just one bill listing everything. I had no answers.
The excuse for that fraud lies in the nature of for-profit healthcare. Anyone who thinks that simply lettting the providers and insurance companies ‘self regulate’ hasn’t seen a real medical bill. My wife’s breast cancer cost us 18,000 and that was with ‘great’ insurance and negotiations between us and the hospital to our share of the bill.
The toughest part to swallow was being billed for ICU due to the butcher the insurance company would only approve to do her reconstruction following the mastectomy.
And the wait of 3 months following finding three tumors in her mammogram, because the insurance company needed to decdeif mastectomy was necessary and cost effective was a nice added touch.
But with government care, it's essential. And you're going to pay for it, one way or another!
Of course that was back when I had good insurance.
You know the "junk policy" that didn't have 10K deductibles, which I am SO grateful to Obama for
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.