Posted on 04/28/2017 8:35:52 PM PDT by Rockitz
An acquaintance of mine had an eye problem....he went to the top eye doctor in the US-——the DR had treated Bob Hope.
The acquaintance got a bill for two eye surgeries...... only one was actually treated.
Luckily I have no fear of losing this doctor...and I’m going to pursue this
Do we have a ping list for “unnecessary testing?”
Leni
I think it was a money laundering operation for the democrat party members. He was the fall guy and did not know it.
I hope he rats out all the others involved.
Yeah me too if that was the case.
But in sanity checking their books, Medicare could at least check for plausibility of the volume of claims.
Did the problem get fixed? (The double billing)
My acquaintance pointed it out to the DR’s office.....who knows what they sent Medicare.
For a spinal injection [interthecal] imaging is required to place the needle at exactly the right point; mistakes not allowed. However, the greatest charge may well have been for legal protection.
A big ol red light should have been flashing with a siren going off.
This goes way back to 1980. My wife was in intensive care for 14 days with double pneumonia. We received the hospital bill which was 100 pages computer printout. There were so many items for each day of hospital stay, I could not believe it. Most items had no description in English, rather just a code number for each item. There is not enough time in a 24 hour period to administer so many services each day. 5 different doctors padded the bill with a 2 minute visit to her room each day.
I called the hospital to explain the hundreds of code numbered items. They said I should ask our doctor for code explanations. Yeah right, our doctor was going to go through 100 pages full of line items with no description, just a code number.
Then I called the insurance company to explain why it was impossible to deliver 10 page long services in a single day, and I was present in the hospital 16 hours each day in the room and did not see 1/10th of what is in the bill. The insurance company said do not worry about it, they will pay the entire bill of $31,000, my share would be only $250.
I reached a conclusion that insurance company actually wants the hospital bill very high so that no one will dare to be without health insurance, and they can charge bigger premiums because the bills are so high.
You raise a very important point about why healthcare costs have outpaced inflation by huge margins. When I called the health insurance company to complain about being billed for fake services rendered in a hospital stay, their response was do not worry, they will pay all of that bill.
Which tells me, the insurance writers want to keep prices of hospitalization sky high, so that no one will dare be without health insurance. Higher bills justify higher premiums.
This is a common practice. You were correct in your analysis.
Leni
I think the point that I and others are making on this thread is a separate one. My own (conservative) doctor told me there's routinely two prices, one for those with good insurance, and others with poor or no insurance....and the prices are not even close to each other. This is one of the issues in the ongoing national health care debate.
Leni
Leni, it was a mess prior to Obamacare. But Obamacare was intentionally an unfathomable mess so that you and everyone will ask for single payer which sounds much simpler.
In other words, I hear your frustration. Sadly, I’ve known this would all occur since 1970’s. It’s been heartbreaking to watch, both as a patient and as one whose family works in medicine.
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