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Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

latimes.com

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Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#211

Post by brycehamrick »

mwambua wrote: post #75
tryitnow wrote: post #47

I went to the ER last year. They ended up making me stay overnight. I was hit with a bill for over $10K, with much of that falling on me. I also used to work in corporate finance and I have a good intuition for how billing works. Before I even got the bill I mentally prepared myself for it by telling myself that it's going to be a long drawn out process. I waited and waited and received an initial bill a few months a…

What do you mean when you say the itemization was incorrect? Do you mean that the prices that they list were incorrect, or that the items didn't make sense given the treatment you received? In either case, what reference do you use to ascertain correctness? I feel like information asymmetry is a problem for a lot of patients. It's hard to tell if you actually need a treatment, or if you're being charged fairly for it…

Upcoding is extremely common and almost never comes with any consequences. It's routine for staff at the hospital to add line items for things that never actually happened. I've personally seen procedure codes for neuropsychological testing in the ER when the staff never completed those exams, as an example. The billing codes require very specific actions to have taken place in order for the insurance companies to reimburse. It's not often done out of malice, the codes added are likely what should have taken place but the hospital staff are overworked and end up cutting corners.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#212

Post by pxeboot »

Has anybody ever hired a high powered attorney to challenge medical billing in the US? This feels like something one or two successful lawsuits could change really quickly.

Hospitals seem to have done an amazing job of charging just enough after insurance for the upper/middle class to be willing to pay to avoid hurting their credit scores, but so much that everybody else just doesn't pay and files for bankruptcy if anybody ever comes after them.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#213

Post by simplecomplex »

brink wrote: post #4

I just got an itemized bill today for a minor fall I took a couple months back.. On top of the nearly $6k in other charges from the hospital, they charged $531 for one dab of superglue or "liquid stitches" on my forehead for something that would have healed by itself. One of my friends died two years ago from pneumonia. He didn't go to the hospital when symptoms first started because he was afraid of the bills that w…

Just a reminder for those reading: you don’t need to pay medical bills, nothing is going to happen except a bad credit report.

Go to the hospital, let them bill you, and then throw the bills in the trash.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#214

Post by journalctl »

djsumdog wrote: post #79
opportune wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a lawyer or financial advisor. But I’ve heard that you can’t be sent to collections if you make a good faith attempt to pay your (medical) bill. Which in practice might mean you just pay $5 while you wait for the itemization

Insurance companies negotiate a lot of this stuff away. The poster needs to call them first, see if they can arrange a $5 payment without addition interest while the itemized bill comes in (honestly, there is legal ground here for not even being willing to honor any of the bill with itemization). Get on the phone, try to keep cool, but realize you're probably going to yell at some poor customer service rep at some po…

The trouble is that in an emergency or urgent situation, you can’t really shop around for service. “I’m having a heart attack, but can we try the hospital in the next town over? Their cardiologist is cheaper.” Bike service is a leisurely afternoon; emergency medical care is not.

It shouldn’t cost that much in the first place. You shouldn’t need to shop around for health care, and you shouldn’t be bankrupted by an emergency. Why people aren’t marching through the streets right now is beyond me.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#215

Post by claudeganon »

danenania wrote: post #191
omegaworks wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't understand why this isn't prosecuted. Simply examine the way the issue was presented by frontrunners in the supposedly liberal party of the United States on the debate stage yesterday. Two candidates call for true universal coverage, a few call for a public option but brand it as universal coverage to confuse viewers, and several (with moderator and broadcast sponsor support) outright mislead by stating that…

I strongly support the Warren/Sanders universal healthcare plan, but in terms of optics, I don't actually see what the point is to making “duplicate coverage” private insurance illegal. It invites FUD and provides a convenient bogeyman while being entirely irrelevant in practical terms. If the government is providing comprehensive free healthcare to all, why would anyone need duplicate private health insurance? There…

Just FYI, Warren is backpedaling heavily on Medicare for All. She released her “healthcare plan” the other day and it its full of obvious outs and hedges away from M4A. Sanders is the only candidate still really fighting this fight.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#216

Post by noelsusman »

fma wrote: post #14
rolph wrote: post #3

i wonder if a hospital would still charge you if you refused thier price gouge materials and used your own purchased at a proper price, as in "thanks for setting the bone, i dont need your sling i have my own and it will do fine, here is my lawyers contact card."

We asked for an itemized price list when my wife gave birth. They claimed she received lactation consultation even though she rejected it, as this was our 2nd baby. Despite having documentation saying so it went back and forth and we just paid it because it was too time consuming. Anyways. In the itemized bill they charge about $40 per ibuprofen. If we knew the price, we should have brought our own and just rejected…

The hospital definitely didn't carefully consider the $40 price to cover the actual cost of delivering the medicine to you. They just multiply their cost by some number and call it a day.

The fact is that hospitals aren't built for itemized bills because very few patients pay the posted prices out of pocket. Medical debt is extremely hard to recover in the US, so why bother expending the resources to figure out a sensible pricing structure for a small minority of your customers who mostly aren't going to pay that price anyway?

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#217

Post by FireBeyond »

dhdudxbeub wrote: post #80

When my wife was 25 weeks pregnant she started feeling ill and we noticed her blood pressure kept going up. We went to the hospital. Turns out she was pretty sick she so they made her stay for 4 days. A few weeks later we had our son’s ashes and a $148,000 bill.

I'm very sorry for your loss.

This is the only country in the world where there are people who will divorce on their hospital death bed, because they are so fearful of the financial impact on their remaining family.

And a non-insignificant part of the population finds this acceptable because they see the alternative as "the government treading on me".

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#218

Post by goostavos »

oppositelock wrote: post #86
brink wrote: post #4

I just got an itemized bill today for a minor fall I took a couple months back.. On top of the nearly $6k in other charges from the hospital, they charged $531 for one dab of superglue or "liquid stitches" on my forehead for something that would have healed by itself. One of my friends died two years ago from pneumonia. He didn't go to the hospital when symptoms first started because he was afraid of the bills that w…

I went to the ER with chest pains seeming like a heart attack. They did an EKG, determined it wasn't a heart attack, then a blood test, which determined it was low potassium, and did a chest x-ray just in case. I received a saline IV and potassium pills as treatment, and went home after a couple of hours. The bill was about $18,000 for this. The insurance negotiated rate was about $1,500, of which I had to pay about…

>then over the next weeks, I received about 20 bills

I'm going through this now! It is completely baffling! I went to the ER, and then I received a steady stream of bills over a period of months. They were so numerous and so devoid of useful context that I began to worry that they were illegitimate. The billing process is absolutely insane.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#219

Post by greggman2 »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #116
alexanderdmitri wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our first born came with a $42k bill. Hospital and doctor said we were covered by our insurance pre-auth, but come bill time apparently pre-auth was null and void b/c it was requisite on a negotiation that fell through. Each side had a different story and their representatives acted absolutely helpless. We were broke at the time we found out about the pregnancy and memories of the first two years of my boy's life are…

Why aren’t US citizens queuing up to emigrate? At this stage, it seems like the US is the “land of the free”, whereby “freedom” is defined as the ability to freely exploit everyone.

For one, probably because these stories are the exception? I know a bunch of people will probably tell me I'm wrong and I might be (haven't used the US health system in a 3 or 4 years since I moved out) but for most people their insurance just covers it (or medicade if they're old).

Otherwise most people don't want to leave their friends and family

Note: not defending the horrible system. Only suggesting that most people using their company provided insurance probably don't run into these issues.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#220

Post by doomjunky »

tryitnow wrote: post #47

I went to the ER last year. They ended up making me stay overnight. I was hit with a bill for over $10K, with much of that falling on me. I also used to work in corporate finance and I have a good intuition for how billing works. Before I even got the bill I mentally prepared myself for it by telling myself that it's going to be a long drawn out process. I waited and waited and received an initial bill a few months a…

Here in europe we don't get to see the bill at all. The hospital sends the bill directly to the insurance company. Think about it. The negotiation of the costs will take place between two companies (B2B). In this case the insurance company becomes the advocate of the people not their opponent.
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