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Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

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Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#461

Post by dboreham »

ruralfam wrote: post #183

I had a 20 minute appointment with a doctor at Kaiser in WA. I thought I had set up a free, yearly wellness meet. However due to Epic's really epically bad UI (they provide Kaiser's online presence), I had setup a standard meeting. My bill was nearly $1,700 discounted to $200 which I was fully responsible for as I/We (family) had not yet reached our deductable limit. Funny things: 1) Doctor wanted me to approve the u…

This is a common bill stuffing scam.

After having this same thing happen a few times I now ask at the beginning of the appointment to confirm that it's a wellness visit. Then I ask the provider to tell me if I inadvertently ask a question that will turn it into not a wellness visit. Then I ask at the end to confirm it will be billed with the wellness visit billing code.

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#462

Post by throwforfeds »

egorfine wrote: post #253
chrisgeleven wrote: post #245

I fought insurance over this past summer after they declined covering a life saving surgery for my 6-year-old child at the last minute. We were in despair that my child's life was at risk each day we waited because of insurance incompetence. ChatGPT literally guided me through the whole external appeal process, who to contact outside of normal channels to ask for help / apply pressure, researched questions I had, hel…

[flagged]

> Though why do you Americans put up with all this? I have heard the US is a democracy. So then insurance-based healthcare is what American people truly want?

It's because our politicians are largely owned by our corporations and spend a ridiculous amount of money protecting their interests [1]. We almost had a public option with the original "Obamacare", but it was forced out of the bill [2].

Also, just turn on Fox News for an evening and realize it's been the number one news channel in the US for 20-something years. They've been a right wing corporate propaganda machine for a long time, all while brilliantly portraying themselves as the "underdog" fighting the mainstream media. Americans aren't very educated and take pride in their ignorance, unfortunately. [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_insurance_option

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#463

Post by seanmcdirmid »

throwforfeds wrote: post #462
egorfine wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Though why do you Americans put up with all this? I have heard the US is a democracy. So then insurance-based healthcare is what American people truly want? It's because our politicians are largely owned by our corporations and spend a ridiculous amount of money protecting their interests [1]. We almost had a public option with the original "Obamacare", but it was forced out of the bill [2]. Also, just turn on Fox…

FoxNews has only been the number one TV news channel for the last 20 something years because almost everyone under 40 doesn't watch TV anymore. Yes, there are a lot of conservatives in the US, but the demographics is really skewed if you just look at people who watch TV and have cable.

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#464

Post by spelk »

lateforwork wrote: post #347
spelk wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some people think single payer system is the solution but then when they talk to Canadians they realize that's not the solution either. I'm sorry but I don't understand this discourse. While we have gripes with the state of some hospitals that fall short of first world standards (e.g. Gatineau Hospital) and wait times for specialists for non-urgent care (it can take 2-3 months to see a dermatologist after referral f…

The wait time you alluded to is indeed the issue. The issue is not limited to dermatologists.

Then it'll come down to an individualist vs a collectivist take.

Triage priorities in referrals are an acceptable trade-off for broadly improved access to health care. The reality is that my eczema doesn't need to be seen before someone else's melanoma.

While I appreciate being able to see a specialist earlier in the US with my health insurance, I know that many ordinary American citizens aren't able to at all and that my insurance displaces incentives to serve underserved communities. I'm not yet an American citizen so I will not preach what the US should or should not do, but I do think it is unfortunate that is the case and I hope that improves.

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#466

Post by [deleted] »

mjr00 wrote: post #42
ibash wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is the prices are all made up anyway. The hospital hallucinates prices, so they don’t blink an eye when an llm does the same.

Yeah, US hospital billing is based on the idea that the patient has insurance and won't really care about what their insurer gets charged. (The wider implications of this are left to the reader.) For the uninsured this sort of thing is actually really common. Had an online friend who had to get emergency treatment and they sent him a bill for $20k. His response was, "lol I'm uninsured and don't give a fuck about my c…

[deleted]

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#467

Post by nonfamous »

epistasis wrote: post #411
georgeecollins wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reason is that people know it is a problem but ideologically they really disagree about what to do about it. The impasse creates an opportunity for profit driven actors to fight reforms. Also, democracies do dumb things sometimes. See Brexit. But also, sometimes people from other countries-- I am thinking parts of Europe-- underestimate how well paid people in the US often are. They compare the averages,…

Oddly enough the big rhetorical push against a universal system from prior decades was about "death panels" deciding what care somebody would get. And guess what's happened with insurance? Death panels! The propaganda spin on the health care system in the US has been on overdrive ever since Hillary Clinton wanted to implement some reforms in the 1990s, leading to absolutely massive resistance to any change whatsoever…

>>> And for most people, the healthcare system works fairly great. There are exceptions, like the denial described in this thread, and they usually get lots of attention because holy hell is that a messed up situation. But the everyday care that most people get is better than adequate.

As an individual who has lived in multiple countries in three continents, I dispute that “the care most people get is better than adequate”. Perhaps better than the world average, but certainly not better than in most first-world countries. And that’s not even counting the impact of delayed decisions and denied care, and the stress of dealing with the system overall.

And if you’re looking for more than anecdotes, there are plenty of studies that show that Americans have lower expected lifetimes than citizens of peer countries, despite much higher per-capita health care costs.

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#468

Post by fluoridation »

Zambyte wrote: post #194
fluoridation wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A code in this sense is something different. It's a shorthand for a longer description of an object. It'd be like a hotel copyrighting the relationship between a room number and its physical location within the building, or copyrighting resistor colors.

I understand. The different meanings of "code" in this conversation is why I said "software" in my comment instead of code. Copyrighting software is as absurd the other things you listed.

>Copyrighting software is as absurd the other things you listed.

I don't really agree, and for context I think copyright in general is nonsense.

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#469

Post by Aurornis »

nonfamous wrote: post #459
Aurornis wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> University is expensive as fck. One thing that's hard to understand from the outside is that almost nobody actually pays those mind-blowing $60K/year tuition prices. US universities charge on a sliding scale based on the applicants' families' ability to pay. For an extreme example: Harvard's tuition is nominally $60K per year, but for families earning $200K or less it's $0. Many prestigious universities follow simi…

One thing that's hard to understand from the outside is that almost nobody actually pays those mind-blowing $200K hospital bills. US hospitals charge on a sliding scale based on the applicants' families' ability to pay. (I don’t mean to belittle your comment about universities which is factual and helpful. I’m just pointing out that US education system is just as fucked up as the US healthcare system the OP is talkin…

Also very true, and a good point.

Even people in the US don't understand why those $200K hospital bills aren't real.

Insurance providers (including government programs) have a fixed limit for what they pay for procedures. They pay min(billed_amount, allowed_amount) so providers don't want to risk leaving money on the table by having billed_amount So every time you see posts on the internet where people talk about their "$200K hospital bill" they're always talking about that arbitrarily high value. If you have to pay cash for some reason, they will reduce the value to the cash pay amount which is in line with the insurance paid numbers.

Nobody ever pays those high hospital bill amounts.

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