My wife had to have hernia surgery, after spending the night in a hospital room in pain, prior to "emergency" surgery. We just received the bill. The grand total billed to our insurance company was almost $77,000! Of course, we can't tell which of the items are totally bogus. Even if I knew some were bogus, the insurance company would likely not care, since years ago, after another hospital visit, I found a bunch of bogus charges, and when I called the insurance company, they didn't care. It's all one big scam! I don't know how much we are going to owe because the summary sent by the insurance company indicated they are still reviewing the submitted charges from the hospital.
Comments (20)
sorted by:
My brother spent about a week in a Medical College hospital and had heart surgery. About 5 days of it before the surgery figuring out wat to do. Removed the pericardium fom his heart. He's on Medicare and a Civil Service retiree. He payed almost nothing. Total bill was almost $4.5 million.
Wow! I guess the 70K a day is about the going rate!
If I may, let me explain the problem at it's core. It is the design.
The healthcare industry can only thrive if we are sick. It goes bankrupt if we are all well. The incentives are backwards. It should be they are paid when we are all well and go broke if we are all sick. We would pay for the health instead of the sickness. Insane design for a system.
To make things worse... this backwards set up is then paid for by insurance companies that can only thrive if they don't pay. It is the only way for them. If the system was only paid when we are healthy... the insurance model change too. They are then responsible for a extremely small population of sick people. A mere $5 dollars a month from 350 million people should do the trick.
There are some serious paradigm shifts ahead for us.
Do not pay anything until your insurance company sends you the Explanation Of Benefits (EOB). If you overpay, it'll be months of headaches on your part to get the hospital to refund you.
There’s always a cash price. It’s much lower. Of course it’s money laundering in the end isn’t it?
Usually the insured pays a percentage of the charges. Mine is 20% . A 500 dollar MRI is billed at 5000dollars so my charge will be 1000 dollars to cover the actual cost and cost of another mri from an illegal alien or other. Insurance then pays a percentage of their negotiated cost which is next to zero.
Doctor explained this to me.
Did she need a blood transfusion?
I need this surgery myself soon.
No blood transfusion. They did do a contrast cat scan and billed that at about $10,000! I guess blood would have been $1000/pint.
I don't want any vaxed blood is all.
You can have people you know donate for you. I just did for my dad two weeks ago and it goes only to him if he needs it. Company is called Versiti. Not sure your area but there are ways to get. What you need.
Thanks ill look into it.
If your surgery is planned far enough in advance you can do an autologous donation (give blood yourself to be stored for your own use if you need it).
Great to know thanks. I'm not scheduled yet,I will talk to the doctor.
Not that many years ago your health insurance policies would reward you with up to 50% of any cost savings you find by auditing your medical bills. Long gone now.
How do insurance companies stay in business with expenditures like this multiplied many times per day around the country? There is no way that the insurance companies can maintain solvency when that type of payment leaves their coffers each and every day. This scam is all about taxing the little guy in so many various ways that even if he works 80 hours a week he will still stay poor, yet the insurance companies and the tax authorities all make big bucks. It's not about the insurance company making money, it's about keeping average citizens poor.
Private insurance is used as a “float” to cover the below cost reimbursements of Medicaid and Medicare.
The whole system is an aberration of price.
Per Healthcare Bluebook, "...the average cost of a CT scan is around $500 - $1000.
https://www.mdsave.com
Other searches show a wider range of costs and variables.
Tell them that you want to audit the bill. It will get their attention. My Mom used to work In utilization review.
Yep! https://www.facebook.com/reel/270651398621161
https://www.facebook.com/reel/270651398621161