Last time my son got a flu test it was $180. This time he was sick and school needed a note so I went to the Dr. They asked if I wanted a flu and covid test. I said, "How much will it cost?" Nurse said "I have no way of knowing that."
I said, "No. Unless you tell me how much it will cost." She walked out in a huff to go get the Dr.
How are we supposed to "let the market sort out the cost" when we can't see the cost before the bill?
I thought Trump signed a bill explicitly stating medical facilities needed to be transparent about costs? It surprised me as being one of the few human things he did so I made note of it.
Got charged $100 for "dental hygiene training" during annual dentist visit after dentist walked in and asked "Do you floss?" - "Yes." - "Good. Floss every day." and walked out. I only know of this charge because insurance refused to pay and they sent the bill to me. I know it's definitely about these two utterances because this was the only interaction I had with this doctor at all. Everything else was performed by dental students.
I now refuse to answer any questions that do not directly pertain to the immediate procedure.
The worst thing is this shows the awful racket between healthcare providers and insurance companies. “Provider billed” means “insurance paid.”
“Yeah we had to hit some arbitrary numbers to break through your insurance’s limit that both orgs will write off before we actually charged you with the real 2000 dollar bill”
If you want to see how arbitrary the charges are in the American medical system, just call them up once you get a bill. Not to complain, not to dispute, just say "can I get an itemized bill where you tell me exactly what you did and what each thing you did cost me?". That, on its own, will cut your bill in half. For profit medicine has made it so no one has any idea what anything costs, so negotiations on price begin after you've accepted the service and they've completed it. Providers do secret deals with insurance companies so that what something costs depends on who's paying for it, to an extent where sometimes it's cheaper to just pay out of pocket because for some reason that will never make sense your insurance company agreed to (make you) pay extra for that procedure.
I just got hardware put in my ankle. From what I've seen of the costs so far, I'm guessing the whole ordeal, from the moment paramedics arrived at my house to when I am fully healed and finished with physical therapy, will cost about $100k. The doctor cutting my ankle open was billed for $16k. That was just the surgery. No post-op meds or anything were included in that. I had an ambulance ride, an ER visit, a 2 day stay in the hospital, and an outpatient pre-op visit before the surgery even happened.
I'm not surprised at that bill, tbh. Healthcare is a fucking joke in the US. Did you have heart surgery? Some kind of organ transplant? Or was it something hella basic like an appendectomy?
WTF? I'm in Europe and I broke my finger recently, so I had to get surgery. I literally paid 26€ + 2€ for pain meds and that includes an ambulance, multiple doctors visits, surgery and physical therapy.
I cannot imagine living with the fear of having random medical problems ruin you financially.
See, the thing is, you can just ignore medical debt for the most part. I was told by the hospital billing people, while panicking over finances, that I can pay like $1/month and say that's all I can afford and the companies just have to deal with it. You can also just ignore it outright for 7 years and then it's gone forever. It can fuck with your credit if you do that, but it is an option.
The cost of shit is still bad though. It's so dumb
I had an accident happen on a dive trip where my dive buddy had a heart attack about 70ft down. Another diver and I see him struggling, and do an emergency surface to haul him up. We get him on the boat, Coast Guard meets up with us to rush him back to shore, and when we get back, they had an ambulance there for me as they were worried I'd get the bends from having to surface from that deep that fast.
I feel totally fine the whole time, get to the hospital and they ask me if I'm in any pain/check for symptoms. I tell them no. They have me wait on a stretcher for about half an hour, until a hyperbaric specialist can see me. He walks over (again, I'm just sitting on a stretcher in the middle of a hall this whole time), and asked if I'm feeling okay. No issues other than the worst need to pee I've ever had from the saline bag in me, and he says I'm good to go. Weeks later, I get a hospital bill for $7k, $5k of which was being seen by a specialist. Which, my college insurance didn't cover because I wasn't referred to by my PCP.
It took an insane amount of back and forth to convince them to cover it, but quickly turned around when I showed them the news broadcast from that day about the accident, and how bad it would look for them to try and throw a $7k medical bill onto a college student who was literally trying to save a dude's life.
Our medical insurance system is just a ton of fun.
I see about 4 different specialist and 3/4 if them attempted to bill Medicare for having me fill out six questions and them adding it up until I put a stop to it. They all knew I have seen the same psychiatrist for 12 years. They would never bring up the inventory.