I’ll see your two days and raise you five days plus emergency after hours surgery. Just the hospital and surgery was $256,000. The ER was another $9000. Insurance negotiated it down to $70,000.
Hospital billing
- Thread starter paindonthurt
- Start date
How exactly are you going to know ahead of time what your charges at the ER are going to be? Think about it.
Well we can always go back to 1950’s medicine If that’s what you want. It was a lot simpler back then.
I was in the ER a few months ago. Umbilical hernia had me in intense pain for a few hours before I went. Got there and a shot of morphine and a cat scan. 2k after insurance and they couldn’t find anything wrong with me. Wrenched my back last weekend and almost passed out twice from the pain. Even through the pain I decided to wait and go to urgent care instead of the er. Guy gave me some muscle relaxers and mobic and told me to put ice on it. Haven’t got the bill yet but I’d be willing to bet it isn’t 2k
Amazing how many are defending this. We have such a complicated, bizarre system that likely no modern society would adopt it. Can't wait to get on Medicare so I don't have to deal with all this. Let the youngsters pay for all those bills I'll rack up.
Similar happened to me recently. My 4 year old busted his chin just bad enough to consider it might need a stitch or two. Once we got to the ER, they rubbed a little glue on it and sent us on our way (and the bill for nearly $2k later). Thankfully, insurance covered most of it, but point being that it couldn't have taken more than 30 minutes to an hour altogether and a trivial amount of glue.
You charge high across the board for simplicity and to make sure you’re above contracted prices both for financial and compliance reasons, then your insurance adjusts down to the contracted rate. It screws self pay over so they have to either pay too much or deal with payment plan process. A lot of self pay, of course, never pay. Revenue is recorded separately from the charged amount because the charged amount is way too high
I broke my collarbone 10-ish years ago. Went to the ER who did nothing but x-ray, give me the shoulder brace and prescribe me some high-octane Tylenol. Was about a $3k event, but I was only in the hook for a small part of it due to insurance.
They referred me to a specialist to make bi-weekly visits to check the progress. They literally never did anything but ask me how I was, outside of the main guy “touching” the injury twice. Every touch that SOB made ran the bills up a good $1k, and they had a medical coder there watching everything like a hawk.
Our health system is beyond 17’d.
They referred me to a specialist to make bi-weekly visits to check the progress. They literally never did anything but ask me how I was, outside of the main guy “touching” the injury twice. Every touch that SOB made ran the bills up a good $1k, and they had a medical coder there watching everything like a hawk.
Our health system is beyond 17’d.
We don’t. We are way down the list. And the billing system is part of the system.
In France about 20 years ago with a bunch of high schoolers. Some get drunk and about 2 AM start doing stupid things. Ones ends up with what I’d call a severe laceration. We go to French hospital. About an hour and a half later we are out of there with stitches, meds, and follow ups scheduled. Total bill: $0.
No one is mentioning one of the worst parts of the equation. Cost of medicines. Two years ago, medications represented 48 percent of BCBS MS total claims payments. Exceptionally high in comparison to national average. Politics notwithstanding, the pharmaceutical companies are never brought into the argument but a lot of the problem with cost.
Trial attorneys aren’t helping matters either.
That should cover all parties with a hand in this mess along with those mentioned earlier
Trial attorneys aren’t helping matters either.
That should cover all parties with a hand in this mess along with those mentioned earlier