Every medical visit ever

[jjaynes]

Doc office: pay us $184.95 for your visit in June

Comments

[evil_macaroni]

Grrrr!!!

If medical billers were cancer researchers...

[kaetaur13]

If medical billets were cancer researchers either we would all be cancer free or everyone would be wearing wigs.

Sadly people who post payment and deposit checks are not the brightest bunch. Anyone who actually is intelligent either chooses to stay in that position because career is not a driving factor/they have other plan or gets promoted and moves on.

Somehow it rarely get done correctly.

[safiya_shirazi]

This is actually a common scam in the medical field. Doctors' offices have agreements with insurance companies as to how much they are allowed to charge customers for a given procedure or visit. The customers rarely know how much that amount IS. They know the co-pay. The doctor's office has an amount they think is actually a fair amount. The insurer then bills them for the difference between the agreed-upon amount and the amount they think is fair. This is highly illegal and they are betting that you don't know the difference. This has happened with my doctor's office often enough that it got VERY ugly. Fortunately for me, my husband wrote a large part of their contract with their insurer, got on the phone with the president of the insurance company and a lawyer, and the problem was solved. (He's enough of a jerk to make that go, as you know, but it did take a lot of shouting

[jjaynes]

As I understand it, the issue is that our insurance pays $x, then the remainder is paid by our HSA or FSA or something. The insurer or HR dept or whatever is managing the HSA, so they sent a check from it and paid the amount at issue. But those checks never get entered correctly by doctors' offices or hospitals, so then I have to yell at everyone.

But I definitely never pay a medical bill without being crystal clear about why it's my responsibility.