Another medical billing gem… Hospital bills me $11,130.25 USD for x-ray of multiple regions of spinal canal with review by radiologist. Insurance goes yep reasonable that’s an approved amount, only pays $728.84
That’s not the percentage they’re supposed to pay of the approved amount.
Couple of years ago I slashed the side of my hand while cleaning a glass soup jar that broke. Hospital put 3 stitches and charged me $1200, but they didn't count my insurance info even though I clearly provided to them, they marked me as uninsured. I fixed the mistake w/ them, but now they said the bill is $3.2K, $2K of it is paid by my insurance, I still have to pay for $1.2K. This's like a legal price fixing scheme.
Yikes! That’s when you ask for an itemized bill and start appealing some of their decisions.
I sometimes debate if money were no option would I just pay every bill to not bother wasting my time on medical billing, or out of principle still make sure I was being billed and my insurance was paying out correctly. Probably option C hire a business manager to deal with the hassle for me.
I think It was itemized but they have different rates they charge individuals vs. they charge insurance, IDK it was a busy period and I didn't think about appealing prices of individual items, I didn't even know I could negotiate like that. I'm not American born, that was the first time I dealt w/ American healthcare. I'd likely do that now in a similar scenario.
Further introducing business managers on your side unlikely is the optimal answer overall. I recently heard in a podcast, for every $1 you spend on healthcare, only 55 cents of is actually used for caring your health or something.
