There are those who will believe only what they see,
and those who will see only what they believe.
The potential for reward is far greater if we are neither.
-- Silk --
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and those who will see only what they believe.
The potential for reward is far greater if we are neither.
-- Silk --
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I got the bill from the hospital stay today. I cannot BELIEVE it! I went in through the emergency room Saturday noonish, and left Tuesday early afternoon.
$17,004.00
That's SEVENTEEN THOUSAND!
I don't know for sure how much of that will be covered by insurance. Almost all of it, I think, but I shudder to think of what it would mean if I had no insurance.
When Jay was battling the brain tumor, 1998-2001, he had an MRI with contrast about every other month or so. The MRIs were about $800 then. They said then that a CAT scan (or CT - the terminology seems to be changing) would have been cheaper, but wouldn't show what they wanted to see.
My CAT scan was $1891. Holy crap! That's at least three times what it was ten years ago!
They cultured my urine twice. Total for two cultures - $1134.00! That's totally ridiculous.
I am fully aware that different patients are charged different amounts for the same services, depending on what insurance they have, and what deals the insurance companies have struck with the hospitals and doctors. That's what "in network" means. It means your insurance company has a deal with that provider.
When I was working for The Company in St. Louis, one of my customers was the billing department of a large hospital, and I read computer core dumps when they had a problem. I could see what the hospital expected to receive from all sources. I was incensed to see that some people were charged as little as 20% of what others were charged for the exact same procedures.
Guess who was billed the highest?
People without insurance.
They'd have to pay as much as five times what an insurance company would pay. That looks to me like the uninsured were SUBSIDIZING insurance companies. The hospital had to make up the difference somewhere, right?
And guess who paid the second highest?
Medicare. Apparently the federal government doesn't set limits on what they'll pay like the insurance companies do.
Gah!
I wonder if my bill is so ridiculous ($567 for one urine culture? My doctor's office sent it out to a lab, and charged $50 for the same thing) because Medicare is now my primary payer, and The Company is now secondary, and they know they can get away with it with Medicare?
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3 comments:
Out of curiosity, I went and looked up my latest surgery (sinus) and it was $15,866.95. I don't remember what my kidney surgeries ran a couple of years ago, and there's all of the follow-up scans and lab, etc too, but considering I had to two of them, a month apart, by two different doctors, at two different hospitals, it was up there too. We can't afford to get sick or to try and stay healthy with vitamins and natural treatments either. It's all very frustrating and yes, I wonder how people make it when they don't have insurance.
Once I was set to check into Barnes, and they were nice enough to tell me the insurance company didn't want to sign the contract with Barnes because Barnes wanted to claim MS patients were actively sick, while the insurance company claimed MS patients were essentially like people in a nursing home getting an IV 3 times a day.They said not to worry about it, but I had to know just in case. (I ended up not going in anyway.)
When D was 10, he jumped off the slide at a Boy Scout camp and lacerated his spleen. The cost for 4 days in the ICU, ambulance from the camp to Columbia General Hospital and then up to Albany Medical Center was well over $25,000 - the limit on the scout camp "supplemental" insurance. We didn't have health insurance at the time. There was about $3000 not paid, which took me over a year of harrassing the scout camp representative to get it paid by another insurance company. As if I should have been responsible for the medical expenses incurred by my son for an injury he received on someone else's private property.
$25000 for 4 days. SHEESH!
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