LA Times: Even if you have health insurance, you may want to pay cash [View all]

[proverbialwisdom]

http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-healthcare-pricing-20160610-snap-story.html

Even if you have health insurance, you may want to pay cash

June 10, 2016
by David Lazarus

Five blood tests were performed in March at Torrance Memorial Medical Center. The hospital charged the patient’s insurer, Blue Shield of California, $408. The patient was responsible for paying $269.42.

If that were all there was to this -- which it’s not -- you’d be justified in shaking your head and wondering how it could cost more than $80 apiece for blood tests. These weren’t exotic procedures. The tests were for fairly common things such as levels of vitamins D and B12 in the blood.

It‘s what happened next, though, that this makes this story particularly interesting.

The patient, who for privacy reasons requested that I use only her first name, Caroline, was curious about why she needed to pay almost $300 for a handful of routine tests. So she called the hospital.

“I was completely surprised,” Caroline told me. “The woman I spoke with in billing said that if I’d paid cash, the prices would have been much lower.”

How much lower? Try this on for size: Tests that were billed to Blue Shield at a rate of about $80 each carried a cash price of closer to $15 apiece.

<>