When I was in the hospital a couple of months ago

[seemslikeadream]

a doctor that saw me three times charged me separately $695.00 from the hospital bill. When my state insurance was retroactively approved, the charges were amazingly reduced to $185.00 and paid in full.

[peacebird]

1. funny how they gouge the uninsured and accept a fraction from Blue Cross....

:grr:

It is past time for health care to be single payer and a right for all people. Get the greedy HMO's and insurance companies out of the loop. I swear it seems like they spend more money trying to deny coverage than paying for it.

[seemslikeadream]

2. I would love to know what the hospital was and what they settled for

believe it or not to this day I have no idea what it was, I never opened the bill. I knew I could never pay any of it.

[DCKit]

3. Does it rise to the level of a conspiracy?

It seems the Dr.s are working in collusion with the insurance companies to terrorize people into buying whatever insurance they can afford.

[Quantess]

4. I finally watched Sicko for the first time last night.

I think I had been avoiding it because I thought it was going to be a lot of depressing, tragic stories. There were a couple of those but there were so many other high lights to the film. What you are saying is exactly the message of Sicko.

[malaise]

6. How else can the bosses buy

yachts and BMWs. You think those Caribbean vacations come cheap? :sarcasm:

[sallyseven]

7. The hospitals have a contract

with the insurers. They will accept the usual and customary charges as payment in full. In order for the hospital to get a raise they have to charge the regular patients a larger fee. Each year they increase the fees so that they can get more from the insurance. Its bull shit.

[Kat45]

12. ANd sometimes the med provider will try to bill you for the difference

between the fee they get from the insurance company and the total fee they want. When this happened to me several years back, I spoke to the insurance company and found out that the provider was not supposed to balance bill me--he was supposed to accept what was agreed upon with the insurance company and that's that. I think providers often do that because most people don't know that they're not responsible for that bill and end up paying it anyway.

[Liberal_in_LA]

9. With dentists, they hide what they are paid by the insurance comp, don't want you to know the truth

[Mike 03]

11. I HATE Blue Cross. That is why I just stopped bothering to even get health

insurance.

They were more worthless than tits on a bull when I actually had medical emergencies.

[Crunchy Frog]

5. Same with my babies' NICU bill. Insurance was charged about twice

what I would have been charged. There needs to be a law against that sort of thing.

[RB TexLa]

8. You want a law preventing HMOs from using their buying power to lower the cost?

The larger amount is what the doctors and hospital feel they deserve, they feel they deserve all of your money. But you want a law to ban insurance companies from negotiating the rates down with them. Unbelievable, just unbelievable.

[Crunchy Frog]

10. A law to keep them from gauging people who don't have insurance coverage.