Evie: Imagine you’re itching for a manicure and a luxurious pedicure, including callus softening, skin scrubbing, foot massage, and foot mask. You arrive at the salon, take a look at the price sheet (which looks oddly reminiscent of a restaurant menu), and tally up your selections in your mind. Once your feet are soaking and the nail technicians are getting busy prepping your fingernails, you already know roughly how much your spa day will cost.
Your nail salon was transparent with you ahead of time, and despite their best efforts to get you to do dip nails or add on a facial, you don’t end up leaving the salon beautified but bankrupt. You’d imagine that’s a standard practice across many industries, right?
In the world of American healthcare, it’s not. Today, many patients only get the bill for their healthcare after they’ve received treatment at the hospital or finished their visit with the doctor. Feels like a scam, doesn’t it? You come in seeking honest help for medical problems, both elective and essential, and you’re left totally in the dark about the cost until the system has trapped you in its web. That’s because it is a scam! Fortunately, the system isn’t yet broken beyond repair.
Recently, a video went viral on TikTok when user @oh_thats_just_trey, Tre’Jon Wilson, exposed his hospital’s billing scam. He alleged that he received a $4,000 bill, but after he asked for a receipt with an itemized list of the charges, the hospital lowered his bill by 76% to just $950.
Such is the plight of many other Americans who have shared their stories online, like TikTok user @amandersruns, whose hospital charged her nearly $4,000 for four doses of acetaminophen (yes, the common painkiller you can buy at CVS) while she was undergoing a Cesarean section to deliver her baby. Let’s just say that her itemized list was eye-opening. MORE
Same as property taxes telling you how much your home is worth…rip off, always go up never go down.
Is American Hospital Billing The Biggest Scam Today?
Do bears shit in the woods?
Yes. The answer is yes.
Transgenderism is largely because the treatment is immensely profitable for hospitals. And they get paid by gov’t and insurers, who don’t care, and we don’t have any say even though it is our dollars.
Same with covid ‘vaccines’ of course. And hospitals got paid for that too.
When 0bamacare forced insurers to pay at least 80% for services, keeping maximum 20% for administrative costs and profits, they were motivated to spend more, to raise their rates ‘because costs are rising, what can we do???’ – because it meant more money in their pocket.
I was in a car accident 9+ years ago, ER visit and a couple of broken bones in my hand. So I had physical therapy for my hand, a couple dozen sessions before I realized it was coming out of my pocket (although I knew I would be reimbursed via settlement with the other driver’s insurance). I was being charged $350-500 for a 30-45 minute session with a hand therapist, through UCLA Health. If I had shopped around and paid directly I’m sure I would have found someone for $50-100 per session. It’s what they do. And, like the insurers, I knew I would be reimbursed (at a multiple, in fact!) so I went ahead with it.
Trump signed an EO toward cost transparency from medical groups, so we actually could shop around. Wonder how that’s going…
I’ve got a very damaged foot and ankle that became bad enough I sought out a specialist to consider fusing it together….
I made an appointment to talk to a foot and ankle specialist. It took 3 weeks to get such an appointment. I certainly didn’t stutter when I told them I had a foot and ankle problem..
3 weeks later I attended the appointment and described my problem to the “specialist”. He responded that he didn’t do feet and ankles, but if I had shoulder, hip or knee problems he could fix me up. He also offered to make me an appointment for a foot and ankle doctor 250 miles away….I declined…
They then billed me and medicare $500 dollars for offering me an appointment….I declined that as well…
After some festive discussions about medicare fraud etc….they decided to not charge me and put me on a list so that I could never be their patient….I belly laughed….
The Insurance industry and the silence of participating medical providers are all evil douchebags….
“Is American Hospital Billing The Biggest Scam Today?“
It’s the Biden ASSministration but this is up there!
The published rates are inflated with pricing negotiations in mind. The losers are those unfortunate enough to be not poor enough but uninsured or with crappy insurance. Most providers will not negotiate prices with individual patients.
Another big problem with hospital billing is services from out of contract providers. Sometimes they let you know ahead of time, like radiology, etc., but individual providers often just ghost in, glance at your chart, then bill you thousands.
That said, some hospitals will let you know up-front what the costs will be and they will give an often substantial discount for pre-payment of out-of-pocket.
A disadvantage to overly aggressive discounting is the old saying, “You get what you pay for.” A physician, and worse, a surgeon, has to be aware of what he/she is going to be payed by each patient. Medicare pays ridiculously low rates.
Had three blood tests at the local office of a nearby hospital.
AFTER insurance, my cost was $900.00
I’m due to take the tests again, the hospital called to remind me, and I told them no thanks.
My total time in the room was 10 minutes
And just because the insurance agrees in writing to cover it, doesn’t mean they will.
Our family had private insurance, and following a rare disease diagnosis we had the hospital social worker verify that our insurance would cover treatment, which was to continue (possibly forever) on an outpatient basis. After a few months of infusions every two weeks at $60,000 a visit (No, that’s not a typo; rare disease, orphan drug.), the insurance claimed a loophole, did a chargeback, the hospital returned the money to the insurance company, and called me demanding the deed to the house.
I said no. Turns out, that’s all you have to do (at least in our state). Well, that, pay your deductible, and hold your head high when you go in for treatment and the billing department wants to speak to you. But, once you start treatment, they can’t stop it just because your insurance stops paying. And the hospital can’t take your house –but they will if they can bully or scare you into giving them the deed. Sick bastards.
Sure some of it is bill padding. Much of it is people who use Medicaid or have no insurance at all and use the ER as their PCP. They have to get the $ somewhere. Too many slackers in this country
It’s crap like this that will give us socialize medicine.
Bill padding and lying. One Cleveland hospital billed me for pain meds for 3 days after i was sent home. Who got those heavy duty pain meds? They gave me a song and dance and I still refused to pay. They also billed me for use of a TV. Said TV was broken and I did not use it.
If you have a job and or insurance you’re going to be paying much more for the same thing than a border jumper.
By the way, border jumpers and cheats uses the ER for their normal doctor.
Between hospital billing and insurance adjusters there has to be a small army of pencil pushers. It sure seems like a incestuous relationship. Throw in govt regulators and it’s the perfect shitstorm.
The one I’ll never forget from the bill on my orbital surgery in 2003:
“mucous recovery system”@ $50.00
Turned out to be insurance biller’s speak for a box of kleenex.
I was in the medical field from mid 70s to mid 90s. Worked as a clinic manager for a doctor’s office, then a hospital business office as a billing manager.
I know medical billing inside and out. At least, I used to. Believe me, it’s totally different now. Only bottom line business. The patient no longer matters.
Step back into my hospital experience with me. We bent over backwards to make sure the patient received an accurate itemized bill. I can tell you that we would take the chart to the ER, Lab, or wherever the question was about a specific itemization. The nurses had to review it with their notes to make sure the patient received what it said. Sometimes we were wrong and corrected it, sometimes the charge was correct.
I once had to tell a patient that his visit to the ER with a heart attack was correct. Had it checked twice; the second time with the head nurse. He still complained about the $2,000 bill (mid 80s). In my most pleasant voice, I asked him if we should have let him die when his heart stopped in order for the bill to be more to his liking. He didn’t say anything for a second, then asked if he could set up payments.
Today? Yup, a scam. I could see it coming when, in my last year at the hospital, they hired a VP from some company that had ZERO to do with the medical field. He ran the business office like IBM or any other for-profit business.
That and politicians ruined our medical industry.
It is interesting to see original bill amount, Medicare allowable amount, and Tricare amount on medical procedures.
Old Doc Adams would work for chickens 🐓.
Bongo,
That reminds me of a time a little old lady came into the office and asked why we charged her $20 for a box of kleenex. I told her we never charge for kleenex and looked up the bill.
Then I asked her if she had come in for a biopsy.
“Why, yes. Does that make a difference?”
Yes. You see here where the $20 charge says “tissue”? That was for sending the biopsied sample to the Lab to test if it was cancer.
Poor thing was mortified. I told her that I was glad she asked so she can now have peace of mind.
That was an interesting job.
“Is American Hospital Billing The Biggest Scam Today?”
No, stolen “elections” are.
But that makes all the medical fraud possible.
Unless the guys I work with take me to a hospital unconscious and with a limb or head severed, I don’t ever plan on entering another. After watching my bride die over 5 months being bounced back and forth between two hospitals and spending time with her….. I am done!
FJB
“Is American Hospital Billing The Biggest Scam Today?”
If not the biggest, then a close second.
American hospitals are attached to Big Pharma at the hips & lips.
Since so few doctors know anything about Covid or how to cure Covid, I just stay the hell away, especially if they mandate masks. It’s fun to ask phone receptionists if the doctor is taking new patients. Even more fun ask if the doctor is a Cividiot.
My former doctor, the one that fired me because I didn’t like his mask policy, is really fond of telehealth appointments. The last one I had with him, he charged Medicare $675. We spoke for less than 5 minutes. Of course he didn’t get what he billed and I don’t recall exactly what he did get paid but my recollection is that it was about half. What a racket.
Years ago, a co-worker of mine was hospitalized for several days with what they thought was a heart attack. He related that overnight there was a stream of doctors that would come in his room and look at his chart. Although he was awake, none of them spoke to him and when he asked a question to one of them, the doctor did not even respond. He just hung the chart back up and walked out of the room.
When he went to check out of the hospital, he was presented with the bill. There were about a dozen doctors (my memory is a bit fuzzy on the number) that billed for “consultations”. My friends wife went to the billing department and raised holy hell and all those charges were removed.
They had fantastic insurance. With a minimal amount they would have had to pay but she said that it was the principle of the matter that was important.
I agreed.
My daughter spent a semester abroad in Madagascar about 10 years ago. At one point she got a GI bug and passed out from dehydration. The program took her to a well known hospital in the capitol city. After a 2 night stay with IV fluids and antibiotics, she was released. Her total bill for all care was about $200. She was able to pay it by getting cash from an ATM at the hospital.
A 2 night stay at a US hospital would probably have cost $10-20K, about 100X the cost of the stay in Madagascar. Maybe we should be adopting their healthcare system.
I complained about this to the Cal A.G. more than 20 yrs ago and his response was that’s just the way it is.