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Transparency in pricing for surgery
Dr Towfigh
The following thing I am posting has some bias, a LOT of frustration and anger caused by people in the medical field. Here you go.When a patient comes to your office, hospital or anywhere (s)he expects a uniform rate of charge. But what happens in these situations is that t if the patient has insurance, he pays co-pay, dr bills insurance exhorbitant amount ($450 to $700 for office visit) and he may get paid 75% of the billed amount. If the patient has no insurance then charge is $200 or so. Why is this difference? The general talk is that, “insurance is paying, why you worry?” I tell you why we worry. When insurance pays a lot, you get a lot and all looks dandy, right? The answer is NO because next year the insurance rates are up and the employee pays more. Q for you in medical community – why cannot you charge the same amount in both cases? The general public thinking is that, the medical community charges differently due to two reasons 1) fear of lawyers 2) greed to get more money. Period. I know for a fact that my dental office charges both my ins companies and even asks me to pay co-pay. When they got more money once due to double billing, I asked them and they refused to return the money to insurance. I plan to report them to these companies sooner or later.
Now coming back to exhorbitant prices – an MRI costs about $3K to $4K and insurance really pays 90% of this amount. Why is an MRI so expensive? I know for a fact that MRI in any other country costs less than $250, even with a contrast. The hospitals bill exhorbitantly for drugs too. For example tylenolr tablet is $20 when given in the after surgery waiting room for a patient. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Same for anesthesia medicines, his price and hospital even bills for disposables – gauze pieces, needles and so on. Many of the patients do not even have an idea that they have to request an itemized bill. Why do they do it? GREED, to answer in short. I was on phone with a famous hospital when my son was born and was requesting, begging them to give a disount and do you want to know their answer? “Even if you die, we do not care, we must be paid.”
When you are healthy, have money and feel good you always talk from high horse and feel invincible. Huh? One day all these health administrators, physicians who are so greedy get cancer and die like roadside dogs too. What they forget is the pain of the patient. Why does this happen? Why is there no single price for everything? We can discuss this till the end of the world, why rules cause problems, state laws, federal laws etc etc. but the bottom line is, there is no rule. Medical community can bill a physical appointment as any other visit and bill differently or bill an injection administration as surgery and get more money from patient. These things have happened to me and both insurance and medical community just wank to milk the common man.
Unformatunately the wealthy have no problems, the poor have no options. It is the middle class like us who get the whip! Great.
Sorry for the bad language but you asked and I gave you a frank answer.