Agreed 100%. The way the providers and insurance companies conspire to keep costs high for patients and low for themselves ought to be criminal.
I recently got some routine blood work. It’s fully covered by my insurance, but the provider made a clerical error and didn’t enter my insurance info. As a result, I got a bill in the mail for the full price of the bloodwork. Around $900.
I called them and they fixed the error, billing my insurance instead. Just to make sure it went through, I checked my claims on the insurer’s website. Due to a “plan discount,” they only billed the insurance company about $100.
Now, I was able to keep track of all this and avoid paying that massive bill. But think about the people who aren’t in a position to find these errors or get them corrected. The very ill, the elderly, those who don’t have caregivers or family looking out for them. How many of those people simply go broke or bankrupt because of these up charges and errors that go unchecked? Disgusting.
It really is disgusting. And the fact that agents will sometimes straight up lie to you or tell half truths or leave out important details about your coverage simply to get you to sign up through them so they can make their commission. It happened to me, I was paying for what I thought was pretty comprehensive coverage, and I ended up needing some pretty expensive medical tests done. Turns out, even after I met my deductible I still wouldn’t be fully covered. So it’s like, I have to pay hundreds every month for insurance, pay at least thousands out of pocket for medical expenses on top of my insurance and then not even be fully covered?
It’s also sad how there’s people who end up getting cancer or some other really serious illness and their insurance won’t cover the cost of treatment and so basically they have to either sell all their assets they worked their entire life for or transfer the titles for their house and car over to family members so they can file bankruptcy for the government to finally step in and help out.
I believe affordable healthcare is a basic human right, and it’s sick how financially driven the healthcare system in America is. To the point where it’s now becoming more common for people to just travel out of the country to get medical services, because it’s way cheaper than getting tests, surgeries and/or treatments in America.
And, looking at your bill after receiving whatever kind of medical services is a must, because they will try screwing you over however they can. Also, when I was getting TMS treatments, the technician who did the treatments was also a nurse at a nearby hospital and we got kind of close since I was in there every day of the week for a couple weeks. She was telling me how when the cost of epipens went through the roof, the hospital was putting those costs on literally everyone who came through the hospital. From how she explained it, every floor/wing needs a certain amount of crash carts, which includes epipens, if they aren’t used within a certain amount of time they have to just get new ones and so even if you didn’t have an epipen used on you, you were still paying for it.
Speaking of the TMS and insurance stuff, it’s ridiculous how insurance is with approving it. TMS is a non-invasive procedure with almost no side effects that’s been proven to be extremely effective for treatment resistant depression/anxiety. But, the machine used is supposedly very expensive to run (the coils in it apparently break down very fast and need to be replaced often), so without insurance you’re looking at roughly $10k for a full course of treatments. Insurance will only cover it after you’ve taken at least two different antidepressants with no success and done at least a year of talk therapy. Which to me is just crazy that you need to jump through hoops and take potentially dangerous medications to get insurance to approve an effective, safe treatment.
