There must have been a female in the hospital, at the same time as you, with the name of Richard?! LOL

I have found that, if you ask to speak to the head of the hospital and threaten to have your insurance company review their billing records, they will knock themselves over to forgive a bill.
Hospitals do not want to be subjected to any audit of their billing - Gee, I wonder why.

I believe the high cost of medical costs is from fraudulent hospital billing.

Not to mention cost shifting!

We've had so much trouble with hospital billing--I mentioned the one experience on the insurance EOB thread--where my husband was charged for a test for gout. But the hospital had never done the test (if they had, he wouldn't have spent a weekend in extreme pain, being treated for something else entirely.)

Then, when I broke my ankle a couple of years back and went to the ER.... Well, we got the bill, DH went in to the billing office to pay it and they OFFERED (he didn't ask) him a discount for paying promptly with cash. Naturally he didn't turn it down. Then, a month or so later, the letters started coming--that we owed a balance, pay up, soon! Each and everytime, we called the billing office and got it straightened out (we thought). This went on for almost a year. Everytime we thought it was finally over, it started up again. Finally, by making a lot of threats to walk in the front door and stay until we saw the head of the hospital, we got to speak to the right person, they claimed they straightened it out, I demanded proof in writing (which they sent) and we've had no more trouble in the past 1.5 years. But what a hassle that was.

Mind you--it wasn't a lot of $$$--I just went to the ER for X-rays, they splinted my ankle, gave me crutches and sent me home. The entire bill wasn't big, 10% of what was left after our insurance paid their part wasn't a lot at all. But darn it, we didn't even ask for that discount--they volunteered it!

Yep, pretty silly. I think it's probably due to computers and fat-fingering, or something similar. Is this still going on? When you posted about it before I thought it had been resolved. Hope it is soon.

Hospitals were padding bills long before computers came into play.

Oh, you think it's intentional, monica? I didn't conclude that. I tend to think that errors happen and this is one. If they were going to intentionally pad it, it seems that they'd have come up with a less obvious erroneous charge.

Yes, less obvious. When I had kidney cancer, the surgeon billed for removing both my kidneys, not just the cancerous right kidney. Oops!

I do not think they are criminals working at low-level billing clerk levels, but it is hard to figure how mistakes like these get made. Perhaps it is because we pay them so poorly, thus not getting the best employees, in order to preserve corporate profits and pay the top people millions per year. I am sure similar mistakes happen in all businesses, but we are
very aware of health industry mistakes, given the politics of it all.

The doctor has never seen anyone with an 02 sat below 56%? Wow, we see it all the time and I've only been a nurse for under 10 years now. I've also seen plenty of patients who's sat has dropped below 65% and lived.

Me, too, Kath.

I learned long ago that billing has to do with coding - if it isn't coded correctly, it isn't billed correctly. Ask them for the code for your procedure, then check your bill and inform them of the mistake - they will correct it if there's an error.

And many people think this is the best health care system in the world!

i'm so po'ed..told the ortho dr my primary ins was blue cross..nope they billed medicare..fought it and am still getting a bill for $129...and of course you can't talk to anyone you have to do it over the computer?? thanks be i can afford it, but i'll hide that darn card from now on!

Kudzu, it has nothing to do with the health care system. It has to do with a human's mistake.

Susan--medicare is the primary then blue cross, if you are over 65. That is what MC claims.

Well @ least the $500 is less than the $1945 for essentially the same thing that you posted about earlier, this time Mass Health Insurance, earlier "Medicaide".Hope you get your issues resolve.

I posted a couple of times about the scam a large hospital here tried on first DH when he went in for a femoral bypass. When he was admitted, we specifically asked if the hospital accepted our insurance. The response was "yes".

Shortly after his surgery and discharge, he got a bill for several thousand dollars for services during surgery.

I called the hospital, and they told me that the hospital and surgical bills were paid by our insurance, but anesthesia services was a separate company that did not accept that insurance (Aetna). We refused to pay the bill, saying that we were told that insurance covered it.

Well, he was scheduled for a second surgery on the other leg, and when we went in, I asked the anesthesiologist if he was in private practice or worked for the hospital - his answer was that he worked for the hospital.

I just happened to meet a person who worked on Medicare Fraud. He mentioned a scam that many hospitals work, by creating a holding company that separated many services into separate corporations - the hospital in general, anesthesiology, radiology, etc. That way, they would have the hospital corp. sign on to accept Medicare and other large insurance companies, but the other corporations would not sign on to insurance companies - thus allowing them to bill patients for services they assumed were covered by the hospital.

I called the hospital Administrator's office, and left a message spelling out this information to his secretary. Also said we were not paying fraudulent bills, and I would call Aetna, and the local TV stations if they sent another bill. I then called Aetna and reported them.
My husband was at work.....a couple of hours, he received a call from the hospital, saying that they were "forgiving" the bills.

But Richard, you never told us whether or not you're pregnant! ;o)

It seems that, according to "Richard" (or his alter-ego who writes here) ...

... that there was something wrong with that picture!

Evidently!!

o j

Seriously people? *shaking head and backing out of this thread*

LOL

When my mother had cataract surgery, she was billed for a douche kit. I called and was told it was miscoded.