Comments on: Keeping A Close Eye On Those Medical Bills

By: rb

rb — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 17:28:55 +0000

I am an RN and strongly recommend that each person ask for a detailed list of the expenses from a hospital stay. Go through each item (with an RN friend) and check charges. For example, what are you charged when they start an IV? sometimes you will see charges for 3 IV catheters. Really, did you have 3 IV’s? Probably not. It they missed the first 2 times and got a vein the 3rd you shouldn’t have to pay for that. If someone inadvertently contamintated the sterile field during a procedure for something simple like a urinary catheter or as big as in the operating room setup, should you suck it up and pay? NO!
Now there is a new law that says if there is a medical error you don’t pay for the treatment for that error. For example, if it is documented that you are allergic to morphine and they give you morphine, you don’t pay for all the events that occurred to treat that. For some, that could be thousands of dollars from a Code Blue…..

By: Renee

Renee — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:06:06 +0000

I am so glad I passed by kidney stone on my own….I can’t imagine having to have to pay to get it removed.

Renee

By: Corporate Barbarian

Corporate Barbarian — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:10:37 +0000

Good job checking everything out regarding the billing. Most people would just pay the bill and forget about it. And my condolences on the kidney stone – I’ve had them and they are murder!

By: Jill H.

Jill H. — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:48:22 +0000

I have some health-insurance, and the costs are sometimes so prohibitive that I’ve often assumed that an error must have occurred. I know from now on that I’ll give my next bill a second, third, and fourth look over.

On another note, I live in California and I thought there was some bill in place that limited the amount a hospital could charge you if you self-pay for health insurance? Does anybody know anything about this – or if this is the case in other states, too?

Thanks!

By: The Incidental Economist

The Incidental Economist — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:46:56 +0000

Medical billing errors are common and your insurance company won’t notice all (or even most) of them. It is up to the consumer to find them. It isn’t easy because medical billing and coding is so arcane and providers are not that interested in helping you pay them less.

I’ve found numerous errors over the years and “saved” thousands by working to have them corrected. One recent episode ended up saving some other folks money too, as I documented here: http://theincidentaleconomist.com/medical-billing-errors/