I agree with you. It’s sad that we argue and struggle to figure out how to pay for these bills when the real debate we should be resolving is why these bills are so astronomically high in the first place. Wouldn’t it be better to have reasonable prices to begin with than to charge outrageous amounts and then play a bunch of games to get the bills to a reasonable amount?
1,000% -- I would love to have a public option, but in the meantime, do we really expect insurance companies to pay these prices? Hospitals are consistently billing them $50k, $500k, $1M... I wouldn't pay that shit either. It's just extortion... It's absolutely necessary to solve for the greed problem on the provider side before solving for it on the insurance side because it's providers that are the primary drivers of these insane prices.
But they don't expect that payment at lest if they network with insurance. They know they are pricing high so they can still make money and insurance can justify themselves and say how good they are at negotiations. Plenty of rural hospitals are closing cause they can not keep up even with high billed rates cause the allowed amount are either not based on that billed amount at all or insurance wants to only pay 30% . Yea some chains are greedy but let's not pretend insurance is not the big player.
Not true. The insurer knows that the billed amount is bogus as the contracted amount is what will be paid. The provider/hospital also know the amount as it set in stone in the contract between the doc and the insurer . Their is some magic in grouping or uncoupling some codes where a doc might bill several services that should have been one combined service or vice versa
That the facility/doc produces such a bogus bill makes the system harder for anyone let alone the patient to understand.
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u/coleman9925 12d ago
I agree with you. It’s sad that we argue and struggle to figure out how to pay for these bills when the real debate we should be resolving is why these bills are so astronomically high in the first place. Wouldn’t it be better to have reasonable prices to begin with than to charge outrageous amounts and then play a bunch of games to get the bills to a reasonable amount?