plant99

I have a big problem with shopping around for health care. Heath care is nothing like buying a shiny doodad. You can live without doodads but your health is very important. Which means you tend to form relationships with providers you trust. Shopping around means going with someone else and perhaps away from the recommended specialists of your primary provider. Also, as severity and emergency of a health situation increase so do the costs as well as the time in which to deal with it.

A lot of times even with insurance and especially with the emergence of high deductible plans, you get hit with things after the fact. My oldest son recently had a short procedure (which would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of $10k USD, if you believe the prices) and the provider was very concerned about my high deductible but didn't bother to go over anything else with me. This was the second time he had the procedure (tubes in ears) at the same location, but this time one small portion of procedure was out-of-network. So even though we had met our in-network we got hit with another bill. I didn't think to ask about it because, one my mind was on my child and two I had gone through this without the additional out-of-network expense the previous year.

There are simply so many moving and shifting parts to the whole machine that getting an up front price is going to be impractical at best.

LORD? What class?

In this case, I think that the provider did. As I said they were very concerned that I would have to pay a large sum at the time of the procedure so they must have run the planned procedure through my insurance and I don't know if something came up (I can't imagine that was the case) that necessitate the use of something out-of-network.

Exactly what are you referring to?

I can only assume you mean that I indicated that emergency costs are going to be higher? I'm referring to something like a severe car accident resulting in serious injury that is going to require a great deal of care and also provide no time to "shop around", not emergency department use.

--edit type-o

I don't know for sure there was a pre-auth. I didn't do and didn't really consider it.

I did contact the billing agency but they wouldn't budge on the price. I do intend on contacting the center to ask about it.