Found in medical bill: "box of tissues, billed as a "mucus recovery system," for $12."

[madfloridian]

A couple more:

A piece of gauze used to wipe down surgical equipment, billed as a "fog elimination device," for $57.

A teddy bear, billed as a "cough support device," for $57.

Companies are growing to help people get more info on their medical bills.

Medical Bills Get a Closer Look

"At the end of the day, health care is a business, and consumers have been left out in the cold," said Inglett, whose company, Medical Billing Advocates of Florida, is among a growing number of private firms across the country that consumers hire to help sort through the medical jargon and complicated coding in their doctor bills and insurance forms.

The national firm that Inglett's company is affiliated with, Medical Billing Advocates of America, says consumers often lack the knowledge and time to question their bills.

..."Inglett said the most common billing errors involve things such as:

Billing for duplicate tests and procedures

Unbundling of charges, which is when a number of things that should be billed as one item are billed separately

Human error, such as an incorrect keystroke

Fraud

Butcher said consumers should call their medical provider or insurance company whenever they suspect there is an error.

So now there have to be companies formed to help us interpret medical bills and make a profit if they find something wrong? We are screwed both ways.

[FarLeftFist]

1. The HC industry needs to start shopping at Costco

Or at least get their negotiating skills up to par.

[glowing]

32. They inflate the charges and hide behind codes so that the hospitals can pay

for their overhead and all the patients who come into the ER and have no insurance and no way to pay for treatment. AND every year it gets worse because they need more billing specialists and investers need more profits because they run a hospital like a corporation rather than a place where people go to be healed. The reason for the bill in Congress being sooo gigantic is because they are trying to stem the costs coming out of the health care establishments in the first place.. Which is a reason the ins. co's don't try to change the language in the bills helping them out with the charges coming from the hospitals.. the ins. co's can make more money if they can cut the health care costs from actual care at hospitals and Dr. offices.. their profits will increase with this factor alone.

[waiting for hope]

2. Jeez - they just ooze out the the woodwork don't they?

Why can't they mandate a country wide standard billing system? It's been needed for a while, and it would make it easier for people to understand what is in their medical records.

[madrchsod]

3. everything is coded now and ya can`t get the codes

my mom was a bookkeeper and a very good investor. she used to go over her and my dad`s medical bills and question charges that seemed to be out of line. more often that not she`d win. she did`t want someone putting pills in their pockets and getting charged.

i`ve asked my hospital for an itemized bill on an operation...they more or less refused by sending me a coded list.

[enlightenment]

4. Twenty years ago I had a major surgery.

They sent me an itemized bill. Charged me (or rather, BCBS) $5.00 for each two-pack of oversized cotton swabs that they dipped in mouthwash(for which they charged another $5) to 'brush' my teeth while I was incapacitated - combined with other over-charges for stuff like that, it added almost $1000 to the bill. I was gobsmacked.

Fifteen years ago I had to take my kid to the ER after he wiped out on his bike. They charged $2.50 for EACH gauze pad they used while they treated him.

When I asked why their gauze pads cost them so much, they told me that they charged insurance patients more to cover the cost of the uninsured.

As long as there is a profit motive in the health care equation, we will continue to get the shaft. A single payer, not-for-profit, regulated health care system is the only thing that will stop this nonsense. I don't expect to see it in my lifetime - we do not have the will to make it happen.

[truedelphi]

8. You know, earlier this summer, when Pres. Obama said that

We would have to keep HCR deficit neutral, I naively thought that we would have some type of discussions about how inflated the costs of health care are.

Only for some reason, that discussion never occurred. Instead, "Cost containment" came to mean the cost of our care - how much expense is involved in treating different illnesses, but never how they arrived at the price structure.

But had that discussion occurred, we would have heard all summer long how inflated the health care costs are. "Cost containment" became early on a phrase used to discuss examining our care costs, rather than making the Big Insurers, Big Pharma and the Big Medical Profiteers examine their pricing structures, and forcing them to roll back their insane prices.

A long time ago, when I was pregnant, my OB/GYN provider was saying that although my pregnancy was a healthy one, the hospital delivering my son liked the idea of having all women use the fetal monitor system. That way women with less healthy pregnancies wouldn't be slammed with such an expensive bill, because a whole lot of us would be paying a small charge. That seemed so humane to me.

Now we just hit everyone with obscene payments. And one friend of mine who used to audit people's hospital visits for them found out that one hospital was charging people for three circumcisions! Three! And we are not talking about people who had twins or triplets!

[madfloridian]

13. I think that is what they do.

Charge those with insurance more.

[Generic Other]

18. But not for the cost of "uninsured" because they get bigger bills than "insured" do

More likely for the costs of those who cannot pay their exorbitant fees.

[nichomachus]

19. They overcharge those with insurance

because they can -- and because it helps their CEOs make $35 million a year. They either find a way not to treat the uninsured or they drive them into bankruptcy.

[dysfunctional press]

25. "they charged insurance patients more to cover the cost of the uninsured."- BULLSHIT!

insurance companies have contracts with hospitals that give them 'volume discounts' -insured patients bills are WAY less than the bill an uninsured patient receives for the exact same procedure.

[waiting for hope]

5. Kicking for content

Rec'd earlier...

[truedelphi]

6. K & R. n/t

[Festivito]

7. See how privatized systems bring prices DOWN?

Okay. I don't.

$.01 aspirin ... nope: $50.
$100 internet access for all ... nope $300/year.
$3000/year HCare everything for all ... nope $6000-9000/year.
$25000/year soldier ... nope: $90,000/year Xe employee.

Hmm. It's almost as though they're stealing from US. Wait! They are!

[Overseas]

14. K&R.

Me neither.

If we could just undo that lie, that privatized corruption behind closed doors is somehow better than sometimes corrupt government services accountable to us all, we'd be able to make some progress on improving the quality of life for the majority of our citizens, not just the Top Ten Percent.

[jmondine]

9. Don't even want to know what they call toilet paper

[trof]

11. Look under 'feces removal material, 1 unit - $27.50'.

:rofl:

[bertman]

27. Is that per sheet or per roll?

No, I'm not kidding.

And whichever it is, it better be that triple-layered kind--not the Breakthrough brand that you find in most Interstate highway rest stops.

[trof]

29. Per sheet, I'm sure.

;-)

[bertman]

36. Now I see how those insurance CEO's make their millions!

[Christa]

10. K & Highly rec'd

shocking and disgusting

[GoCubsGo]

12. Doesn't surprise me...

While in college, I worked in a hospital billing office and in a hospital pharmacy. One of the things I did was check the pharmacy charges against the patients' medical records. There was human error, but usually it was in places like the ICU or the ER, where one can understand how billing errors can be made. But, that was during the 1980s, and things have gotten worse. I don't recall seeing such charges as a teddy bear or gauze for fifty seven bucks. Maybe it's because I worked in Catholic hospitals, one a charity hospital, and the other a university hospital. They hadn't brought the corporate types to run them at that point.

FWIW, I have been told that the $50 charge for an aspirin includes the cost of the nurse that administers it, and the pharmacist that dispenses it. Both usually get paid really well. Especially the pharmacist. I suppose if they're not including the staffs' pay in one's room rate, the charges are legitimate. But, somehow, I don't think that's the case...

[Firstzar]

15. It's like the Pentagon in the 1980s

K&R!

[Overseas]

16. Let's not forget the big one -- health insurance coverage, $10,000 per year.

But whoops, post-"recision" it can disappear in an instant, even if you've been paying your premiums dutifully for years.

[tomm2thumbs]

17. vomitous - just sickening

[noamnety]

20. I've been charged for meals in a hospital

for multiple days when I wasn't allowed to eat anything.

[cornermouse]

21. If you were charged for something you didn't get you need to

call them and tell them about their mistake. You can fight it and you don't even need to pay a middleman.

[noamnety]

24. It wasn't really possible to fix that.

I had a language barrier at the time, and was pretty much powerless - when you're having health issues, often there just isn't the energy left to deal with that stuff, especially when you're met with the line "That's our policy."

[Froward69]

22. A few years ago I broke my arm

and the hospital bill was itemized.
I saw that included was the doctors "service fee" nof $650. the whole hospital bill was only 1600 so I paid it. The doc double billed me... then decided to sue me. in his suit he added $2000 for "travel expenses" as he lived in New Mexico.

well the Judge ruled the doc did deserve Travel expenses of one tank of gas $30 and tossed the rest out. proclaiming that the doc had run roughshod over the community long enough.

[cornermouse]

23. Don't do the middleman route.

Its expensive and unnecessary. Call the business office and complain/argue. Unbundling should show up in the edits; especially as they move to computerized records. Duplicate tests/procedures ditto and he's just trying to drum up business.

[madfloridian]

28. You are only partly right.

Once I had many questions about a long hospital stay. I knew there were so many problems with the bill, but I was still too ill to handle it.

That's the problem. People who need to question things like this are often not physically up to it at that time.

You are correct in that we should not need a middleman to do things for us, but then again we should be able to trust hospitals.

They count on sick people giving up the battle. Plus the battles with the insurance companies take an additional toll when one is sick.

[Odin2005]

26. That's fucking pathetic.

[ehrnst]

30. 'Mericans DESERVE $12 tissues.$1.50 tissues = RATIONING!!! (nt)

[juno jones]

31. K&R! n/t

[Nikki Stone1]

33. Fog elimination device? A teddy bear, billed as a "cough support device"? Who write this shit?

:wtf:

[historian]

34. how about this one?

Internal timpanic cleanser - 6.00! Thats for a cottonette. I went to the hospital (i took a nursing course many years ago) and argued with them about every single item on the invoice. In the end they had to reduce it from 5.200 to 1100, and that was mostly for the doctor and the technicians who performed some of the complex procedures (mri) etc.

[AsahinaKimi]

35. Ferengi billing system ..

# Once you have their money ... never give it back.
# Never pay more for an acquisition than you have to.
# Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity.
# A man is only worth the sum of his possessions.
# Keep your ears open.
# Small print leads to large risk.
# Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.
# Greed is eternal.
# Anything worth doing is worth doing for money.
# A deal is a deal ... until a better one comes along.
# A contract is a contract is a contract (but only between Ferengi).
# A Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all.
# Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
# Never place friendship above profit.
# A wise man can hear profit in the wind.
# Nothing is more important than your health--except for your money.
# There's nothing more dangerous than an honest businessman.
# Never make fun of a Ferengi's mother ... insult something he cares about instead.
more:
http://www.sjtrek.com/trek/rules/