I feel you. My partner was on the phone with the gastroenterology office about an upcoming procedure. I had just had one last fall and spent half a year fighting them because they charged me out-of-pocket for a procedure where charging the patient is against federal regulations. They claimed “oopsies” but wouldn’t refund a prepayment until insurance confirmed. Now they are doing the same with my partner. They told her to call her insurance and confirm, which they did. But after she did, they decided to ignore that and charge her anyway. I cited the HHS Guidance Document; they didn’t care. I pointed out they were violating federal regulations; they disagreed but without anything to counter the direct language of the guidance doc.
At this point, I think it’s going to take an investigative reporter crawling up their butt to get them to change their process.
Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to move to the US a few times. The work would be interesting, the pay would be good, and the locations were beautiful (the offers were in Boston and San Francisco).
I’ve always declined, and the number one reason is healthcare (tied with “guns”, but that’s another discussion).
It’s so frustrating that it takes fear of bad publicity or a lawsuit to get some of these companies to just do what they’re already legally obligated to do. In your case, I wonder how much extra money they’ve made from doing that same thing to people less inclined to challenge it.
Exactly! And even with me, they had an interest-free loan for 6 months. It wasn’t enough by itself to do anything, but multiply it by a thousand patients and it’s an MRI machine!
So after they installed the scissor hands, I hope it healed okay? Faceplanted in Quora a bit and ended up reading some story about tooth grinding, then error saying it’s an eardrum problem, but with surgery, then the 4th cranial nerve gone hard, and poof, a couple of facial reconstructions and finding the lost screw, that’s how you get to be 37.
Which is to say I don’t get the thing where they bounced the 4 y.o.'s burn case in the first place.
