I use them all the time…that’s called Wednesday. 
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Exciting! Must be a very nos-tril for you!
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Yes. We know it’s mostly the insurance companies’ and hospitals’ fault that pricing/discriminatory billing is such a thing, not most doctors’.
But hypothetically (and employment might depend upon doing this, in a hospital) if you were a GP with some freedom to set your own prices, you might have to enter that code into the system that tells the health insurer that you are in need of payment via the insurance of your patient … but, couldn’t you say 'I know this code will result in a claim of X, which I could claim and get paid, but if we do not tell the insurer, I would personally charge you one tenth of X - shall we do that?
(I suspect the way I’ve tried to frame this tells you I have very little actual personal experience of the US medical system.)
I can see how you could be a cog in the machine as an employee, but what about ER physicians who work for private equity groups that specialize in providing out of network docs to ERs? Is there any culpability in working for a contractor who exists for the purpose of ripping off even insured patients with ridiculous bills?
The hospital, I would think, is culpable for outsourcing their staffing to knowing rip off artists in those cases, but the hospitals also specialize in rip off charge masters that have no rational relationship between costs and billing, so why wouldn’t they? But the docs have to know their are being billed out of network on a regular basis? Or do they?
But, if you are lucky, the cabin pressure will pop it out and then you can just enjoy New Zealand.
Behind the shoe. If only Barbie had even smaller feet.
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Something something, but socialism!
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"Own the Libs! No Obamacare Death Panels!
Also, donate to my go fund me for my $40,000 ER visit bills when I broke my leg working construction under the table with no workman’s comp. I’m uninsured and broke. But at least I ain’t no socialist!!! MAGA!"
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But it was a Manolo. $2700 is a bargain.
Ok. Ok. How much for a pair?
Many insurance contracts specifically disallow that kind of side deal. They call it “most favored nation” clauses, basically saying we will pay you $X, unless there is someone else that you charge less, in which case we will pay that amount. And yes, they do audit us. Don’t even get me started on the government programs who send out Recovery of Assetts Teams (yes, they actually call them RATs) to find anything that they can use to claw back money. No, we couldn’t risk that when we were an independent practice. Now that we are corporate, we literally cannot do that.
Edit cause I not good type things
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Well, I think (and this is an opinion, I can’t back this up) that part of the rationale in turning billing into indecipherable codes was to put a barrier between the provider and the billing. I can look up the code for whatever procedure, but there is no way for me to tell you what that means dollar-wise. We have actually tried to find that info for patients before and run into brick walls. I have a hard time believing that is accidental.
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Yeah, that code.
I’ve worked on construction estimating software, where a job is made up of assemblies, which are made up of individual items costed various ways and sub-assemblies, rise-repeat.
The thought of what happens when some cost assemblies are out-of-network, possibly passed to other company’s system which is going to do more of the same, ugh.
My first day on the job: “Hey, once all those assemblies are broken down, there are a lot of duplicate cost items. We could probably make an optimizer to weed those out.” Also my last day on the job.
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That’s because Health Insurance ≠ Health Care. And bc we still have privately run health insurance companies whose entire existence depends on taking your money as premiums and NOT giving you health care. (I know Humbabella knows this, but your quote was the best way for my to inject this opinion of mine into this conversation)
One problem with the arguments about how much hospitals give to poor people, is that these days, hospitals are seeing a LOT LESS uninsured people. Cf the effectiveness of the ACA. Plus most hospitals in most states get state and federal money to help pay them for taking care of the uninsured. While turning record profits, the hospitals are still complaining about taking care of poor people “for free.” I bet that, if we get to M4A, or a similar program where anyone can opt in to Medicare or keep their private insurance, the hospitals will still pretend hardship.
You’re supposed to use nose forceps, not ass ones. No wonder you’re not a doctor!
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Obviously this is ridiculous, which seems par for the course. I saw a couple of days ago on twitter about a man comparing buying pills to cure threadworm in the UK. He got change from a 20 pound note from a chemist. In the US, it would be somewhat more.
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I would have less of a difficult dealing with this excuse of no power if I haven’t met so many doctors with god complexes. I get guff because of my lifestyle from docs … you can’t even get a handle on ethical billing.
Can’t argue with the God complex issue. We certainly have our share of those. Not sure I understand the rest. If your doc is telling you your lifestyle (assuming by this you mean weight, exercise, BP, etc) is not conducive to a long and healthy life, they are just doing their jobs. Does not really relate to my ability to change corporate billing practices.
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