Yep, kudos to her. I can think of no other business that is so lacking in transparency, and so completely divorces what they charge from their actual costs of providing a service.
I’ve tried to get costs for medical procedures from Group Health in Seattle, supposedly a consumer friendly cooperative HMO, without success. Providers have no idea what will be billed for the treatments they suggest, and are sometimes shocked when told the simple two second squirt of liquid nitrogen for a maybe suspicious skin patch becomes $300 “outpatient surgery”- and two squirts is twice as much. Even after the fact, after getting billed almost $300 recently for a routine 15 minute office visit, they could not explain what the charges were for, or what the codes signified- just that each subject you discussed (if a computer code was entered) was essentially another visit as far as their billing was concerned. Of course, when most people only have a copay, this is just accounting- but if you actually pay the full bill, it’s deadly.
