4/6/2012 6:04 AM
Ron, if you have a pain in the chest, that is a genuine emergency. If you go there because your toe nail fell off that is not. I have been in there so many times and hear people say, "well I have this cough and I have had it for about a week now". Oh so this cough all of a sudden became life threatening to go to the ER? They should have made an appt with their family doctor. The hospital in my town has had so much of this, they create a new wing called fastrak ER, for all the non emergencies.
There is way too many people that use the ER for their basic health care and it ends up costing us way to much money.
Now as far as the verification of your bill, you just do it like this. Hospital sends you completed bill with all the procedures and codes on it. You go over it, verify its accuracy, sign it and forward to your insurance company. If its not correct, you call the hospital or medical provider and discuss, they fix and send you a new bill, then you sign and forward to your insurance company. Small little responsibility for the patient who receives the care, but could save a lot of money in the long run for your insurance carrier, which in the long run keeps your premiums down. The other benefit to it, is that the patient gets to see what each procedure and individual items costs. People do not know what stuff costs today, because a third party pays the bill. I got charged $88 for three band-aids (the ones that are about 3" wide and 5" long) by my hospital when I had a procedure. I could have bought a ten pack at Wal-Mart for around $5. So i called the billing dept and they said that the insurance company will just pay it because its within the acceptable range for a bandage. My response was, "How much if I pay cash?" She noted that there was a different price if you pay for it yourself. So I asked her to rebill it to me, so I could pay it. The original bill was around $18,000, the new bill she sent to me was only $8000 and the Band-aids were rebilled at $15 for the three. This was a little more in line with reality. So when I got the bill, I faxed it to my insurance provider and they paid the $8,000. How many times a day, throughout the country does an insurance company get overcharged by a hospital and they pay it? No wonder insurance premiums are thru the roof, because there is no accountability, because the patient usually doesnt see the bill and the insurance company has no clue what the hospital provided for the patient. This gives the hospitals the leisure to charge what they want and add things to the bill. By having the bill go through the patient first, the person who was actually given the care can verify its accuracy before it goes to the insurance company. Wow what a novel idea to eliminate fraud, double billing, overcharging, etc.