04-02-2013, 05:14 PM
$tevie wrote:
A friend of mine needed to have his gall bladder taken out and he asked the surgeon what it would cost and the surgeon told him. To which my friend responded that he had no insurance. So the surgeon immediately quoted a price which was literally half as much. This shows that the costs given to insurance are BS, probably with the idea that the insurance company will still overpay even after making their adjustments. It's all a huge cluster you-know-what.
That's more of an indication of the problem with medical insurance. Ask any doctor or hospital admin about it and they'll tell you that both medicare and private insurance will pay whatever the insurance thinks is appropriate. As such, much of the quoted rates are inflated to combat this - if the doctor quoted a reasonable rate, the insurance company would cut that by half (or a large percentage).
Knowing that it was coming out of your pocket, the doc was able to "slash" his prices to what is the reasonable rate - which is about what the insurance company would pay.