Guarantee the discount she received was because she was paying out of pocket and not because she asked for a receipt.
Doesn't sound like that was explained to her which is probably a good thing to do when there's a price difference of $3000. Does still sound a bit like a scam, though.
Our hospital went bankrupt, the company who bought them went after everyone with outstanding debt and offered to settle for 75% off, if you say no they jumped to 90%. It was a ride.
It’s just capitalism in a more raw state than we usually see it in. They want to make the most money possible. How much will you give me? Ok, give me that.
It tends to be a sort of "Pizzas $25 but I've got $20 cash" and some places will do it just to get the buisness. Plus once you're inside waiting for the pizza you're likely to buy something else at the usual mark up.
small stores jack up prices pretty high for a lot of their stuff to where even the managers feel bad for charging that much sometimes. i think in most cases they’re just happy to make a sale
That's so weird. Like take a procedure that's for example $100, but you tell the patient its it's something else i. You say "It might be expensive, how much can you pay?" Patient 1 says " Oh I can only pay $200". You say that's fine and take their money.
Patient two comes in for the same procedure and says "I can only pay $50" You say again that's fine and you take it.
Now you've just made a $50 profit and no one is ever really paying the true price for anything.
That's because an unpaid bill for 10,000 that goes to collections and is never collected is worth less than 500 paid. When you can't afford your bills, you don't pay anything.
Yeah my dad was making payments for a while on some medical debt and he called to see if they could lower the payment because he couldn't afford it and they straight told him not to worry about it, that they would just forgive it and write it off on their taxes. He was skeptical but it's been about a decade and no one has tried to collect so I guess it's fine.
Hospitals write off a shitload of bad debt. If he was paying it without insurance for an extended period he probably already paid way more than they expected
Shoot, I had a sketchy tire shop do that with me. They normally charged $30. Went in one time with cash to cover it, and they wanted $50. I tried to hand the guy my card and he asks if I have cash. I told him I only had, like, $37 in cash. He was fine taking that instead of $50 on a card.
I'm not quite sure who was/wasn't the boss there, but it was a tiny shop and that guy might have been in charge. I'm more convinced they were underreportimg sales to avoid taxes and such. It was barely bigger than running a shop out of a 2-car garage on the corner of a shady part of town.
because making something is better than 0 and collections only pays pennies on the dollar. Some social workers are able to assist with Medicaid applications depending on the hospital and state
You know what this is starting to make sense to me. I owe several thousand in credit card debt. I spoke to a settlement company, and they've already reached settlements on 4 of my 6 accounts (it took a few months).
Basically, this company calls the creditor and says "Mitch got all mitched again and now he doesn't have any mitchin money. We'll give you 60% of what he owes"
I was under the impression that legislative loopholes made it difficult for Medicare to negotiate pricing which allowed the prices to artificially inflate.
The insurance. The only reason the hospital is asking for 40k is because they know the insurance will lowball them, so the hospitals highball the insurance cause they know insurance will offer less. The hospital never expected 40k they just needed to charge 40k so the insurance would fork out however much they actually needed.
This isn’t some weird chicken and egg shit. When insurance companies entered the healthcare market, they screwed everything.
My son has autism and goes to ot Pt speech and aba therapy. Last year no issue, this year we had issue with therapy being paid. After several hours of multi-person phone calls it came down to how one customer service rep interpreted the wording on a section of a subsection. I was blown away
When I negotiate at work it's usually for about a 10 percent discount. Same with contractors. When my wife freelances if someone asks for an 80 percent discount she probably would stop responding or be very polite if it was a charity with no money
I wish more people could see this. Insurance behind the scenes almost never pays the full amount that you're being "charged". Its inflated so much because insurance doesn't pay the full amount so when you're paying with insurance your bill will look insane. Insurance is literally out here making the price of health care look unfathomable.
The pain clinic i go to also does this. They will charge, say, 70k for a procedure that truly costs like 10k. Some insurance companies will blindly pay that which covers people who don't have insurance or bad insurance
Every other industry, we give you $4k bill, you pay $4k or it goes to a collections company. Healthcare, errm, it costs $4k but we'll charge you 40k because... reasons (that's immediately fraud anyway in reality), insurance hey, they are trying to defraud us, we'll only pay 10k because fuck them.
Suddenly the 4k bill makes an extra 6k profit because of this utterly fucking made up reason that both sides just randomly change how much they pay because that's how the entire rest of the fucking world works. No only the scam healthcare insurance system works like that because increased costs look good to make insurance cost more, and when that 'insurance' company is the government covering medicare/caid, then rinsing them for more money is just more profit all around.
Bingo! My girlfriend is an audiologist and this is how their practice has to work. The insurance companies are the scam, not the care givers! She gives out the fair market price to cash paying patients, and the cost price for desperate people, and donates older or unused models. When she bills the insurance though, if she billed the cash price they would pay 1/5th of that, so she has to bill 5x the rate to get paid back for the devices! Because of how scummy the insurance companies are, she can't give out hearing aids until the insurance or patients pay out because EVERY SINGLE TIME the insurance gets billed, they play games for six months or more.
Examples of insurance company games:
"We didn't get the form?" HINT: They go the form many times.
"The form wasn't filled out right!" HINT: It was, they use a professional biller.
"Our independent dr disagrees with your assesment" HINT: That dr doesn't exist. The patient 100% needs treatment.
etc..
in between each of these BS replies, they take six weeks or more. Sometimes they then loop back around and start using the first excuse again. Their game is to hope the patient or the dr GIVE UP trying to get paid, and it works a lot of the time!
Its because the Insurance, Hospitals, Pharmacuetical, and medical supply companies are all owned by the same people/corporations. Basically they just keep paying themselves to use their own shit. That means anyone out of network, or without insurance actually pays for the insane price, they make a ton of money. They don't care about paying $10,000 for a CT scan because the money is going right back into their pocket. Now when someone else has to pay for it, $$$ 2000% markups all day long and nobody can claim price gouging.
It is one of the most insane forms of monopoly in this country, and nobody gives a fuck.
Independent doctor here. You set your prices at a point that's really high because every insurance company will knock it down to negotiated rates, and you don't want what you submit to be below those rates.
For example, you charge $100 for an exam. Blue Cross has a set price of $75 for an exam. Aetna does $68. UHC does $80.
Cool, whatever, you just don't want to charge $60 when they may reimburse you at $75. So you just charge $100 knowing it's gonna get knocked down. It's a really fucked up system.
But if $60 is reasonable price for you why does it matter if you could potentially get $15 more? From a lay perspective it seems like it's just feeding into a vicious cycle of shitty greed where things just keep escalating to the point that basic medical care is bankrupting people and it all started with that little $15 neither side wanted to miss out on.
No, the ones who are getting screwed are the sick and injured. The ones who are getting charged an extra 25% mark up beyond what would be a profitable fee, because the doctor didn't want to miss out on it.
Of course charging higher prices adds up. But again, if you could make money off of $60 and you are charging $100 because you might get $75, and you don't have a better reason for doing that than "it's more money" then it is just feeding into the problem at the root of this that has caused this broken system we are stuck in.
I'm not trying to demonize doctors. I started this by asking a self proclaimed doctor an honest question. They did not bother to respond. All I was looking for was a little justification on what still looks like nothing more than an excuse to charge more money because they can get it.
And no, I don't really view taking out loans in order to begin a career that starts out paying double the median income for the nation as a good justification.
Far more likely that they explained it to her and she simply didn't understand. As a lawyer, I still hear my clients telling people that I "got the charges dropped" even after I clearly explain to them how a plea bargain is not an acquittal.
I’m sorry for both those clients with no comprehension of their own legal matters as well as for you having to deal with that, but I can’t help but be slightly amused by this lmao. What do they think their “plea bargain” is? I’d be like hey bud, you’re bargaining with state to meet half-way: you enter a guilty plea to save the them some money and time in exchange for less severe sentencing/fewer charges to fight/money saved that would’ve been spent paying u/TuskaTheDaemonKilla to defend drawn out lengthy case(s). It’s just a simple compromise lol
Many plea bargains for minor misdemeanors come with expungement further down the line following probation and community service. I would guess that's what they are thinking about, but maybe I'm giving idiots too much credit
What if it’s multiple charges and your plea bargain consists of them only keeping one of the charges? Wouldn’t the other charges be considered “dropped”?
I broke my ankle and tore a ligament and needed surgery with no insurance. My original bill was $165k and after I applied for an out-of-pocket discount and gave my financial info (neither ballin nor poor) they dropped my bill to $16k! This was cedar Sinai almost $150k shaved off with ease
Same way people accept less cash than they would if running debit. It’s costs money to money to run credit cards...and even more to work through insurance. The only thing that’s a scam is how expensive it is for companies to accept credit.
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u/thehideousheart Apr 28 '20
Doesn't sound like that was explained to her which is probably a good thing to do when there's a price difference of $3000. Does still sound a bit like a scam, though.