A few months ago I had to take the girlfriend to the emergency room. No, I didn't end up on Cops...she was experiencing tightness in her chest and was having difficulty breathing. After calling her health plan's difficult-to-find advice line, we were advised to go to the hospital. The ER staff at CPMC took chest x-rays, an EKG, and declared her fit as a fiddle...and prescribed her an inhaler.
We opened up the mail tonight to find a bill for nearly $700...and that's after her health insurance company paid their share. We also found that the hospital had added billing codes for lab work...which never occurred that night. Apparently, these billing errors are extremely common. Health care providers, especially hospitals, have every incentive to make these kinds of mistakes and not correct them. And insurance companies just pass the buck along to you.
This is a perfect example of how broken our current health care system is. Perverse incentives, duplicate and redundant bureaucracies abound. And all of this from the same companies fighting hard to prevent true health care reform. And it's coming out of your pocket. Isn't America great?
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