
The Doctors Who Bill You While You’re Unconscious - jseliger
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/surprise-bills-can-come-even-when-hospital-and-surgeon-network/606391
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erentz
> A growing body of research suggests that this nightmare scenario is fairly
> common for Americans.

This is just about every interaction with the medical system for me. It’s not
just surgery. At the moment the current one I’m dealing with is a case from UW
medical center. They’re billing my wife for special neurological testing that
was denied by Cigna. I look at the Cigna policy and her diagnosis is covered
for the testing. But they have a specific list of DX codes and the very
generic one that UW supplied on their claim isn’t in it. They need to use the
ever so slightly more specific code relevant to my wife’s condition. But
trying to get them to understand this and resubmit it is like talking to a
wall. Additionally being in network apparently they shouldn’t bill for denied
tests. But here they are billing. I hope we will be able to resolve it
eventually but once again it’s hours upon hours of effort from multiple people
going into something that just shouldn’t happen in any other system.

~~~
innagadadavida
What are the consequences of simply refusing to pay the bill? I know your
credit rating would suffer and you will get many calls from collectors but are
there more serious consequences? At least in California? For example, can the
insurance or hospital refuse to give you care or cancel your policy?

One of my friends did this after the insurance refused ambulance bills and
while the experience was harrowing, just refusing to pay might just be how to
deal with this.

~~~
gowld
www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/11/outrageous-and-un-american-sanders-says-
city-kansas-jailing-people-unpaid-medical

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jobigoud
So it's like when you bring your car to the workshop for a simple repair and
when you come back they announce that they _had_ to do these 2 other things...

The next level in this is sneakily replacing fresh parts with older, second
hand ones.

