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Old 02-09-2016, 12:47 PM
 
113 posts, read 158,425 times
Reputation: 245

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Did you ask them to send you the lab results? If not, I would call them back and ask for them.

 
Old 02-09-2016, 04:13 PM
 
8,081 posts, read 6,896,632 times
Reputation: 7977
Doesn't seem clear to me, was it sent in collections or by the Drs office. That means to wholly different circumstances.
 
Old 02-10-2016, 03:10 AM
 
Location: Rural Michigan
6,343 posts, read 14,600,966 times
Reputation: 10548
Quote:
Originally Posted by R_Cowgirl View Post

I know this post may upset some traditional nurses and docs, but it's still worth looking at. $700 for two tests versus $119 for 12 is quite a huge difference.
Nursing is a blue-collar profession, you get paid by the hour, not on commission, so I can't see any reason why nurses would care where you get your blood work done. Nurses can draw blood, but every lab I've heard of hires technicians (not nurses) for blood draws.
 
Old 02-10-2016, 12:06 PM
 
Location: Phoenix Metro Area
720 posts, read 725,869 times
Reputation: 860
I would call the collections company and tell them what happened and tell them what you can pay today - they will call the doctor or lab in your instance and negotiate for you - can't be an absurd number like $20 - maybe a couple three hundred and they will work with you. Good luck.
 
Old 02-11-2016, 10:06 AM
 
Location: Georgia, USA
36,969 posts, read 40,935,301 times
Reputation: 44899
Quote:
Originally Posted by MN-Born-n-Raised View Post
I assumed the bill was an aggregate of the doctor's office bill plus the lab work. If you go outside of the insurance company rates, "retail" can be out of control pricing.

In one quick example, over a decade ago my son had to go to the ER from an aggressive hockey check. We had to pay the 1st $4800 deductible. While I was in the ER with him, I asked how much it would cost to apply some superglue on a 1/8" deep cut (the helmet mask cut him which was related to the visit). No one knew. Not the doctor, not the front desk, no one. They made some calls. Nope! I asked for a ballpark. They had no idea. Thy looked at me like I was asking the stupidest question ever. They were confused because no one ever asks. I get that some insurance companies pay different rates. But give me a ballpark or range. I explained I would contemplate doing it myself or maybe going tomorrow to regular appointment.

Anyways, thinking the superglue 15 second procedure could not be more that $150, I said let's do it. Of course the Doc had to call in the nurse to do this (below the doctors pay grade I guess) as the Doc sat and watched the nurse superglue the cut. One one thousand, two one thousand, three. Done! From memory, the ER visit was around $1000 a decade ago. The ER doctors visit was a few hundred and they add in some other incidentals which I forgot. But I do remember the 15 second supergluing event. It was $450!! Again, this was a decade ago. So the total (with my insurance discount) was over $2K.

I called the insurance company to recode or I was paying $300 short. With several phone calls, I got it removed. So when you go into a clinic and they have absolutely no idea what they charge for a procedure, you know the system is broke! I'm not saying it's the Doctors fault. Nor the insurance company. But USA healthcare is an absolute mess.

Cut paste repeat many times. With my large deductible of $4800 a decade ago, I cared about how much a heart stress test would cost (on a treadmill). Again I asked "how much". All kinds of calls needed to be made. In short, a stress test at a clinic (again about a decade ago) was around $1200 with a cardiologist. But at another clinic in the same healthcare system was $2800. Why? Well it was attached to a hospital. Now I understand the logic of why it is more attached to a hospital. But over a Grand more? Any why the H_ll didn't the scheduler know the stress test that I wanted (for a benchmark) did not need to be attached to a more expensive hospital. I explained this was out of my pocket so I cared what I paid. I have another 20 stories like this. In short, the system is broke.


True. If you want world class access to the state of the art procedures, then of course you need to pay MUCH more. But people assume insurance equals every available procedure. Not true!

That doesn't change the fact that lobbyist are protecting their interest. The USA pays a massive amount more in drug costs while other countries negotiate a better rate. I get when you limit $$'s paid R&D gets stifled. But the USA is officially paying its unfair percentage. Then of course the AMA limits the amount of doctors entering the system. The AAEA doesn't (American Association of Engineering Societies). I realize it isn't as simple as what I explained. But again, the system is broken.


My son is off to Stanford for medical school next year. The tuition is rather expensive so you are preaching to the choir.

Since you are a Doc, please explain why a cardiologist, urologist, dermatologists all get paid 2X more than a neurologist, OBGYN, Internal medicine, and general surgeon? Of course the answer is related to the amount of income brought in but that has a lot to do with which trades can prescribe the NEW procedures (even when the "old ones" work perfectly fine) In short, slow moving insurance companies cannot get their hands wrapped around the new procedures fast enough to control the costs. Hence, you get paid much more than your (also) highly trained internal medicine Doc. I don't blame you. You were smart. But the system is broken!

But before people assume the insurance companies are the guys getting rich, as you know, it is a "cost plus" model. So when the insurance companies payout, they actually make more $$'s NOT less. They care how much they pay out ONLY because their rates go up and lose customers.

So the solution is to start over. Open up the spigots for advanced nurses to go the commodity procedures in every discipline, stop allowing drug companies to rape and pillage ONLY the USA market, stop the lawyers from being sue happy opportunistic pigs, remove the layers of bureaucracy of paper pushers mandated by government laws, stop allocating doctors (AMA), and crush the business as usual of allowing doctors to push more expensive procedures.

To that last sentence. I am not speaking of you in particular. But we both know that no one should blindly trust a doctor with advice. There is a business aspect (profit) that comes out of some doctors recommendations. Those doctors (and their are many) are part of the problem. Roll by a imaging clinic with all the nice care out front. They HAVE to fill those machines. ENT docs HAVE to put in ear tubes to keep busy etc etc. I never lose sight that medicine is a business. Smart people realize this.

So I am not advocating a one pay socialized system. But to me at least, the problems ^^ are glaring. If one guy had a wand, it could be fixed a whole lot better. So long as we have politicians trying to "fix" things, it will mean overhead and bandaids. Political solutions 99% of the time are disastrous. There will be winners and losers if it ever gets fixed. But right now the losers are guys who get charged $700 for iron blood work (along with a couple other blood tests).
I agree with most of what you say, but the AMA does not have anything to do with the supply of physicians. That is controlled by Congress. Residency slots are funded through Medicare, and Congress has refused to increase the number of residency positions. Medical schools cannot increase the number of graduates if they will not be able to find residencies.
 
Old 02-11-2016, 10:11 PM
 
Location: Dothan AL
1,450 posts, read 1,199,989 times
Reputation: 1010
Quote:
Originally Posted by britanylynn View Post
So I definitely called the Lab Corp office rather than the collections agency. The collections agency was not able to lower the balance but when I called Lab Corp and explained the situation, they reduced the balance by about $200 which is better than nothing. I did have to pay it all at once.
Good, you took care of it yourself!
 
Old 02-12-2016, 10:08 AM
 
Location: Mostly in my head
19,855 posts, read 65,607,770 times
Reputation: 19374
This thread has run its course and wandered off into the political arena. The OP posted an update.
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