Jeanne Pinder
Insurer price transparency has arrived: The law mandating that health insurers must publicly post prices they have negotiated for almost all procedures and items with hospitals, doctors and other suppliers went into effect July 1, 2022. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services wrote on the web that the move was “empowering consumers with the […]
Jeanne Pinder
How much does a mammogram cost? As with everything in health care, that depends. The cost can be $0 or it can be as high as $2,786.95. Why the differences? Let us help you sort it out. First, is it a screening mammogram or a diagnostic one? First, screening (preventive) mammograms for women over 40 […]
Jeanne Pinder
“A woman who expected to pay $1,337 for surgery at a Westminster hospital but was billed $303,709 may be off the hook for the massive bill after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in her favor Monday,” The Denver Post writes. “The justices unanimously found that the contracts patient Lisa French signed before a pair of […]
Jeanne Pinder
“While many investors have seen a decline in the value of their stock portfolio over the past year, Cigna shareholders became significantly richer today after the company announced that it made far more in profits during the first three months of this year than Wall Street financial analysts had expected,” Wendell Potter writes over at […]
Jeanne Pinder
“Over the past several days, I’ve been scouring a dozen years’ worth of big health insurers’ financial disclosures, and I’ve discovered some trends that go a long way toward explaining why most of us are paying much more for coverage that is far less useful and protective than it used to be,” Wendell Potter writes […]
Jeanne Pinder
(Updated and corrected, March 25, 2022: This post originally said the Ellume test was a 2-pack, but it’s actually a single test.) At the Rite-Aid in Grand Central at the checkout counter, two 2-packs of Covid at-home tests were for sale next to each other on March 20. Can you guess which was $38.99 for […]
Jeanne Pinder
A friend writes about an experience here in New York: So my husband’s at a routine checkup with our primary care provider’s physician’s assistant, Maria (whom we really like). He tells her he has this ongoing thing with his heart where he sometimes gets lightheaded going upstairs. He’d seen a cardiologist but didn’t really get […]
Jeanne Pinder
So I went to fill a prescription on Saturday, and talked the price down from $76 to $45 — though I think I could have gotten it down to $11.05 with a little more work. It’s for olmesartan, the generic for Benicar, a high blood pressure medication. With my insurance card for Medicare Part D, […]
Jeanne Pinder
How much does a vasectomy cost? One man paid $2,350.09. We’ve seen a wide range of prices, but this was definitely on the high side. The vasectomy price figures were reported in an anonymous share from our interactive software. The man who sent in the data did include his explanation of benefits, which we show […]
Jeanne Pinder
“When I was growing up, it seemed that everybody who had health insurance had a Blue Cross plan,” Wendell Potter writes over at his Substack. “Every state had a Blues plan, every one of them was a nonprofit, and their policies were comparatively cheap and comprehensive. That seems downright quaint when you consider what has […]
