Jeanne Pinder
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“No, I’m not ovary-acting,” Leena Kulkarni writes over at Huffpost. “After an abnormal Pap smear recently, I found myself in need of a colposcopy ― a fairly routine procedure in which doctors use binoculars to search for abnormal cells in the cervix. After visually inspecting my goods, my OBGYN quelled my fears. Everything looked […]
Jeanne Pinder
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A community member shared with us the bare bones of a story: Two MRI bills at an imaging center in Scarborough, Maine, resulted in a bill for $2,380. “Doctor advised ‘spinal MRI’, no indication given that procedure would be expensive or be billed separately for thoracic and lumbar regions of the spine,” wrote the community […]
Jeanne Pinder
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“A recent report by Pennsylvania’s health care industry watchdog shows that most of the hospitals frequented by Lancaster County residents take in significantly more money than industry experts say is necessary to maintain stable operations,” The Lancaster Online editorial board wrote recently. “As staff writer Heather Stauffer reported in the Money section of the July […]
Jeanne Pinder
“Dr. Matthew Wetschler can no longer practice medicine. Matthew Wetschler is a Stanford-trained emergency room doctor. He’s also a friend,” Christina Farr writes over at CNBC. “In November 2017 while surfing in San Francisco near his home in Ocean Beach, he hit his head hard on a shallow sand bar and broke his neck. He […]
Jeanne Pinder
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How much does a hysterectomy cost? Depends on the kind of hysterectomy, of course, and where it takes place. A community member sent in the bill here from a procedure in a Pasadena hospital. Total charges weere $125,585.84, insurance company writedown of $107,674.84. The insurer paid $13,607.52, and the patient was responsible for $4,303.48. Here’s […]
Jeanne Pinder
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Is it a payment or an adjustment? Wait, it’s both! This bill for a colonoscopy clearly identifies the sum of $722.13 as both a payment and an adjustment. The vertical “payments” column is quite clear. Just as clearly, there was no payment at all, judging from the horizontal selection. We have seen a lot of insurance […]
Jeanne Pinder
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“For those of us fortunate enough to have health insurance, it is easy to anticipate the costs we will pay for health care services,” writes Rachel Linn at the Center for Improving Value in Health Care blog in Colorado. “For example, I have a fixed co-pay plan, and know that if I visit my doctor, […]
Jeanne Pinder
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“The first man died in April 2014. Another died later that month. Then on July 18 of that year, a woman was rushed to a hospital where she was told she was lucky to be alive,” Christina Jewett, Kaiser Health News and Mark Alesia, USA Today Network, write in an investigative piece on regulation at […]
Jeanne Pinder
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By David Belk, M.D. David Belk, a California doctor, has an interest in pricing and has researched and written on this topic for The Huffington Post and at his own site, TrueCostOfHealthCare.org. He sent this via email the other day, and I asked if I could repost it. The next time hospitals tell you they’re […]
Jeanne Pinder
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LabCorp, the national lab test chain, has a program called “LabAccess Partnership program,” with discounted fees on a menu of routine clinical tests for patients who are uninsured or whose health care benefits do not cover clinical laboratory testing. Other payment options separate from private insurance, Medicare or Medicaid, Labcorp says on its site, include […]
