A few months ago, 20-year-old Reddit user Zcypher posted his hospital bill for a $55,029.31 appendectomy. Suffering from a burst appendix, he went to Sutter General Hospital in Sacramento, California for treatment. The hospital bill, pictured below, has several ridiculous charges on it that are obviously borderline fraudulent, but are relatively common practice. There was the $7,501 “Recovery Room” charge, for one, which he reportedly spent “maybe two hours” in. Not to mention the $4,878 for a single night’s room and board.
Here’s his bill:
Want to know something interesting? Twenty-seven cents on every dollar. That’s how much California hospitals collect on how much they actually charge, thanks to deals with insurance companies. And what’s more, those insurance companies get to claim the money they don’t pay — the “adjustment” — as part of paid money when it comes to your healthcare benefit. If you don’t have insurance, you don’t have the bargaining power that an insurance company provides, and thus you get stuck with the full bill. Either way, though, you’re probably paying more in proportion to your health insurance company than you think you are.
In the bill above, the?actual amount paid by the insurance company is only $6,481.47.?Look carefully at the last page. This wasn’t a charity case. The hospital wrote off $37,448.31 of the claimed debt because that’s the deal they have with the insurance company. What does this mean? Well, it means that instead of paying 80 percent of the bill, as they deceitfully indicate on the front page, the insurance company actually paid only 37 percent. Despite the $55,000 charged, the actual cost of the procedure and affiliated costs was only around $17,000.
This video explains it really well:
This nation needs true healthcare reform — streamlined universal healthcare, with transparency and accountability.
h/t Addicting Info
