Hospital bills include opaque facility fees that patients can’t decipher
Patients receive emergency care bills with unclear, high facility fees and cryptic codes, making budgeting and understanding charges difficult.
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What people say
- so my dad fell again last week and this is the third time this year and every time it happens i have to take a half day from work to go sit in the er with him and then fight with his insurance about why the same scan costs a different amount depending on which building they wheel him into and my siblings live far enough away that its mostly just me doing this and i love him obviously but im also…
- Update on the ER bill from June. I finally got through to someone in the billing department directly instead of the general line, and she agreed the facility fee was coded wrong. They are resubmitting the claim, which she said can take six to eight weeks to process. I am not counting it as resolved until I see the corrected statement in writing. Thank you to everyone who explained what those codes…
- Does anything exist that tells you the real out of pocket cost before you agree to a procedure, not just the sticker price the office quotes? I'm getting hardware put in my foot in three weeks and every person I ask gives me a different number depending on whether they're counting the surgeon, the facility, or the hardware itself separately. My insurance portal says call for an estimate which just…
- My daughter had an ER visit in June for what turned out to be nothing serious, and the itemized bill arrived with a facility fee higher than the actual treatment line. I have called the hospital's billing department twice and have not gotten a clear answer on what any of the codes actually mean. Is there a resource or service that helps ordinary people interpret a hospital bill and dispute…