Tips for Avoiding Hospital Overcharges
Hospitals are meant to be safe havens, providing care and a place of recovery for the sick, injured and infirmed. Unfortunately, they have become places where many are robbed of their hard-earned money in hidden charges, fees for unnecessary treatments and lack of coverage from their health insurance plan. According to recent studies, hospitals are overcharging unsuspecting consumers a whopping $10 billion per year. Luckily, you are not doomed to a lifetime of high hospital charges. There are tips and tools at your disposal to make sure that you are only paying the fees that are necessary for you, and you can ensure that the money saved can go toward preventative care to help you stay out of the hospital in the future.
Request an Itemized Bill
You may get a bill at the end end of a surgery or extensive hospital stay for something like $25,000 dollars, and have no idea what you are being charged for. Before the bill even gets placed in your hands, request that the hospital make it into an itemized bill for you. One woman whose husband had just had hip replacement surgery saw charges for newborn blood work and a crib mobile. Unless her husband had had a baby while he was in the hospital, these charges were ridiculous and egregious. Hospital overcharges average about $1,300 per patient, per hospital visit, so requesting an itemized bill can help you avoid paying for things like $129 for a box of tissues.
Enlist Expert Help, but Don’t Rely on It
Even those who have worked in the medical claims and billing field can be baffled and confused by charges that appear on hospital bills. If you are confused about what you are seeing, seek out help from a professional. If they are not able to help you discern what you are looking at, try and speak to someone who works at your health insurance company. They don’t want to pay for ridiculous charges any more than you do, and consulting with someone there can aid in breaking things down and disputing any extra charges.
Don’t Let Hospitals Intimidate You
The last thing hospitals want is patients going over their bills with a fine tooth comb. They want you to be naive and just shrug your shoulders at the money you are about to siphon out of your life long savings. Don’t be intimidated by the hospital if they argue with your request for an itemized bill. After all, any overcharges and things not covered by insurance are coming straight out of your pocket. If you don’t look carefully at what you are paying and end up accepting your huge bill, be prepared for the hospital to aggressively pursue payment, including being quick to turn cases over to collection agencies if the payment isn’t made in a timely fashion.
When In Doubt, Do the Following
- If you aren’t admitted to the hospital for any type of an emergency be sure to check with your health insurance company ASAP to see what they will and will not cover for you. Be sure to carefully review the section on “exceptions and exclusions in your plan’s material to know what they won’t be forking over for.
- Call down to the hospital’s billing department and what you are being charged for your room by the day, and exactly what those room charges rover. If small things like tissues aren’t included, then phone a friend and ask them to bring you some — $129 extra for tissues is just absurd.
- Make sure that everyone who will be treating you — the surgeon, anesthesiologist, radiologist, pathologist, etc. — participates in your insurance plan. If you are insured, make sure to get both your insurance plan and the doctors involved in the communication process.
- If you are with it and hip enough, keep your own log of tests, medications, and treatments. If you zonked out on Morphine, ask a friend or family member to do it for you.
- Never, EVER pay your bill before leaving the hospital, even if they tell you that you have to. You don’t. Take that bill home and look it over with a magnifying glass.
- Not to beleaguer the point, but request that itemized bill. There is no other way to know what you are being charged for.
- At some point you will receive an explanation of benefits (EOB) from your insurance company . It will say, “This is not a bill,” and you may be tempted to just recycle it thinking it has no value. It most certainly does, and look it over carefully. It will tell you how much the hospital is charging, exactly what your insurance plan will cover, and what you will have to pay out of your own pocket in deductibles and co-payments.
Working hand in hand with your health insurance company can really help make a hospital stay less stressful, as you will know exactly what they can help cover for you, and try to avoid anything that they will not. Being careful and avoiding handing over more money than you need to can help make the unpleasantness of a hospitalization much more bearable.
photo credit: SarahMcD ॐ
Tags: billing, cutting costs, health care, health coverage, health insurance, hospital bill, hospitals, overcharges, saving money
