Because the insurance company (or hospital, rather) said the total cost of the care was 12,500 for me to pay without insurance.
When it was determined that there was insurance coverage they ‘re-calculated’ how much it ‘really’ costs and it was 1,500.
It has something to do with the Hospital having a ‘contract’ with the insurance company...some kind of ‘agreement’ that adjusts how much any procedure can cost.
Now, I call that CRAP.
The hospital charged $12,500 partly because of the law that prohibits them from charging anyone less than they charge any medicare patient. They inflate the charges over actual cost, not because they expect to collect that much, but rather as their own cushion against the unforeseen regulatory problems. They don’t want to go to jail for violating the complex regulations.
Their actual costs, including some allowance to pay for non-paying patients, is probably close to the $1500. If your insurance was medicare, they would probably allow the hospital to collect even less, less than their actual cost, maybe $1000, and of that medicare would pay $800 and the hospital would be required to bill you for the remaining $200.
Under this system, hospitals that accept medicare patients are likely to deteriorate. At the same time, the medicare insurance system is going bankrupt. Medicare is likely to find more and more creative ways to reduce their costs, like weighing the cost of your medical care against the dollar value of your life.
There is a lot of complete crap in here, but it comes from the complex regulations and cheesy payments associated with medicare, not from the private insurance company.
If you actually had been uninsured and responsible for paying the bill yourself, you could have told the hospital “How about I give you $2000 and we call it even?” and they probably would have gone for it.
Under Obamacare, you would have been given a bottle of pain medicine and told to come back in six months when the next available appointment was to actually get rid of the stone. If you were young and healthy otherwise. If you weren’t young and otherwise healthy, you’d be booking a flight to India to get treated.
Obamacare is CRAP
Doom on Obama’s plan.
(Note to Secret Service: not suggesting any harm to The Won himself.)