4 ms·

Do you have any further links or information on these magic incantations ?...

• cookiecaper 11y ago
  Here's an article about the differences: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/27/business/la-fi-medical-prices-20120527 http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/27/business/la-fi-medic... The specific incantations are different for every provider or hospital. Sometimes you can get it just by saying up front "I'm paying cash today." Sometimes you have to go through a complicated Patient Financial Services system to get the bill reduced, and then you have to say the right words to the right people if you want reduction. A massive bulk of "medical" labor goes into these cat and mouse games between patients, insurers, providers, and facilities. They're all trying to figure out how to maximize their profit and/or savings and it gets very complicated. If insurers learn that other people, even cash patients, are getting "a better deal", they'll punish the provider and/or facility by removing them from the network, thus cutting the patient traffic. When providers and facilities bill insurers, they expect to get maybe 10%-20% of the billed amount, so they rack the cost of everything up through the roof so that they'll be OK with the pittance they get in return. And that's the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of people whose jobs are dedicated to nothing more than these billing shenanigans.