The sickest part is the "billed to insurance" value. You get a medical bill that looks like this: Cost: $1000 Paid by patient: $200 Billed to insurance: $800

The sickest part is the "billed to insurance" value. You get a medical bill that looks like this: Cost: $1000 Paid by patient: $200 Billed to insurance: $800 Paid by insurance: $150 Remaining to be paid: $0 I get statements that look like this all the time, where the provider "bills" the insurance for $N, but the insurance pays a fraction of it, and apparently that's "good enough". But when they tell me "that'll be $200 today, please, we take Visa and Discover", I don't have the option to say "actually I'm gonna pay $50 and that's good enough"