Inflated hospital bills
Maxwell's demon
Healthy Savings On Hospital Bills
Advocates Who Find Overcharges And Hidden Charges Can Pare Thousands Off
Sky-High Bills
By Melissa McNamara
There is some good news for the millions of Americans who find
their hospital bills a confusing mess. Wyatt Andrews reports on how you
can save money on your bill by doing a little investigating.
* Many hospital bills are a confusing list of codes and charges. A
medical advocate can help consumers sniff out mistakes and save money. Photo
CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook examines various
health issues and treatments.
...Nora Johnson, a billing advocate...is a kind of medical detective, an
advocate trained to sniff out mistakes on hospital bills. She found a
big one on O'Shea's.
The hospital repaired six tendons, but he was sent a bill for nine. "The
took $11,000 off of his bill," says Johnson, of Medical Billing
Advocates of America.
Johnson says almost every hospital bill she has ever reviewed has an
overcharge.
"I see it every day on every bill," Johnson says.
Consider Joe Manchin's bill. After his knee replacement last year,
Manchin says most of his $34,000 bill was a list of charges simply
labeled "hospital extras." Whatever happened, he thought, to plain English?
By the way, Manchin is governor of West Virginia. He says nobody can
understand what each hospital extra is. "The best accountant in the
world can not understand this," he says.
That bill led Manchin to propose radical surgery � for hospital bills.
Manchin believes the broken billing system can be fixed by patients. His
unique idea is to have the state's Medicaid patients become watchdogs
over their medical bills and pocket 10 percent of any error they
discover. The change, he says, will instantly improve billing and save
money.
"With technology today, they can't tell me that can't be done. I know it
can," Manchin says.
Nora Johnson believes every patient can be a watchdog. First, she says,
don't settle for a summary bill: Get an itemized bill. Look for charges
on procedures doctors did not perform, and then check for duplicate
charges. If you want a billing advocate like Johnson, start with the Web
site Bill Advocates. Then scroll down and click on "find an advocate."
After Steve O'Shea found an advocate, negotiations began with the Henry
Ford Health System, where officials tell CBS News "the services we
billed for were rendered." However, last week they drastically reduced
his bill � to around $6,500, about where Johnson said it should have
been all along.
"It's a profitable error, and errors always seem to have a way of
working out to be profitable," O'Shea says.
O'Shea thinks the lesson is that his bill, and the bills of most
Americans. have mistakes that need correcting.
Kelly Greene
"Maxwell's demon" <Old...@home.net> wrote in message
news:4a4d42ef$0$22513$607e...@cv.net...
Excellent advice. I never heard of a hosp underbilling and losing money for
themselves.
--
Kelly..........
If you're a past or present resident of
NYC and want to share past experiences
and current events with others from NYC,
check out this free message Board:
http://members6.boardhost.com/QueensNYer/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tristan
St. Barnabas hospital (It actually runs Clara Maass and other
facilities) was caught inflating and even falsifying charges for the
uninsured not long ago:
"In addition, St. Barnabas increased prices charged to uninsured
patients, Monahan alleged. "By rapidly increasing retail charges for
procedures often covered by Medicare, St. Barnabas got a steep increase
in federal aid," the Times reports (New York Times, 8/20)."
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/50171.php
"For those without health insurance, New Jersey is the most expensive
state in the union, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins. Patients
lacking insurance can expect to pay four to five times more than insured
patients." (Star Ledger 5/8/07)).