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Had my implant surgery 3 weeks ago and today received the first explanation of benefits from my insurance. I have heard many of you tell how the surgery cost 20, 30 or 40 thousand. These guys billed my insurance 128,881.00. I was floored to say the least. Insurance 'allowed' them to charge just 4,180.00 of which i owe 418.00.
Other than being on Medicare which covers the whole thing i dont know how folks w/o insurance manage it. Im still working and apparently have better insurance than i thought.
Guess the moral of the story is be greatful when your company provides insurance. It may not be perfect but expenses like that would have bankrupted us.
The other part is i am greatful and thankful to have a second chance at an intimate life with my lovely wife.

With hospitals the price is never the price. They pull their charges from thin air - even their costing people couldn't tell you what a stay or procedure actually costs. Their contract with the insurers, Medicare and Medicaid specify what the insurer will pay for procedure and related costs, as well as your copay. With all the reform going on in the healthcare/insurance industry we can only hope that something as simple as a hospital bill will eventually come to make sense, and in any case with ACA in effect there is no reason for people to be without insurance. If they are truly destitute Medicaid will take care of them.

MickCrowder wrote:Had my implant surgery 3 weeks ago and today received the first explanation of benefits from my insurance. I have heard many of you tell how the surgery cost 20, 30 or 40 thousand. These guys billed my insurance 128,881.00. I was floored to say the least. Insurance 'allowed' them to charge just 4,180.00 of which i owe 418.00.
Other than being on Medicare which covers the whole thing i dont know how folks w/o insurance manage it. Im still working and apparently have better insurance than i thought.
Guess the moral of the story is be greatful when your company provides insurance. It may not be perfect but expenses like that would have bankrupted us.
The other part is i am greatful and thankful to have a second chance at an intimate life with my lovely wife.

They actually didn't bill your insurance over $128 thou. It's generally a fake charge designed to do what it did: make you feel grateful for having insurance. That aside, you are right when you say those of us who have [employment-related] health insurance--for which WE PAY PREMIUMS that we don't completely notice because they are taken from our paychecks, just like taxes--should consider ourselves fortunate.

KMeister

There is a website, http://truecostofhealthcare.net/, by David Belk that covers this issue. There are other resources that cover this topic as well of course.

@dg__moore this is off topic but ACA isn't really effective in the real world sense and I won't comment any more on that since that is my opinion and I won't get into a discussion about that.

@MickCrowder congratulations, keep us updated.

anotherguy wrote:There is a website, http://truecostofhealthcare.net/, by David Belk that covers this issue. There are other resources that cover this topic as well of course.

@dg__moore this is off topic but ACA isn't really effective in the real world sense and I won't comment any more on that since that is my opinion and I won't get into a discussion about that.

@MickCrowder congratulations, keep us updated.

Thanks for your opinion. I have one also, as do most.

Here's what I posted about my billing ....

Insurance Information, Billing!

Just logged on to our insurance web site:

Surgeon charged: $4,209.00 (Insertion, Multi-component)
Hospital charged: $74,564.75 (AMS 700 LGX was $37,999.50, included in the hospital charge)
Total Bionic Boner: $78,773.75
-co-pay $25.00

Insurance Payed: $12,088.16

Surgeon got: $764.95
Hospital got: $11,323.21

Jere