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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (186390)	5/9/2006 7:14:00 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Sorry to butt in and I will be on my lurk mode after this...but this is not how it works. Say the hospital says your drugs cost 100k. Your HMO says you are responsible for a third of the costs so supposedly you pay 33k of the 100. Then the billing department of the HMO will call the hospital and "remind" them that there is a volume discount between hospital and HMO and they should get a 60% discount...the HMO will end up paying close to $30k. In other words, the patient pays more than the HMO in most cases (and the HMO never pays what their percentage of total costs would have been). The whole thing is a sham that has been going on for too long. Ask some of your doctor friends in hospitals and they will fill you in...btw, in case you are thinking this volume discount to HMOs is legit, a friend of mine who had no insurance got a $340k bill after her pregnancy. She called the hospital and told them she can't afford this and they should give her a better deal. Right on the spot they droped $140k of the bill and told her the rest of it can be reduced too. In other words, if you know how the system works, you can neggotiate your price, which is another way of saying that the price on the bill is a jacked up price. ST