patrick.net

My daughter went to GP and had moles looked at. He suggested going to dermatologist. That cost $20 copay. Then at dermatologist they removed one pencil eraser size mole and another slightly larger. Cost: Again $20 copay for office, $190 for doctor and $332 for pathology, after allowable charges by Anthem, I still owe $150.25 to doctor and $236 for pathology. So basically $213 per mole. Defintely will get them burned rather than excised in future.

BTW, I got screwed anyway!

I carefully confirmed that one annual physical is covered 100% and make an appointment for a physical and nothing else.

Then I got a bill for $325 for an "Office Visit", which is not covered by my insurance.

I called and confirmed that I made an appointment for a physical, and they said they'd check the coding. If they don't code it as what I asked for, I do plan to go to small claims court over it.

Boy I hate the medical system. I probably am fine, except that their billing is going to give me a stroke.

Next time go to a cash doctor. He'll tell you exactly what the price is, and will treat you much better.
Your bill will be lower than what you paid.

Maybe its possible to make a list or calculator for figuring out the costs of medical procedures up front? Perhaps similar to the rent vs buy calclulator. You could select from a list of 'treattments' and options and it would have boxes to fill in ahead of time that would tell you what to ask them BEFORE the appointment/treatment.

We really need to make the medical industry accountable like other professions - you should be able to get a quote up front in writing and they should NOT be able to arbitrarily tack fees on without you signing a new quote.

Its really insane, maybe Patrick and some good software coding can help!

PockyClipsNow says

Maybe its possible to make a list or calculator for figuring out the costs of medical procedures up front?

But they won't tell you!

Prices are all SECRET and the only way you can find out what they are is when you get the bill.

I suppose I could try to get everyone to enter medical codes, bill amounts, and provider from their own bills, kind of like gasbuddy.com, but I bet hardly anyone would do it, even if it were completely anonymized.

I'm having no luck getting any departing tenant to say anything about their rentals:

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Just a follow-up @Patrick, since it's been more than six months. How did this story turn out? Did you photograph the mole, and has it changed or remained stable?

Thanks for asking!

I called twice and was assured twice that the mis-billing would be corrected because their own records showed I had made an appointment for a physical. But it was not corrected and I started getting calls from a collection agency.

So I wrote two letters and got no response at all to them. Finally I filled out the small claims papers and went to file them at the court. The court clerk told me I did not have the exact correct legal name to serve papers to, so I had to go look that up. Since I was passing the Palo Alto Medical Foundation anyway, I stopped in to show them that I was about to file suit.

A nice person in the billing office assured me they would fix it, but I pointed out I had been told that before. But it looks like a credible threat of suing worked. I have not been billed by them for a month now so I think they finally did correct their error.

The doctor said the mole is nothing to worry about.

I would rather die than deal with them again.

Yes

And it's cheaper than most people's copay.

The doctor said the mole is nothing to worry about.

This may be the best reward of being a difficult patient. If you were a typical patient, especially with gold plated "Cadillac insurance", you might need a lot more tests to get the same answer. And, if any of those tests showed an ambiguous result or if any samples got switched at the lab, you might need some expensive and dangerous procedures too. That's how the premature deaths caused by "preventive care" tend to offset the lives "saved" by it, even before counting the fact that those "saved" include Elizabeth Edwards and others who endured more than five years of treatments without living much longer than if they had done nothing.