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PSA: If you have American health insurance, a) I am very sorry, and b) make sure you ALWAYS ask your provider to run an inquiry with your insurance about how much a treatment will cost before they provide it. Always. (thread)
Three months ago, I had an EKG that the provider told me I didn’t even need - it was “just a precaution” and wouldn’t show anything because I wasn’t currently experiencing symptoms.
Another provider in the SAME SYSTEM had given me an EKG a month earlier. That one cost me $0. So I didn’t think to ask how much another, precautionary EKG would run me.
I got hit with a surprise $722 bill because the second provider was a specialist at an outpatient hospital rather than a primary care provider at a doctor’s office. Same test, same system. Just more money because of whose assistant performed it, and in which building.
Had the doctor asked me if I wanted to check first, I would have done it. And then I would have turned down the treatment. But providers don’t have time for that shit! And they have zero idea what their services cost/how much individual patients’ insurance will cover.
Now. I’m VERY lucky that $722 is an absorbable amount. It sucks, but I don’t have to choose between paying the bill or buying groceries for the month.
It just makes me sick for the people for whom that isn’t the case, who don’t know to ask before services are provided, and who are fighting more challenging and expensive battles.
Vote for people who are doing their best to upend this massively fucked up symptom, of which this story is just one tiny example. And in the meantime, advocate for yourself. lifehacker.com/how-to-figure-…
