Re: Uncovered HPV screening
From: art fougner, md (evsono@pipeline.com)
Mon Nov 20 04:56:08 2006
Thanks, Marilyn ... Paying for medical care seems to an anomalous
business situation in which the cash payor is at a disadvantage.
Art
At Sun, 19 Nov 2006, Marilyn Ringstaff wrote:
>
>At Sat, 18 Nov 2006, Garry E. Siegel, M.D. wrote:
>>
>>No joking; my wife has had a bunch of labwork done and the prices from
>>the large commercial lab are quite high.
>>
>>I have also seen the "retail" prices of HPV testing.
>>
>>Garry
>>
>Garry: Only Suckers Pay Retail :-)
>
>http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1127/054b.html?partner=magazine_newsletter
>Forbes
>Only Suckers Pay Retail
>David Whelan, 11.27.06
>Forbes
>
>How to chop hundreds of dollars off your medical bills.
>
>The cost of a medical procedure is usually a mystery until the bill
>comes. That's when you really get sick. Craig Conn, a software
>consultant in St. Charles, Ill., recently got an invoice for his wife's
>surgery, including a $3,390 facility charge. Conn is especially attuned
>to his medical bills because his insurance from Blue Cross Blue Shield
>of Illinois has a very high $5,000 deductible. Even though Blue Cross
>negotiated a lower facility charge of $1,290, Conn still thought it was
>too high.
>
>So he turned to a company called My Medical Control. A negotiator at
>the Louisville, Ky. firm compared what Conn had been charged with the
>lowest rates in the Chicago area. Then the negotiator called the
>hospital with an offer: Charge my client's credit card for $962 now and
>get your money within 48 hours. Or, and this was left unsaid, keep
>sending him reminders and hope to get paid someday, fingers crossed. The
>hospital agreed. My Medical Control pocketed 35% of the savings, or
>$115, and Conn was delighted to save $213.
>
>Timothy Cahill, My Medical Control's founder, is the first to admit his
>two-year-old business takes advantage of what might be charitably called
>a screwy medical economy. Three million U.S. employees have now been
>shifted to high-deductible plans, often saving their employers on
>premiums, but patients who now bear more cost still don't get enough
>information about what they should be paying for services and
>procedures.
>
>So a lot of the time they don't pay. Last year the cost of
>uncompensated care reached $29 billion, up from $22 billion in 2000.
>That shows up on the big hospital chains' profit-and-loss statements,
>where bad debt levels have almost doubled to 10% of revenue since 2000.
>Cahill's last two companies were a lot like My Medical Control: One
>helped health insurers get money out of hospitals and doctors, the other
>helped hospitals collect from car insurers. "What we've done," says
>Cahill, "is put ourselves in the middle."
>
>My Medical Control has six negotiators who run bills through a database
>that analyzes the 12,000 commonly used medical codes and checks them
>against a wide range of reimbursement policies in 200 metropolitan
>areas. If a customer is not getting the lowest rate, the negotiator
>calls the hospital or doctor's office and uses that rate to make a
>lowball offer. The average bill received is $1,000, and Cahill
>typically gets clients a 22% haircut. The largest bill ever was
>$62,000, which Cahill's company cut in half. Half of hospitals agree to
>the offer, nine in ten doctor's offices go for it. Cahill acknowledges
>that a smart patient could chisel down a bill without his help, but then
>you'd have to see a doctor for the migraine you'd get.
>
>--
>Marilyn Ringstaff, CNM
>
--
art fougner, md
"May The Wings of Liberty Never Lose a Feather." - Jack Burton
