Why is medicine the only retail service that can't figure out billing?

insurance covers different things differently

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All on separate bills, with different payment requirements and no explanation of what you are actually being billed for.

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Not to mention no one can give you the price of anything in advance.

What I can't stand is how cash customers typically get charged more


My current dentist is out of network for my dental plan and so I had to be reimbursed by my insurance company. Of course the amount paid by the insurance company doesn't pay for what the dentist charged me, because he didn't charge me the same "agreement" price that they will charge the insurance company.



Looks like I'll just have to change dentists

I guess the thought process would be if you were a business owner, would you trust another entity to bill for you? Is that even common to do with a degree of separation like this would be?

I'd be nervous to bill like that, and maybe why it isn't done.

I'm curious why other models didn't work out like a contractor/subcontractor arrangement where the consumer would get one bill. Probably insurance again.

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$1.95 for cook
$2.50 for use of the griddle
$2.00 for the burger and bun
$1.00 for the server
$1.50 for the condiments

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That's exactly what your dinner bill would look like if each of those were their own entity, with their own scope of services, and their own tax ID.

Your surgery (or whatever) isn't a single service, like a meal, no matter how much people want it to be.

There are concierge healthcare services that allow a one stop shop for exam, diagnostics, medication, and billing...but the markup is SIGNIFICANT, and you would have to file your own insurance to recoup whatever you can.

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Your surgery (or whatever) isn't a single service, like a meal, no matter how much people want it to be.

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Again. From the consumer's standpoint. It is.

The sign out front doesn't say:

Baton Rouge MRI
Jim Smith, MD
Red Stick Imaging Equipment leasing, LLC
Doctors Assistants & Lab Techs, Inc

This only seems to be a problem when multiple providers are involved. When I go visit my doc for a checkup, I get one bill. If I go to the hospital, or have a surgery, then, yeah, it's a mess.

In a perfect world, you would have one "medical contractor" who would bill you, and then that doctor would hire all the "subs" such as the facility, the pain doc, etc.

However, each of the "prices" not only vary from sub to sub, but also vary based on the insurance company used by the patient.

As long as you have this fractured system of insurance, I don't think there will be much of a fix for billing.

This is one of the many reasons I've long wanted to see the idea of in-network go away, and just have everyone have their rates and the insurance companies pay their share and the individual pays their share. This works for auto insurance.

I feel your pain (pardon the pun). As more employers and insurance companies shift the burden to the medical consumer, straightforward billing becomes even more necessary. At a meeting last year, prior to implementation of our HD plan, we were told that we should "negotiate" fees with our medical providers. It's a bit difficult to do that, under even the most ideal, elective circumstances, when there's often no single point of contact available to negotiate with.

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I assume you are discussing a hospital bill.

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3 separate MRI's and X-Rays that have been performed at different outpatient centers of clinics or hospitals.

For instance we are just getting billed with the dye injection from a MRI from February. Why is that separate? If an MRI doesn't need the injection just have it billed as one line:

- MRI with injection $650
- MRI without injection $520

Not 4 different bills that have zero explanation of what the hell they are for.

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You want me to contract additionally with the hospitals?

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I want you to figure out how to be customer focused.

Quite simply, medicine is not a retail service, it is a professional service not a fast food restaurant. Frustrating, yes but for the level and convince of care that we have become to expect, it is what it is and the insurance companies and the fed government/Medicare have forced it this way. I can only promise you it would be much easier on the provider end to set a price and demand to be paid that, but then you are "out of network " and that starts a whole new butch session