re: How much were you charged to get tubes in you child’s ears?

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The Eustachian tube in the middle ear in children lays horizontal and is prone to ear infections. The tubes incline it to help with drainage, causing less infections.

Both of my kids had to have them due to constant ear infections... one of my sons ears had almost total hearing loss before the tubes. Don’t know if it is the same way now, but 15 years ago they had to have a certain amount of infections for it to be chronic before they’d ok the surgery. That bullshite rule caused a lot of sleepless nights.

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You are understating it.

When yellow fluid is running out of your kid's ears on a weekly basis because the ear drum ruptured to let the pus out, after countless nights of night-screaming from your child, and your pediatrician says everything is fine, it's normal for babies to cry, it is normal to get ear infections, take him back to ped and he looks inside ear and says no ear infection, then it ruptures in the check-out line, so he says "That's why they call it practicing medicine hee hee" and finally refers to ENT for tubes to drain the fluid so it doesn't cause permanent hearing loss due to constant ear drum rupturing, it costs $35,000.


I had this same topic on here about 2 years ago but I don't care to dig it up.

$15000 billed is probably 6-8k actually paid by yourself and your insurance.

Remember that you’re not just paying for 15 minutes of the surgeon’s time, but the ancillary services and facility fee as already pointed out. You’re also paying for the expertise of someone who went to med school and ENT residency, delaying their income for at least 9 years after college graduation.

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We had one that wouldn’t fall out. It cost us more to have that one removed than it did to get both of them out in.

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That's another part of the scam... if they fall out naturally, might have to put them back in. If they don't fall out quick enough, might have to take it out.

So much bullshite.

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It’s ripoff,my sister had them several times and I had them once.Dr. just did it in the office with his nurse assisting.That was in the old days,though.Now they make huge deal out of it with a huge bill.

What’s your choice?

Just had it done a couple months ago and it cost me $0 because my insurance through work is the tits! I do remember seeing that my insurance company paid roughly $7500 though.

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I get an invoice saying I owe $1,145.40. I’ve already paid out of pocket nearly $900.

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All depends on the type of insurance coverage you have. I think ours was about $700 total out of pocket.

Or it could very likely be a billing error. Insurance companies and doctor's offices tend to do that. I wouldn't pay it without calling and inquiring about it.

Medical industry is out of control.

Overhead DUE to insurance companies and the federal government is a huge reason for healthcare costs that seem outrageous.

If insurance was used like any other form of insurance, and most of your office visits and simple procedures were paid by the patient, I could save over $100k in labor. My billing staff alone costs close to $100k. I wouldn’t pay several thousands of dollars for credentialing, $15-20k in EMR costs. I’d need 1 less medical assistant. I’d be able to spend more time with every patient (though I already give patients more time than a lot of specialists). And ultimately the patient would pay less for the same services. Especially those who pay premiums every month and still have $2-3k deductibles.

And don’t forget your insurance company has much higher overhead the more claims that are needing to be processed.

It’s silly to even call it “health insurance” when you use it for every single episode of care.