Spending and Saving
How to Outsmart Your Medical Bills
Okay, so you don’t have health insurance. Or your insurance has a low reimbursement limit or a high deductible. Or, you had to have your wisdom teeth out, and dental isn’t covered. However it happened, here you are, staring at a medical bill equal to the annual budget of a small Caribbean nation. Not a good place.
Use A Medical Negotiation Service.
You may think you have no choice but to pay this ridiculous amount, or else eventually face legal action. But there’s another alternative: Use a negotiation service to bring that stratospheric bill back down to earth. Though some specifics differ, all negotiation services work by reviewing your bill, contacting your doctor or other provider and suggesting a lower price. They do this based on extensive information about “usual and customary” charges.
Medical Fees Aren’t Always What They Seem.
While medical practices often act like they have set fees for their various services, they actually accept widely varying payments from different insurance companies, Medicare, and people without medical insurance. Believe it or not, doctors often bill uninsured patients three or four times as much as insurance companies would pay—simply because large insurance companies have pre-negotiated lower rates. So, if you don’t have an insurance company dictating what a doctor or hospital can charge, it makes sense to try negotiation before you pay that hefty fee.
The negotiation service pays for itself from a percentage of your savings, if you have any.
Use Common Sense In Negotiating.
It’s obviously a waste of everyone’s time, including yours, to try to negotiate a $25 or $50 co-pay, but any bill larger than, say, $250 is appropriate for negotiation, whether it’s partly covered by insurance or not. You can try to negotiate by yourself and save the fee, but you’ll have to do some research. You’ll need to know going rates for the same procedure in your area. Unless you have access to medical or insurance information, this can get complicated fast…
Read the rest of this article at LearnVest: Don’t Pay That Medical Bill—Use a Negotiation Service!
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Thanks for the informative post. We formed INSNET, LLC in 2007 to help individuals save money on their medical bills. Since 1985 Insurance Negotiating Service, INS, has saved insurace companies millions of dollars. We formed INSNET to be an individuals safety ‘net’ and ensure they only pay a fair price on their bills. Individuals now have access to the same cost saving tools that insurance companies have had for decades. To learn more visit http://www.myinsnet.com.