That’s absolutely false. The vast majority of health care issues develop slowly and there is plenty of time for bargaining. There is nothing that prevents me from contacting several doctors to see what they charge for an annunal checkup, for example.
If I find I need surgery – such as my wife’s knee replacement – the time between diagnosis is adequate for searching for the best price.
Consider pregnancy – a woman has plenty of time to shop for an obsteretition.
Ok, just curious… do you generally get a positive response when calling doctors to ask about or negotiate prices? We’ve tried simply asking what the prices for different services are. Generally the receptionist transfers us to someone in the billing department, who either doesn’t respond, or gets belligerent, or says they have to look it up but never get back to you, or says it depends on your insurance, or the specifics of the case, or blah blah blah.
There are some doctors and clinics and such that have a fixed price list for specific services. However my experience has been that, for many doctors’ offices, it is just not that transparent. Never mind getting to point of negotiating a price, because you can’t even figure out what the starting point it.
A surgery would be the type of thing too where, e.g. you might get a price for the surgeon for the knee replacement, but the anesthesiologist, the radiologist, and the doctor making the rounds in recovery all belong to separate practices that all bill separately from the surgeon. Perhaps you can negotiate with one… but you don’t necessarily get to choose them all.
Other kinds of screwy things happen too. E.g. I know that my hospital runs blood work in their own lab, which is covered by my insurance and will charge xx amount. On Tuesday I get some blood drawn at the hospital. However, they’re short-handed that day, and send out my sample (without my knowledge or consent) to an outside lab, which happens to not participate in my plan, charges 3 times as much, and doesn’t apply toward my deductible. I’m left with a bill for much higher than I expected. I can stall up to a point, but they don’t respond without threat of legal action, insurance and the hospital both blame each other, and ultimately it’s my credit score that’s going to get dinged if I don’t pay, so I really have no recourse.
As for an Ob-Gyn - depending on where you live, these are in very short supply. Not an attractive field for young doctors to specialize in. 9 months isn’t necessarily a long time to find one. And if you actually want some prenatal care earlier in pregnancy… it’s not unusual to have to wait 3-4 months to get the next open appointment, never mind trying to find the doctor with the best cost structure, or one that will negotiate with you. And back to the first part of my post… my wife’s Ob practice was a classic case of having no idea what they actually charge. In fact they never even got around to billing us for prenatal services, and a different Ob ended up being on call for the delivery, so he billed us for that, which may have been totally different from what the original Ob would have charged.
So if I may summarize, even the cost of routine medical care can be difficult to predict, let alone negotiate. At least in my experience. Even if you do have time between 9 and 5 to call around to different doctors’ offices and speak with unhelpful people in the billing department.
)It won’t help the Walmart 40 hour employee, I’m afraid. Not that this person defines broke, but they probably cannot afford health care as we know it. I am not against medical savings accounts…my employer offers them and some people love them–but they won’t help people who are broke. I might read through the thread so I understand the definition of broke, to make sure I’m on the same page.
