About the best you can do to reduce complexity is an HMO plan, in which the company owns the hospitals and hires the doctors as well. It's a lot easier to stay "in the system" that way and avoid surprise bills. Even then, I've never come across one that did dental as well.
But yeah, it's purposely this bad. Some fun tricks:
you know Emergency Departments are expensive, so you go to an "urgent care" clinic instead when you can't wait for an appointment. Turns out they're affiliated with a hospital's emergency department, even though they're in a completely different building across town, and you get billed the ED rates anyway
some random doctor walks in while you're resting in the hospital and asks you some questions. You have no clue who they are. Months later, you get a bill for hundreds of dollars for the "out of network" consult.
or some random doctor wanders into your surgery, to the same effect, but for thousands of dollars
There's no way to avoid getting fucked, and you just have to hope you get lucky.
Ironically my school’s plan does do dental! Or at least so far as I can tell from the info I’ve read of it.
The doctors randomly wandering in part is crazy to me. Do they do it on purpose to get more money? Is it nefarious or just a common screw-up??? I’m not sure if you’ll know the answer to that but it seriously is mind blowing to me that just ... happens.
I've only learned about this through reading. It's at least a combination of doctors trying to get more money, and the hospitals telling the doctors to find more ways to bill patients.
Here are some examples:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/us/drive-by-doctoring-surprise-medical-bills.html
Yeah, the fact that you can go to a hospital that's "in network" and be seen by doctors that are out of network is fucking insane. I've had it happen to me in the ER where it's not like you're in much of a state to stop a doc from poking their head in to see if they're in network (not that they'd fucking know) especially if you've been waiting to be seen for hours as it is. And it's not like you'd know to do that until after this sort of thing has happened to you either.
you know Emergency Departments are expensive, so you go to an “urgent care” clinic instead when you can’t wait for an appointment. Turns out they’re affiliated with a hospital’s emergency department, even though they’re in a completely different building across town, and you get billed the ED rates anyway
OMG we had a whole zoom conference with our work insurance and they mentioned this.
Everything in America is a goddamn fucking grift. Its fucking unbelievable. I feel like if you don't live in the US you can't even take it seriously....like you feel like shit like this has to be exaggerated.
About the best you can do to reduce complexity is an HMO plan, in which the company owns the hospitals and hires the doctors as well. It's a lot easier to stay "in the system" that way and avoid surprise bills. Even then, I've never come across one that did dental as well.
But yeah, it's purposely this bad. Some fun tricks:
There's no way to avoid getting fucked, and you just have to hope you get lucky.
Ironically my school’s plan does do dental! Or at least so far as I can tell from the info I’ve read of it.
The doctors randomly wandering in part is crazy to me. Do they do it on purpose to get more money? Is it nefarious or just a common screw-up??? I’m not sure if you’ll know the answer to that but it seriously is mind blowing to me that just ... happens.
I've only learned about this through reading. It's at least a combination of doctors trying to get more money, and the hospitals telling the doctors to find more ways to bill patients.
Here are some examples: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/us/drive-by-doctoring-surprise-medical-bills.html
Yeah, the fact that you can go to a hospital that's "in network" and be seen by doctors that are out of network is fucking insane. I've had it happen to me in the ER where it's not like you're in much of a state to stop a doc from poking their head in to see if they're in network (not that they'd fucking know) especially if you've been waiting to be seen for hours as it is. And it's not like you'd know to do that until after this sort of thing has happened to you either.
OMG we had a whole zoom conference with our work insurance and they mentioned this.
Everything in America is a goddamn fucking grift. Its fucking unbelievable. I feel like if you don't live in the US you can't even take it seriously....like you feel like shit like this has to be exaggerated.