Extra Health-Care Facility Fees

LilOlLady

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Apr 20, 2009
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Reno, NV
Extra Health-Care Facility Fees
Take Many Patients by Surprise

By Sandra G. Boodman
Kaiser Health News
Tuesday, October 6, 2009

But when Young, 54, received a $25.59 bill for a "facility fee" separate from the $207 physician's charge for a recent routine eye exam, she called her health plan for an explanation. Young was told the fee was a "room charge" -- an item she might not have noticed previously.

Baffled, she reviewed two years of paperwork and found that the fee hadn't appeared until this year. "Why am I paying for it?" she asked. "And why wasn't I told when I made the appointment?"

Similar complaints are occurring more often, consumer advocates across the country say, because patients increasingly are being charged the fees, the result of an obscure change in Medicare rules that occurred nearly a decade ago. Called "provider-based billing," it allows hospitals that own physician practices and outpatient clinics that meet certain federal requirements to bill separately for the facility as well as for physician services. Because hospitals that bill Medicare beneficiaries this way must do so for all other patients, facility fees affect patients of all ages. Doctors' offices owned by physicians and freestanding clinics are not permitted to charge them.


READ MORE:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02910.html
 
An article in the Sunday Reno Gazette Journal today was about a women who was charged $103 extra for use of room. Can be as much as several hundred dollars.
 
DOCTORS CHARGE TOO DAMN MUCH.

I got a doctor's bill today and I almost lost my bladder contents. A routine office visit bill for a balance or $141.28. Amount the insurance did not pay and that I would spend a day in hell before I pay. Yes, the doctor has an office on hospital grounds and is part of a hospital clinic. The total bill for two routine office visits were $1,315. WTF is this all about. Keep this up and doctors affiliated with hospitals will have no patients. I will be looking for another doctor----- in Mexico. A private doctor with no insurance to charge would not charge that. That is why Medicare and Medicaid is broke. Doctor charge too damn much. If you do not believe me I will send you a copy of the bill and why the hell is Obama and the rest of the clowns allowing this to happen?
The doctors office did not even have the nerve to itemize the bill. This bill must include charges for the examination room. But that still do not explain the other charges.
Are doctors getting charged by hospitals for the cost of treating illegal aliens who do not pay and is passed on the ME?

Extra Health-Care Facility Fees Take Many Patients by Surprise
Sandra G. Boodman
Kaiser Health News
October 6, 2009
Extra Health-Care Facility Fees Take Many Patients by Surprise
 

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