No. I'm saying in many cases the same sercive would actually cost LESS if you offered to pay for it yourself instead of having it billed through an insurance company,
Hmmm... I was not aware of this. Every case I have seen in my 25+ years of medicine shows that ins co's have contracted prices. They get a deal based on quantity of people vs. an individual.
Think of it this way. You go to the hospital and have your appendix removed. The hospital will likely bill your ins co around $50K. But after the ins co goes through the bill and their contract with that hospital it's typically around $12-$15K and the rest is written off. Then the insured pays their deductable/co pays in line with what ins paid. A self pay with no negotiations would pay $50K. Cut a deal with the hospital (even after the fact, many times) and you pay what an average ins co will pay.
With that said, many people are not aware that due to these contracted prices with ins co's if they are self pay they can usually request a discount and more times than not, this is granted.
I work in this industry for a living. I send people from Mexico to the US for (paid) medical care. Sometimes they have great ins that covers US care as well as MX and sometimes they have a lot of money and are merely self pay. I have ALWAYS been able to get my self pay people ins co contracted prices which is a fraction of what a self pay would usually be.
But, those are merely my experiences.
I am looking at this from the perspective of what the hospital bills for a service. You mentioned 50k billed to insurance above. I have heard of several cases where if that same procedure were billed directly to the customer they would be charged less. It's not less than what they would be with insurance coverage but the point is more how much is charged for the service based on who is being charged.
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