With health insurance that can leave him on the hook for more than a quarter of his salary every year, a Kentucky essential worker who has heart disease is one of millions of Americans who are functionally uninsured. At only 31, he has already been through bankruptcy and being sued by his hospital. This year, he faced a bill for more than $10,000.
An uninsured Colorado man owed $80,232 after two surgeries — the second to correct a complication from the first. After months of negotiating with the hospital, he still owes far more than most insurers would pay for the surgery he had.
When a colleague brings a medical billing problem to human resources director Steve Benasso — he goes to battle. “I am a bulldog on this stuff,” he said. In this episode, Benasso tells how he does it.
A college student’s bill for outpatient knee surgery is a whopper — $96K — but the most mysterious part is a $1,167 charge from a health care provider she didn’t even know was in the operating room.
Americans who had coronavirus symptoms in March and April are getting big hospital bills — because they were not sick enough to get then-scarce COVID tests. Some insurers say they are trying to correct these bills, but patients may have to put up a fight.
A dad in Denver tried to do everything right when COVID symptoms surfaced. Still, he ended up with a huge bill from an insurer that had said it waived cost sharing for coronavirus treatment. What gives?
Some large employers interpreted themselves as exempt from new federal laws that say tests for the coronavirus should be free to patients. Large academic medical centers are holding back from sending bills to these patients to avoid a backlash over surprise billing.
The Families First Coronavirus Response Act requires private insurers to pay for certain services related to coronavirus testing at no cost to the patient. But gaps in the protections expose patients to unexpected medical bills.
Her doctor worried she had COVID-19 but couldn’t test her for it until she ruled out other things. That test cost a bundle.
Molecular diagnostics are at the frontier of science, but insurance and billing questions create a minefield for patients.
