We found out two weeks ago that we’re having twins.
We got a benefits explanation from our insurance provider today–and there are two identical charges for the ultrasound we did.
Called the ultrasound provider, and sure enough–they charged us twice because it turned out to be twins.
No big deal–just puts us $70 closer to maxing out a deductible which will inevitably be maxed out anyway.
But if we hadn’t had good insurance, considering the charges are $500 each, this would have been a disaster! I’m sure people don’t typically understand going in that if it turns out to be twins, then you’re going to be charged for two ultrasounds. And they certainly don’t explain this during the procedure itself…
Seriously?? That’s pretty shaky, IMHO. It’s not like the ultrasound required twice as much work or power or whatever, did it? Sometimes I really hate our health system…
I don’t think they would charge an individual person double for twins. I think they just do that because they always bill as high as possible to insurance. If you were uninsured and they billed you directly, they most likely would have just billed for one.
They said they did two exams, one for each “human being” (their words, and they put an odd kind of emphasis on it), and so they were within their rights to charge twice.
Like I said, I’m not even slightly inclined to argue about it since it’s money I was going to have to pay inevitably anyway, if not now then as a result of the next exam.
But yeah, “shakey” is a word you could use for this reasoning.
The insurance company even seems to, in a way, communicate the shakeyness of the reasoning for it–they allowed very different amounts for the two ultrasounds. We pay a little less than a third for one, and a little less than a sixth for the other.
(When my kid burned his finger on a light bulb many years ago, the total bill was $70,000, but because we were uninsured at the time they waived all but $7500 of it–and because we were super-poor at the time, they brought that down to $2500, which we paid in small installments.
I gather that not all hospitals are this kind. And I suspect a hospital’s kindness may be a function of patient demographic…)
The weird thing about this, to me, is that the babies are considered the clients instead of the mother. She is technically the one being seen, no?
I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m belittling the importance of your unborn children - I’m super excited for you. It just seems like it can get into sort of legally sticky territory to consider a fetus a patient.
I could see paying $70 for one baby and $35 for the other. They have to do the measurements twice and look at each baby so there is extra work involved. But they only have to do the actual ultrasound once, so a full double charge seems shady.
Disclaimer - I am not from a country that charges for health care so I could be off base here.
:eek: How bad was the burn for $70 000 worth of medical bills?
Congratulations on the twins, Frylock! I guess now is as good as any to start having to pay twice as much for everything (though I think your insurance company is insane)
I had a buttload of ultrasounds because I had a very high risk pregnancy, and therefore got to observe many of them, and I’ll bet there actually is close to twice the work in a detailed one of twins – all those measurements they take of the critter(s) and the placenta(s) and such. Plus with two in there I bet it’s a lot harder to make sure you’re looking at the same one you started with when you switch from cranium to thighbone or whatever. It’s murky in there. But maybe this wasn’t the measuring kind of ultrasound like I had, and they just took a peek and counted?
Congratulations! Get used to it…2x car seats, 2x high chairs, 2x beds, etc.
The ultrasounds make sense as they spend a lot of time doing the measurements for each. They have to keep track of the growth progress of each one to ensure proper growth. Fortunately for us when we had our twins, we didn’t have to pay for the ultrasounds (here in the Ontario Socialist Republic).
[aside]I cannot fathom resistance to socialized health care. Sure it’s a drag to pay into it when you don’t need it, but if you do it sure pays off.[/aside]
I should use this opportunity to suggest joining a local Twins Club. Ours has semi-annual clothing and toy sales. Good to buy stuff, great to sell it!
I’ve been having some very “iffy” sonograms too. Until a couple of weeks ago I was getting at least one sonogram a month, sometimes two depending on what the sonogram doctor (who is not my regular doctor) recommended. In October I went to my OB who said, “Why have you been having so many sonograms?” and I explained that the doctor in that department kept asking me to come back so I kept making appointments. Then later that day I went in for a sonogram and the sonogram tech said, “I know you like seeing your baby but you can’t keep coming in like this. We’re very busy and other women need to be seen too.” I just sort of looked at her and said, “But the doctor keeps telling me to come back!” She looked at my chart and my readings and said she couldn’t understand why because they already had everything they needed and my baby was perfectly normal in all 12 of the sonograms taken since I got pregnant so she called the doctor in to ask why I needed yet another follow-up exam. His response while I’m lying there covered in goo? “Well, she’s heavy so that makes the sonograms harder to read. Have her come back in two weeks.”
Seriously? I’m fat so you need to charge my insurance company $800 every two weeks even though you already have all the information you could possibly want and every other professional who is involved in my pregnancy thinks you are going way overboard? Good to know. That was my last sonogram for this pregnancy and my baby is doing just fine. They haven’t called or inquired as to why I’m not making appointments so I’m going to stick with my theory of insurance fraud and not have another sonogram.
He had to have surgery and stay in the hospital for something like a week in the burn ward, if I recall correctly. It actually didn’t look bad to us at the time, but the way it was healing would have caused him to have a permanently bent finger, they said, and we decided to have that fixed. They put cadaver skin on it, which is apparently exactly what it sounds like.* Then, later, they put his own scalp skin on it.
We didn’t really know how much the expense was going to be going in, and to this day I don’t really know how you figure that out ahead of time. But like I said, the hospital was very kind to us. I don’t know how universal that experience is.
*Is this part of what happens to my body if I am an organ donor?
I’m almost 22 weeks along and I’ve had… 3. The dating one (7 weeks), the initial one for the sequential screen (12 weeks) and the full anatomy scan (last week). I don’t even know when my next one is (and it’s not soon, or they’d have scheduled it at my last one). Do they really ramp them up that much at the end?
Chiming in to say that yes, it is in fact double the work. Our baby was in an odd position on her back, but curled up, and she took more than an hour to scan correctly, and they still didn’t get all the spine shots they needed. I can only imagine it would have taken at least twice as long for two kiddos.
Wow- I am scared about the burn too! How did he hold the hand on the lightbulb long enough to get burned that badly!?
I suppose that makes a lot more sense than what I was thinking - ER visit, bandage, etc! Poor kid; glad he’s OK!
I actually thought most women only really had 2 sonograms during a pregnancy. One to confirm and one about 4 months in to check for issues and identify the sex?
There was a big court case over a similar issue following 9/11. The WTC insurance policy had a maximum amount of $1,100,000,000 that was paid per incident. The owner argued that the attacks were two separate incidents and the insurer argued the attack was a single incident. The insurer won at an initial hearing but the owner won an appeal. I don’t know what the final outcome was (or even if one has been reached).
They were only supposed to do 3 for me just like everyone else. Apparently the doctor there felt like he could “legitimately” claim difficulty in reading the information and keep asking me to come back because of my weight and that I wouldn’t know any better because this is my first child. He kept moving me around from sonogram technician to sonogram technician too and I’ve determined that this is probably because he wanted to avoid someone saying something to me about being there way too often.
What a jerk! As if you don’t have enough appointments when you’re pregnant!
I can definitely see twins being twice the work on the full anatomy scan, because that shit takes forever. The early ones, though? They’re only a few measurements.
