I’ll try to make this as unconvoluted as possible…
The background: I had a kidney stone. About midway through dealing with it, I hit my deductible. That is, I have a $4000 deductible, I was at $1400 and the whole thing cost something like $5000. I have a bill here for $2600.
That’s not quite exact, but it’ll do just fine for my purposes.
So, I’m going to call the billing office and ask them if I can get a discount if I pay it in full, right now, today, here’s my credit card number* (is it cheaper if I give you a check?). I always hear that if you offer to pay it in full, you can usually get a discount. I’ve heard anything from 20% to 80%. Honestly, I’ll be thrilled if I get 10%, but I won’t be surprised if were at a day and age where the number on the bill is the total, period. But, it’s worth a call, right.
Anyways, what I want to know is that since the $2600 is what was left of my deductible, will the insurance company just give rebill any discount I get, back to me? IOW, lets say the hospital give me a 10% discount. That’s $260 off. Now, I’ve only paid $3740 towards my deductible. If the hospital puts this new total back in through the insurance company, I assume the next $260 worth of medical bills that come their way, they won’t pay, but rather defer to me as if I hadn’t hit my deductible. If that’s the case, there’s no point in even bothering.
OTOH, the hospital may consider this a deal they’re making with me and since they’ve already run it through the insurance company, they’ll leave them out of it at this point.
*It’s actually a debit card number hooked into my (very low interest) HSA. But, I’d like to keep this on topic, I’m really not looking for any financial advice. But in case anyone is curious, if they can’t give me some kind of discount, I’ll probably ask them if they can break it into a handful of payments.