I took care of this by being born in Canada. It won’t work for everyone, but it’s worked nicely for me. 
Okay, fine, I still have to pay dental bills. They submit those to my insurance for me, and I pay the remainder in a week or so when it’s clear how much won’t be covered.
Yeah I just go to the doctor, and I never see a bill.
I just go to my specialist and I never see a bill.
I just have my surgery and I never see a bill.
I just go to the ER and I never see a bill.
My wife and daughter were in the hospital for 2 weeks after giving birth and I never saw a bill.
Yup I live in Canada.
I can totally see why American Republicans think our system is evil.
MtM
That’s a good idea. I should think about doing something like that.
In one case I got a bill and there was never a corresponding EOB. As it turned out, the paperwork got lost and the insurance company never received the claim. It took some phone calls to straighten that one out.
Yeah, but you’re all socialists and everyone knows that the waiting lists are so long that your wife couldn’t get a spot in the maternity ward until your daughter was 3 years old and you must hate it because if you don’t then I might be wrong and that can’t be!
As for me, I go to a big clinic, and they never send a bill until the insurance company has paid. I have a flexible spending account for health care, so every few months or so I gather up all my EOB forms, and my prescription co-pay forms, fill out a form and fax them to the FSA company and get the money back. (I’ve had it taken out pre-tax from my paycheck.) Every so often the insurance company bounces something, but it is usually because someone misentered something and the clinic takes care of it.
Intuit (the company that publishes Quicken) has a product called Medical Expense Manager that’s supposed to help people manage these things, including whether the insurance company has paid a bill. It sounds like a good idea, but after looking at the website and a couple of reviews, I get the idea that it hasn’t been updated in several years. (It is a good idea for a software product, though.)
Not a method, but some info/terms that might be helpful:
Co-pay: a set amount per appointment, usually collected at time of the appointment
Co-insurance: a percentage of the total bill that you owe, usually billed, but sometimes pre-determined and paid at the time of the service (often used for tests, etc., whereas co-pays are usually for appointments, but this is not always true)
Out of pocket maximum: Once you meet this (usually at leat 3000) you don’t have to pay anything anymore, usually not even co-pays
Deductible: This is the amount you have to pay before your insurance pays anything
Third quarter carryover: this is a nice feature wherein anything you pay that would count towards the deductible in the last three months of the year carries over to apply to the next year’s deductible
The question “do you take my insurance?” is a bad way to phrase what you really want to know. Anyone will take your insurance, the question is really whether or not the provider is in your network of providers, aka “a preferred provider.” If so, you will probably pay a lower co-pay or co-insurance than with an out of network provider. Also, in network providers are not allowed to balance bill, which is charging you what is left when you take what they charge, what the insurance pays, and your co-insurance or co-pay.
Hope this helps! I learned all this the hard way, as someone who bills insurance and initally lost a lot of money.
My bills (and I’ve had quite a few of them coming in since a pulmonary embolism last July) have always been quite clearly marked as “this is the part your insurance is or may be covering” and “this is the part you definitely have to pay.” So far, I haven’t had any refunds bounce back (or gotten nagged for not paying something I should have).
Because you’re a SOCIALIST! And you live in a FURRIN country!
You know–the usual.
Usually the first statement from a provider is either “we’ve billed your insurance, here’s the current balance but you don’t owe anything” - or it’s not sent until after the insurer pays so they know the correct amount due.
From my recent surgery, I never got anything from any of the providers until the insurance had paid their share.
In either case, I wouldn’t pay anything until I’d gotten the EOB from the insurer. Then I’d pay what they said I owed.
Funnily enough: at least one provider got confused. They got my payment before they got the insurer’s EOB/payment. So they said “oh, she doesn’t owe us anything yet!”… and sent my check back to me. I had to mail it right back to them. :smack:.
Oh, and in one recent case, I called the provider, told them “I owe you this much, please collect it from my credit card”.
Then a month later, I did it again (they never collected it the first time).
See, they claimed they never got an EOB from insurance so they couldn’t bill me until they’d gotten that EOB and payment.
Only trouble is, the insurance had processed it 2 months earlier. Paid nary a dime (it was for an ultrasound, in December, and their fee came in under the deductible). Somehow, someone at the ultrasound provider’s office missed that - I guess they overlooked it because it had a zero-payment listed.
Heaven knows when I’d have gotten billed, but I didn’t want it to get lost in the shuffle, so I told them “look, I have the EOB right here. It says with the in-network discount, I owe 189 bucks. Please charge me for it”.
I fully expect to get a bill for the full 450 dollars any day now. :smack:
I only have copays so I never see a bill.
Today the cost of healthcare in Scotland dropped. The price of a prescribed drug will be £3 for the next 12 months (previous year £4) before the charges for all medicines are removed next year. A 12 month prepayment certificate will cost £28.
No bills from doctors or hospitals, despite having my clavicle screwed back together last year. It was a close thing but I escaped from the Death Panel, as they decreed my life to be worth preserving.
I hate living in a socialist backwater.
Apparently Americans are also exempt from the death panels–I got a really nasty case of strep when I was in Scotland a few years back, and all they did was diagnose me for free and then give me free antibiotics. Scandalous!
I live in Canada too, but when I pay for dental work or prescription drugs with my work insurance, I get the same kind of “this is not a bill, just a wild-ass guess of how much you would have to pay” statements from the insurance company. Especially regarding dental stuff.
They have Quicken Health now, which is free. I actually was pointed towards this though my health insurance company (a link right from their Web site) and being that I link it with my health insurance account, some stuff gets filled in for me.
I actually don’t like it that much because my method for paying is “when a bill comes from the doctor, pay it, using my HSA debit card and mark it in Quicken.” Having Quicken Health seems to complicate the matter. They send me emails with claims before I get bills (so I ignore the emails), and I don’t like having to enter my payment into the Web site and into Quicken on my computer.
However, if I didn’t have Quicken on my computer, and if I paid more attention to health care costs, I might be more interested in Quicken Health.
How dare they! And how dare you take advantage of that system!
Great. Now the secret is out, there will be a queue of health tourists.
I was in the hospital in October and they sent me a bill for $10 for using the TV in the room. Our health care is really going downhill up here in the great white north, last time I was in the hospital that was free!
Ok, you guys are having fun with the thread, so I won’t derail it too much. But just because you don’t see a bill doesn’t mean it is “free”. You pay for it just like we do, but instead of seeing a bill, you see a GST for most everything you purchase. Six of one, half dozen of the other…
Yeah, 'cause an extra five cents on my sandwich is exactly the same thing as a $15k bill from the ICU.