Is their a way to find out if you are being charged to much by a hospital?

[Jason]

Is their a way to find out if you are being charged to much by a hospital?

Are there medical billing caps?

PS: I had no insurance.

[ConfusedToo]

With or without insurance? Hospitals, or any medical for that matter, can only charge you your co-pay if you have insurance. They have to accept what insurance pays and cannot charge you the difference.

Without insurance, they charge the full amount to you, which is probably higher than they would get from insurance.

Rip-off? Yes. Legal? Yes. State laws may vary.

[zfire]

If you do think you are being overcharged, you can meet with accounting and go over the bill with them. They do double charge sometimes, and nobody

notices it except the person paying the bill, unless it is brought to their attention. Since they are in the business to make money, you have to be the one to challenge the overcharges.

Z

[isislc]

Another point to bring up. You can also negotiate a discount. If you don't have insurance you can always request a discount. I had this happen with a bill that I was stuck paying for $700 and missed timely filing with insurance. I called the doctor's office and explained the problem. They then reduced my bill to $150. It does work as long as you're courteous and deal directly with the OC.

[flacorps]

There are businesses around that will flyspeck hospital bills.

Some take a percentage of what they save you, others work by the hour.

Chances are that every bill has things that were doubled up on, things that were charged to you that were done to or for someone else, and things that were just charged at unreasonable prices.

Insurance companies do this stuff for you. When you're uninsured you're on your own.

[Jason]

Yeah I did not have insurance at the time.

There should be laws if there isn't already with medical billing caps.

I thought perhaps there was web site that we can look at pricing to see if they are billing accurately. It really does not make sence that any hospital can bill what ever they feel like. There has to be or needs to be a standard policy in place for billing.