The one where Rebecca gets pissed at medical costs

(title courtesy of a Friends binge I've been on...)

Ok, seriously, this makes no sense to me at all.

How on earth does my local hospital get away with charging $973.70 for an emergency 15 minute external ultrasound to check to see if my baby was alive? And, in their bill, they call it a 14 week pregnancy ultrasound (which I obviously wasn't) which makes it seem like it wasn't a necessary ultrasound but an optional one. My insurance company, through the magic of all the deals they make with hospitals, is only going to "allow" them to charge me $281.00 and calls it "medical service."

Which I still find ridiculous. At my RE's office I had three ultrasounds after we'd already found out the pregnancy wasn't viable (one to confirm and get more info and two to make sure everything had come out after the m/c). You could even argue that these were unnecessary ultrasounds. Each one was both external and vaginal. Each one lasted 20 minutes or more. The RE charged $178.00 for each one and my insurance "allowed" them to charge me $58.90 and called it, are you ready for this, an "ultrasound!" That is $176.70 for three in depth optional tests or $281.00 for one absolutely necessary emergency test. Something is VERY wrong with that.

(For the u/s at 7w I had to confirm and date the pregnancy at the RE the "allowed" charge was $106 on a $360 bill. Not sure why it was different, but still seems a lot more reasonable!)

What's even more ridiculous? The "cash" price that my RE charged for u/s for fertility treatments (since my insurance sucks majorly where IF is concerned) was $85 (recently raised to $100). So, that means I've been paying less than 1/3 the cost of a covered, medically necessary test for my uncovered, entirely frivolous (to them) test.

Here I was thinking it was foolish to drive 90 miles for ultrasounds and blood work at my RE's office. Little did I know how much I was saving.

I'm considering contesting the cost of the emergency ultrasound. Not the amount that my insurance is charging (because I believe they are charging the right amount based off of what the hospital is charging), but what the hospital is charging in general. I don't understand on what planet that cost makes sense. For those who have had emergency ultrasounds at the hospital, was the cost similar? Am I crazy or are they? Or, should I just keep my mouth shut and thank my lucky stars that my RE hasn't figured out how much she could be getting away with charging...

One of the reasons I'm so angry about this is that I seem to spend all my time contesting incorrect bills from doctors since we started fertility treatments. We've been re-charged twice for an ultrasound we already paid for, I've argued for a week about a $2000 credit card payment they claimed didn't go through (when I'd already been billed for it by the cc company and paid the bill) and I've spent 6 months contesting an incorrect double charge for an IUI. I finally had to tell the customer service rep that, as virile as my husband is, it is highly unlikely he provided two samples for "sperm washing" within a few minutes of each other and she needed to check her records more carefully.

Yeesh.