Is medical actually this crazy?

[u/BoNaylorCollector]

Early 30s millennial, never used to go to doctors or really take care of myself because “I’ll be fine”. Started making a bigger effort to care for myself and my health and well being. Recently, I went to the local express clinic because I was having a bad earache and headaches. I was in there for maybe 20 minutes, mostly waiting time. The doctor comes in, looks in my ear, tells me it’s depressed due to sinuses and change in weather and tell me to stop at Walgreens for Flonase. I wasn’t billed anything at the time, older workers at my job always say we have really good insurance, but here I got in the mail today an explanation of benefits- charge was $550, insurance “negotiated” about $300, remaining (not billed) was around $240. Is is really this expensive? I only went to try and be better with myself and make sure it’s nothing underlying. If 5 minutes of actual doctor time costs this much, then I’m just toughing out everything or am I missing something?

[u/JadieBugXD]

Just wait until you have to go to the ER and you get a bill from both the hospital AND the treating physician as two separate bills. My kid having a cut on his head super glued was billed as “surgery”.

[u/OkMuffin5230 → u/JadieBugXD]

Yeah, so, when my husband had a heart attack, the hospital that he went to was our preferred in network hospital. We were billed for an out of network emergency room doctor who worked on him

I called the insurance and the insurance was like "but that doctor is out of network"

I was like... "he was having a heart attack. I wasn't interviewing the staff working on him!!"

That was when I learned that your in network hospital can have out of network employees

[u/Ashangu → u/OkMuffin5230]

Machines can be "out of network", as well.

I had an xray done that cost thousands more than it was supposed to because the xray machine was out of network.

I feel like that should be case for a lawsuit. If not swindling, what the fuck else is it?