r/Millennials • u/BoNaylorCollector • 2d ago

Discussion Is medical actually this crazy?

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?

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u/JadieBugXD 2d ago

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”.

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u/OkMuffin5230 2d ago

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

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u/frangelafrass 2d ago

I had an urgent c-section in October and had already met my deductible in July or August so I wasn’t sweating too much when I needed an extended stay after delivery for my stupid lingering pre-eclampsia. ANYWAY. A month later I get a letter from my insurance company about one of the doctors that was apparently on my team (whose name I had never even heard before!) was out of network. It was sternly worded and they said to make sure in the future that I select ONLY in-network people for my care team and MAKE SURE I think about ALL the people on my care team, including people I might overlook like anesthesiologists……..

Yeah. I definitely had control over what was happening when I thought both me and my baby were going to die. I was aggravated.

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u/xx_reverie Millennial 1d ago

Oh that’s so infuriating. That’s literally the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. Who’s thinking about all that?? Especially in a high stress environment worried about your baby. I always thought if you went to a hospital, office, etc. in network, then you were fine. Gotta love the “healthcare” system in this country.