craziest charge for health/medical treatment you've had

Inorite? Can you imagine hearing him complain at the counter ahead of you about the charges for his splinter removal while you were waiting your turn for something... I dunno.... urgent?

 

You are lucky because you actually got the proper treatment even it was overpaid.

It could be much worse, easily.

They could just get you some infection and cut your some body part ....

 

lolwut?

 

Well, he does have a point...

I mean, you gotta admit, the OP coulda been hit by a car, stabed, raped ect just sitting in the waiting room, but at least he made it home OK with ONLY a $300 bill.

 

I question the need to see a doctor for a splinter. I can see going to a doctor's office, but I would think a nurse would be capable of handling such an injury.

 

IF it is not an emergency (like a splinter), why not ask what you are about to be charged to see the doctor? Or ask what you are about to be charged to have the splinter removed.

 

Actually an urgent care center is a good place to go get something like this done. They are not an emergency room. Urgent care centers are more like clinics. They do flu shots, physicals, etc.

But yes, doctors and hospitals charge ridiculous prices for ridiculous services. I fought a doctor to get a bill waived that included a surcharge for something that the insurance denied. When I asked the insurance company to figure out the code it was something about electrical screen cleaning equipment.

 

Because it's about as easy to extract nuclear codes from the President.

 

Textbook principal-agent problem. The $50 copay is supposed to discourage you from doing stupid stuff like that. How many tweezers and bottles of hydrogen peroxide can you buy for $50?

 

I was scheduled for a sinus surgery at an outpatient surgery center near my house where everything was pre-approved. The ENT had a conflict come up so we had to reschedule, she had a date open in a surgical center in the Med Center so I took it. It turned out that the anesthesiologist at that center that day was not in the Blue Cross system so the center billed me for the whole uninsured rate for his services, like $4K.

I call Blue Cross and met with the administrator and explained that I could not have possibly known and would not have scheduled an out of plan anesthesiologist ( they probably would have caught it too except for the scheduling snafu). Blue Cross ended up paying them their scheduled rate and I only paid my deductible for the surgery.

But even at the insured rate, those 3 hour outpatient surgeries run $40K ($2500 to me). And it wouldn't have mattered if they indentured me to slavery, I still would have had it done to get rid of the pain..charge me anything just fix it.