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Topic: Outpatient markups fuel outrage |
Outpatient markups fuel outrage
Los Angeles Times, by Chad Terhune
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Original Article
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Posted By:pineledger, 2/4/2013 7:28:41 AM
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A surgery center charged teacher Lynne Nielsen $87,500 for a routine 20-minute knee operation that normally costs about $3,000. Despite the huge markup, her employer and its insurer, Blue Shield of California, paid virtually all of the bill from Advanced Surgical Partners in Costa Mesa, Calif. Blue Shield mailed the $84,800 check to the high school Spanish teacher in December and told her to sign it over to the surgery center. Nielsen said she was outraged and refused to send the check. Instead, she asked the California attorney general´s office to investigate the matter. "This is insane," she said.
Source corrected by Staff.
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Comments:
This us where the government should have a role in health care -- making sure this kind of chicanery (some would call it skimming or kickbacks) does not happen. But no, The Won wants to be the whole show.
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Reply 1 - Posted by:
Catherine, 2/4/2013 8:28:24 AM (No. 9157008)
We´ve all been paying three times the cost of health care for a long time to make up for illegals and uninsured. I don´t think this is an isolated incident and chances are it´s going to get worse. The money for Obamacare has to come from somewhere.
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Reply 2 - Posted by:
Bur Oak, 2/4/2013 8:30:21 AM (No. 9157018)
Medical care would be a lot cheaper if there wasn´t any such thing as medical insurance.
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Reply 3 - Posted by:
SoCalGal, 2/4/2013 8:48:08 AM (No. 9157052)
Outrageous. And not just in California.
(This article was published in the Times print edition on January 31.)
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Reply 4 - Posted by:
nhchemist, 2/4/2013 8:49:46 AM (No. 9157054)
My last colonoscopy was in a surgery center, not the hospital. The cost was half the cost of my previous in hospital colonoscopy. Because the cost was lower, my insurance company waived the copay and picked up the whole cost. How about a story like this in the national papers.
The Portland Press Herald is very liberal and publishes anecdotes that promote socialist/progressive policies all the time.
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Reply 5 - Posted by:
mickturn, 2/4/2013 10:22:25 AM (No. 9157326)
She should have sent them $3000, told that them that was all she was paying (the care center would have written off the rest) and she could have kept the $84,000. Thank you very much!
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Reply 6 - Posted by:
MisterDickens, 2/4/2013 10:37:46 AM (No. 9157361)
Sometimes I think everyone is a crook.
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Reply 7 - Posted by:
ColonialAmerican1623, 2/5/2013 1:53:28 AM (No. 9158970)
They do because they can. It´s business as usual.
She might be one in ten million to complain; most people can´t be bothered.
I am surprised they mailed the check to her instead of the outpatient medical center. If they had, we wouldn´t be reading this story.
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