$900 for blood work?

[Homoochan]

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I recently had occupational exposure so went to employee health of my own hospital for blood work and PEP.
2 months had gone by and I received bill of $600 for blood work, which includes cbc, chem 7, cmp, hep b/c.
I had 3 visits and so far received bills for 2 of those 3 visits. Blood work was drawn for each of those 3 visits and each blood work was ~ $300, so I'm expecting another bill of $300 in a very near future.
I was sort of dumb-founded because I do have health insurance that I purchased from my own hospital and went to the hospital that I'm working at and was charged this much for routine lab work.
Did anyone have this issue in the past or have any advice on how to proceed from here? I'm a resident living on tight budget. Certainly don't have $900 lying around unfortunately... 🙁

 

[Mass Effect]

That's absurd. How much is your insurance paying? I also had blood work recently and combined with my doctor's visit it was a grand total of $1700, of which I had to pay about 150 and insurance paid the rest. It's still absurd, but at least I didn't go broke paying it off.

 

[AStark]

Ah, the benefits of private health care. The collection and processing costs for that kind of blood work is far, far less than what you're being charged. It's a very unfortunate situation - but why do Americans put up with such outrageous price gouging?

 

[Smurfette]

This happened to me during residency as well when on rotation away from my "main" hospital.

These bills are covered under workman's comp because it happened at work. It should not be processed through your usual medical insurance. Ask either your GME office or your program coordinator about where to bring the bills to; the hospital should take care of it. You also can inquire with your employee health office, as odds are, you are not the first person this has happened to.

 

[Perrotfish]

Ah, the benefits of private health care. The collection and processing costs for that kind of blood work is far, far less than what you're being charged. It's a very unfortunate situation - but why do Americans put up with such outrageous price gouging?

The government removed all of the usual consumer protections from healthcare, including the very basic protection that you can't be charged for something you didn't agree to pay. Your consent can be implied, for a six figure bill, while you are actually unconscious. Not only that, the government also wrote their own healthcare policies to guarantee price gouging: Medicare/Medicaid agrees to pay a hospital either a maximum mandated amount for their services or an absurdly small percentage of their cash price (like 10%), whichever is less. So every hospital that takes government insurance HAS to gouge their handful of cash/high deductible customers to legally charge the 90% that are on Medicaid the full price for their services.

My limited experience with high deductible healthcare is that you have to pay. I tried calling the hospital to negotiate the times it happened to me, but hospitals don't negotiate with people who can pay the bill. OP you might be in a different boat, though, if it was a true occ health exposure. That shouldn't be going through your insurance at all, that should be on the hospital at no expense at all to you. Get in touch with their billing department, and if that fails their occ health department and then their legal department in that order.

BTW, I would take this as a free lesson on the importance of an emergency fund covering at least 2 months living expenses. If you have a deductible on your health insurance that's more than two months living expenses, then that should be the minimum instead.

 

[RangerBob]

This happened to me during residency as well when on rotation away from my "main" hospital.

These bills are covered under workman's comp because it happened at work. It should not be processed through your usual medical insurance. Ask either your GME office or your program coordinator about where to bring the bills to; the hospital should take care of it. You also can inquire with your employee health office, as odds are, you are not the first person this has happened to.

I would second this--I also had an injury at work and the clinic billed my workers comp but the radiologist billed my private insurance (they had it on file since my PCP worked for the same hospital system as my radiologist).

If the exposure/injury is work related, it's covered under workers comp and you shouldn't owe a dime. You probably have a RN who manages the occ med claims--talk to your program coordinator/GME office and that RN will probably be very happy to help you. You will have to file a claim of course, if you haven't already. And if you've already paid some of the bills I don't know how that changes things, but get in touch with the occ med claim manager.