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Health insurance follies
I was looking at my HSA web site the other day, trying to pay some bills, and looked in particular at the charges for my recent periodic endoscopy/colonoscopy (isn't being Over Fifty wonderful?). There were two charges of $1545.50, apparently one for the endoscopy and one for the colonoscopy. As I've discussed here and here, the "amount billed" is pure fiction, having little resemblance to what anybody actually pays or gets paid.
But there was something unusual about this one. For one of the two procedures, the "allowed charge" was $1128.50. For the other, it was $2257.00, larger than the "amount billed" and (I think not coincidentally) exactly twice the other allowed charge, as though somebody had entered the number into a spreadsheet twice and the software had added the two numbers. 10% of each of these was charged to me, and the other 90% to the insurance company. (It's nice to have a wealthy employer with generous bennies....) As a result, my insurance company appears to have paid the hospital an extra $1015.65 that they shouldn't have paid, and I'm being charged an extra $112.85 that I shouldn't have to pay.
I contacted the HSA and was told "we just enter whatever's in the EOB we get from the insurance company; it's not our problem." So I called the insurance company; the customer service agent didn't see the same numbers I did, but agreed that something sounded fishy. She thanked me for bringing this to her attention and suggested I wait until I get an EOB in the mail. I'm not sure they'll actually do anything about it; the extra $1015 they paid may not be worth the trouble of getting it corrected.
But there was something unusual about this one. For one of the two procedures, the "allowed charge" was $1128.50. For the other, it was $2257.00, larger than the "amount billed" and (I think not coincidentally) exactly twice the other allowed charge, as though somebody had entered the number into a spreadsheet twice and the software had added the two numbers. 10% of each of these was charged to me, and the other 90% to the insurance company. (It's nice to have a wealthy employer with generous bennies....) As a result, my insurance company appears to have paid the hospital an extra $1015.65 that they shouldn't have paid, and I'm being charged an extra $112.85 that I shouldn't have to pay.
I contacted the HSA and was told "we just enter whatever's in the EOB we get from the insurance company; it's not our problem." So I called the insurance company; the customer service agent didn't see the same numbers I did, but agreed that something sounded fishy. She thanked me for bringing this to her attention and suggested I wait until I get an EOB in the mail. I'm not sure they'll actually do anything about it; the extra $1015 they paid may not be worth the trouble of getting it corrected.