Yet another bull$&!t medical bill. Encapsulates how screwed up our health insurance system is, why the whole thing should be thrown in the trash.
- Labcorp charges almost $3K for some blood work, and Premera “negotiates away” $2.3K of this. What nonsense. Everyone is inflating costs for their own reasons and it is all abusive garbage. I don’t believe for a second that these labs cost anywhere close to $3K and I don’t think Premera did any work at all to negotiate this down.
- Premera pays almost $500 for the labs (and who knows if they really did, all I have is their claim they did)
- We are stuck with $119.50 which is probably not far from the true cost of the labs, but why didn’t Premera “negotiate away” this when they were negotiating away $2.3K?
- Amount you saved – another total fiction. Based on the nonsense total charge and Premera’s claims of what they paid.
In all this, I have no power as consumer to do anything. The insurers and providers are motivated to jack numbers up. The system results in a lot of profits being diverted to insurance companies and administrative overhead that does nothing to benefit patients.
