Medical Bills Often Come with Sticker Shock but Insurance Could be Reinvented to Provide Costs Upfront

The price of the doctor’s visit you calculated online might not reflect what you’ll be billed.
The price of the doctor’s visit you calculated online might not reflect what you’ll be billed.
chormail/Envato
Share
The price of the doctor’s visit you calculated online might not reflect what you’ll be billed.
The price of the doctor’s visit you calculated online might not reflect what you’ll be billed.
chormail/Envato
Medical Bills Often Come with Sticker Shock but Insurance Could be Reinvented to Provide Costs Upfront
Copy

You have scheduled an appointment with a health care provider, but no matter how hard you try, no one seems to be able to reliably tell you how much that visit will cost you. Will you have to pay US$20, $1,000 – or even more?

Patients are increasingly on the hook for health care costs through deductibles, co-pays and other fees. As a result, patients are demanding credible cost information before appointments to choose where they seek care and control their budget.

Yet, in spite of recent legislation and regulations, upfront information on patient out-of-pocket costs is still difficult to obtain from both health care providers and insurers.

Read the full article on The Conversation.

Without stoves or modern tools, participants learned to prep a full 18th-century meal over an open flame in a historic Rhode Island home
In Los Angeles, a new crop of curbside libraries are helping communities recover after last year’s wildfires. But instead of books, these libraries are full of seeds
The fires will return from May through November, featuring a milestone 500th lighting and themed nights
Janet Coit, the former director of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, and a Biden administration official, is set to begin her new job in April
Thousands of protesters gathered in Providence, part of a nationwide day of protests
The paradox of mass shootings in an era of less crime