Thread time!
On January 28, Scott Kohan was violently attacked and left unconscious in downtown Austin. He woke up in the ER with his jaw broken in two places. (1/10)pic.twitter.com/Jcqf9aDC9G
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This is how he ends up with a $7,924 bill from the oral surgeon that his insurance denies. I wrote about his story today: https://www.vox.com/2018/5/23/17353284/emergency-room-doctor-out-of-network … (4/10)
This type of billing happens pretty frequently, especially where Scott lives in Texas. One study estimates that for his insurance, a staggering number of ER’s in Texas have *zero* in-network doctors: https://forabettertexas.org/surprisebills/img/2017_HW_SurpriseMedBill.pdf5 … (5/10)
After I called the oral surgeon’s office, Scott found out they planned to reverse the bill entirely. Which is great for him - but still leaves this really big problem of out-of-network providers at in-network facilities for a whole bunch of other patients. (6/10)
This is actually an area where the policy solutions are actually really clear and decently easy!
Like this one from @zackcooperYale:
https://twitter.com/zackcooperYale/status/999266641639862272 …
(7/10)
Or this one from @LorenAdler and co. At Brookings: https://www.brookings.edu/research/solving-surprise-medical-bills/ …
There are so many really hard to fix problems in health care. This just isn’t one of them.
(8/10)
This is another story from Vox’s ER billing database. We’ve received bills from over 1,300 patients at this point who live in all 50 states. (9/10)pic.twitter.com/vl08mW07dk
Want to help us further this reporting? Submit your bill. Or share the database with someone you know who has been to the ER recently. It would be a big help. http://erbills.vox.com (10/10)
Screwed up my first tweet! Should have been a photo credit there for @ilanaPL, who took the fantastic photos for this story! (11/10)
how the f*** can a specialist who doesn't accept ANY insurance be operating in a public hospital without explicit patient consent?! Just going to work and throwing $8k grenades every day.
Two different issues - one, how can a hospital assign a doc who does not take ANY insurance in emergency? Second, out-of-network docs are assigned all the time. My dad got billed, I fought it and won, but it took a lot.
“Health Insurance” should be just that- peace of mind that you are covered when you need it and least able to jump thru bureaucratic hoops. In Healthcare, as in War, Prisons, Education and Net Neutrality,
#ProfitCorruptsOutcome.
This can happen with labs and imaging too. The units may be in the hospital building, but may not be in your medical plan. We have run into this but we had the time check into before services were rendered. Most people wouldn't even check.
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