| Across the country, patients scheduled for planned, nonemergency care are asked to prepay hundreds or thousands of dollars before care is delivered, even when no one can say what the final bill will be. The statements arrive weeks or months later, with bills from multiple providers that are often far higher than expected.
Days before Theresa Schmotzer’s outpatient surgery, the hospital called, demanding roughly $3,700 up front.
She had waited months for the procedure. The caller was insistent, Schmotzer recalled, and she feared that the surgery would be canceled if she didn’t pay. But the number couldn’t be right. Her maximum out-of-pocket for the year was only $3,500.
While Schmotzer, an occupational therapist in Arizona, was preparing for surgery, she was also becoming a billing investigator.
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Her experience is not unusual. In one KFF survey, about 30 percent of insured adults said they struggled to figure out what they would owe out of pocket. Across the country, patients scheduled for planned, nonemergency care are asked to prepay hundreds or thousands of dollars before care is delivered, even when no one can say what the final bill will be. The statements arrive weeks or months later, with bills from multiple providers that are often far higher than expected. (Read more) |
