Hi all, could use some advice.
My wife has a chronic pain condition. Not long ago, she went in during a period of intense pain (mentally not 100% with it) and her doctor decided to do some tests, to see if there were any obvious indicators (which all came back negative). The conversation, best I can gather, was essentially, "I'm going to take some blood and have a few tests run". Today we received a bill for nearly $5,000, none of it covered by insurance, for the tests the doctor decided to run.
We called the billing department and spoke with the floor manager, and were told that it is essentially "your responsibility to know what you're being tested for, and whether your insurance will cover it. You should have postponed, asked for a list of procedures, and called your insurance to verify all of them". When asked if it was reasonable for the office to advise patients on this, we were also told that was our own responsibility as well. Fair enough, consider us educated.
At the time my wife was not mentally in a place to be able to make those decisions. It certainly gives me pause when visiting a doctor.
My question is, what do we need to know going forward? Is there anything we can do about the medical bills? For example, if we call our insurance, are they likely to be able to help? Does a doctor/practice/hospital have any requirement to inform patients what they're doing and charging for, or can they just use their own judgement and charge for things as they see fit?