Reply #34: The doctor is a whole lot more removed

[SheilaT]

from the billing part of the E.R. than are the people who do the paperwork, the ones that took your information when you first got there. Trust me, they haven't a clue.

I used to work registration at a hospital, and what I hated the most was when we had self pay patients and we couldn't give them any more than a rough estimate of the cost of the procedure, and that ONLY after digging laboriously through a program that was supposed to give such information. Much of the time I couldn't find the procedure that had been ordered. The doctors don't work with those programs.

Chances are the E.R. doctor is on salary with the hospital, so he has no reason whatsoever to know what procedures cost. Even the doctor in private practice probably has little or no idea what the cost is of whatever he does in the office. And, different patients get charged different amounts.

What happened to you was not right, but please don't be thinking the doctor has any idea what it was going to cost you. He or she has also drunk the Kool-Aid of "We have the best health care in the world", and since the doctors themselves get charged less than anyone as part of professional courtesy, they are singularly unaware of the true costs of health care in the is country.