Hospital Bills

I am trying to gather some info in case I have to fight with the billing office at Innova Hospital in San Antonio. Can you all tell me what your HOSPITAL bill was and how much out of pocket you ended up paying. My bill for outpatient with no complications was 59K and since its out of network, my insurance says I am responsible for 57K. I did sign an promissory note for $ 4500 when I did the preop. I don't know what I will do if I owe someone $ 57,000.00 HELP please.
Teanne

My surgery was outpatient and I was self pay. My total bill was $16K for hospital, surgeon and anesthesia. You're getting ripped off!

I think you got ripped off too. Mine was $9000-$3000 so my total will be $6000.

I'm self pay too in SC and my bill was just under 14k. This includes all pre and post-op services ( to include a leg DVT study), surgeon fees, anesthesia, hosp fees, radiology, pharmacy, 4wk nutritionist follow-up and my 1st four fills up to 12mos.

Teanne, expect to fight with the billing office...I'm just sayin is all.
You need to call your insurance company and find out specifically what they will cover. Get a copy of that, maybe they will have something WRITTEN online. Then call the doctor's office and ask them what will be covered by your insurance, the office manager usually knows this. Give them plenty of time to get this to you, a couple of days should do it.

I suggest using the jump thread option on LapBandTalk to the Insurance thread. You will find loads of answers there.

You probably should have done this beforehand rather than after the fact, but your surgeon and and the hospital often have negotiable rates. For example, it's very unlikely that the self-payers are getting billed for almost $60 for this surgery. In fact, that's the highest I've ever heard of.

They will bill the insurance company for some outrageous rate in order to guarantee they get the amount they really want, which is often much less. Explain that because they are out-of-network that you are essentially not insured and see if they will cut you a deal.