Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="trplnkl" data-source="post: 889251" data-attributes="member: 13254">You just think you know how medical billing is done here. You aren&#039;t totally incorrect, but far from being totally correct. &nbsp;I challenge you to buy a box of gloves for 5 bucks, it aint gonna happen. Here the doctor doesn&#039;t bill the patient or the insurance company for gloves. The test that doctors order are done by other people not the doctor, no extra pay for the doc. unless his/her office has a lab in the office which is rare around here. What a doctor charges the insurance companies is a negotiated price for each procedure and the procedures are separated because the insurance companies want it that way, not the doctors.&nbsp; Doctors have basically three prices for procedures; patient pay (the highest rate), private insurance pay (negotiated rate, a % lower) and medicare/caid ( a much lower price mandated by medicare/cade). If doctors had to rely on medicare for survival offices would be closing at an alarming rate. &nbsp;Hospitals do charge for individual items like meds and maybe some supplies. Again this is because the insurance companies want it that way. At some point the insurance companies decided that they were getting hosed by hospitals by being charged for supplies that some patients didn&#039;t get. So the ins co only pay for what the individual patient receives and at a lower rate than if the patient pays the bill.&nbsp; Ever wonder why in the US there is usually more than one doctor in an office? It&#039;s because they can&#039;t make a living without being able to share operating expenses with other doctors. Even in the single doc office (which is getting more rare) they have figured out how many patients a day they have to see to pay the overhead of the office and be able to pay themselves too. &nbsp;I would suggest that the model used in Canada adds to the long wait to get non-urgent appointments because the docs don&#039;t see as many patients per day.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="trplnkl, post: 889251, member: 13254"] You just think you know how medical billing is done here. You aren't totally incorrect, but far from being totally correct. I challenge you to buy a box of gloves for 5 bucks, it aint gonna happen. Here the doctor doesn't bill the patient or the insurance company for gloves. The test that doctors order are done by other people not the doctor, no extra pay for the doc. unless his/her office has a lab in the office which is rare around here. What a doctor charges the insurance companies is a negotiated price for each procedure and the procedures are separated because the insurance companies want it that way, not the doctors. Doctors have basically three prices for procedures; patient pay (the highest rate), private insurance pay (negotiated rate, a % lower) and medicare/caid ( a much lower price mandated by medicare/cade). If doctors had to rely on medicare for survival offices would be closing at an alarming rate. Hospitals do charge for individual items like meds and maybe some supplies. Again this is because the insurance companies want it that way. At some point the insurance companies decided that they were getting hosed by hospitals by being charged for supplies that some patients didn't get. So the ins co only pay for what the individual patient receives and at a lower rate than if the patient pays the bill. Ever wonder why in the US there is usually more than one doctor in an office? It's because they can't make a living without being able to share operating expenses with other doctors. Even in the single doc office (which is getting more rare) they have figured out how many patients a day they have to see to pay the overhead of the office and be able to pay themselves too. I would suggest that the model used in Canada adds to the long wait to get non-urgent appointments because the docs don't see as many patients per day. [/QUOTE]

Verification