And we patients are expected to negotiate with them? Read on.
It’s not only surgeons, of course, but this Washington Post story lays out the problem pretty clearly. Surprise billing can happen whenever a cross-covering physician is out-of-network. A colleague checked before scheduling spine surgery to make sure the scheduled anesthesiologist was in-network. Absolutely, the office manager replied. Not so much the day of surgery, when a different — out-of-network — anesthesiologist was substituted in at the last minute. That’s how a $1500 bill became a $15,000 one.
There is only word for a fractured health care “system” this unresponsive to the needs of patients and the requirements of contract law: broken.
