[Question - Insurance] Does anyone have advice on how to get a hospital bill down to as low as possible? I have insurance with an out of pocket max, but it is pretty high and I'd like to pay less than that if possible.

Apologies if this isn’t the correct sub for this question, or if this isn’t allowed here.

TL;DR - I live in the United States. I’m going to have surgery and I’ve heard doing things like calling the hospital to ask for an itemized list of costs can reduce your bill. Is this true and is there anything specific I should know/do to try to bring the cost down?

So I will need orthopedic surgery in January. I was going to have it in December, but I know that I’ll need physical therapy after the surgery for 6 months, and if I have the surgery before the end of the year, my out of pocket maximum ($2,750) will reset January 1st and then my surgery costs wouldn’t count for my out of pocket max for 2021. So hopefully I have already saved myself some money there.

I have a feeling the surgery and PT will end up taking my whole out of pocket max (and then some) but I’m wondering if I can do anything to get the costs down so that at the end of the 6 months I’ve paid less than the out of pocket max. Does anyone have any advice on this? I've heard stories of people calling either the hospital or the insurance and asking for itemized list of expenses and receiving a wildly lower bill. I just really feel lost with the whole “yeah go ahead and have the surgery and PT, it’ll cost what it costs” attitude of the hospital and the insurance. This is for US (probably obvious).

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Submitted November 19, 2020 at 03:54AM by Rigatoni_Carl https://ift.tt/3nv9FOa