Monday, September 24, 2012

Medicare Bills Rise As Records Turn Electronic

My impression is that the US health care system has been doing this for as long as it has existed. Having digital records should be a great help to the insurance companies to make it easier to track down fraudulent health care providers.

Since I live in Sweden I don't usually have a problem with health care bills, but once during a vacation to the US I had to visit a hospital due to severe stomach pain. Four hours and a trip through the CT machine later I was released with a prescription for some pills. Six months later (back home in Sweden) a bill for $14000 arrives...

When I brought this to my insurance company and explained that the examination I went through couldn't possibly have cost that much they just shrugged and said "yeah, they always try this when dealing with foreign insurance companies". A few weeks later they had everything settled at just under $3000.

So what's the point of this story? If a system is open to exploitation you need someone to monitor it. Monitoring is easier with good records of what's been going on.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/d2PDww-JVWw/medicare-bills-rise-as-records-turn-electronic

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