yep- I vote procedure. Just had nice reaction to a test. Haven't got the bill yet.

I went for a few years without insurance. I've explained the story on Gazettextra previously, so I won't bore you with the details, but if the people working in the health care field don't know how to interpret charges or even which specialty of doctor one should see (primary care physician/family practitioner/orthopedic,etc) how is a patient supposed to advocate for themselves?! I was given polar opposite/conflicting information from two areas within the SAME facility about who I should see for what I would consider a minor procedure.

Medical insurance has got us over a barrel and their current practices need to be stopped! THAT is what is messing up our country!!!!!! From those living in poverty and receiving assistance to those in the middle class (whatever that means, anymore) just trying to provide preventative health care for their families....it's a crisis.

and to receive bills from 5 different places (radiologist, doctor, lab, etc) is RIDICULOUS! When I go to Farm & Fleet, I don't pay the supplier of Lee jeans. I don't write a check to Benjamin Moore when I get paint, or pay Milwaukee Tools with my debit card for the saw. I pay ONE bill for EVERYTHING that I purchase, or in the case of medical care, the procedure(s) that were "purchased" there...

Go a head and go to Dean/ST Mary's in Janesville. Don't worry about the bill or being over charged. They won't do anything but give you a RX, send you home and tell you to follow up with another DR who by the way is out of town. I for one hope you make it to see that other dr in one piece!

The payment is worse. Insurance is fraught with errors, scams, and outright fraud. I once got an "Explanation of Benefits" ("this is not a bill") which basically said the insurance company was paying for a procedure. Unfortunately the procedure was for a female, and I am not! I called the insurance company, who sheepishly said "that's never happened before!" (really?!?) and that they would take care of it. Okey dokey.
On another occasion, I went to an urgent care clinic with a badly sprained ankle. I walked out with an ace bandage. Over the next several months I got at least five different bills, totalling over $500, for the doctor, the clinic, the X-ray, etc. etc. etc. I now think that either they never submitted anything to my insurance company, or were declined for reasons never explained.

living in dream huh? try I live in the environment everyday. You an have a TOS, time of service discount, which can be given under certain stipulations some of which require the appt to be scheduled more than 24 or 48 hours in advance ( I forget the actual time frame at the moment) and the biggest requirement is that they actually pay the amount at the time of service, not get billed later for it..
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and under this circumstance you are still charged the same amount. If someone has a 99204 E/M code charged at a facility, every single person that has that done will be charged exactly the same. If you pay a TOS discount you might get a 15% discount over someone that doesn't chose to pay at that time.
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and no major medical provider gives huge breaks to all major insurer's. you don't know how it works. True some providers sign a contract with some insurers to provide care to their customers in exchange for accepting a lesser amount than their charged fee. Meaning that 99204 might be charged at 200 bucks, but anthem BC/BS is only going to pay 100 under the contract. but they aren't charged less.
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and if the provider is not under a network contract with BC/BS their is no contractual acceptance of less than the charged amount.
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in all cases, the charged amounts are the same, whether you have no insurance, humana, bc/bs, medicare, medicaid, etc. It doesn't matter. The amount that actually gets paid depends on network contracts and all sorts of things. But by this notion, you can say that Dean insurance holders cause everyone else to have to pay more, because their reimbursement for procedures is garbage in most cases and providers have to make that up somehow right?? like that is legal.

I switched to Dean Care from Mercy because of Mercy's resolution of billing problems. From the sheer bulk of billing mailings, I suspect Javon Bea's family owns several paper mills. He should spend the money he is using to try to horn in on Illinois health care to get Mercy's billing department out of ICU.

zdog...you are living in a dream world if you think people without insurance are charged the same as ones with insurance.

All major medical providers give insurance company's a huge break on most procedures.

I'm hardly on drugs. Person A is charged X dollars for Y procedure. If person B, C and D all have the Y procedure, they will all be charged X dollars regardless if they have BC/BS, Medicare, Medicaid, Humana, no insurance, or are black, white, hispanic, from Europe, the US, the state of Texas or Mexico.
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Those charges are set by using your regional factor and using units from Medicare. If you know of a Hospital that was not paid by person A and is charging person B double to recoup that cost, then let someone know as it is completely illegal and will result in massive fines and penalties.

Oh I pay my bills , but trust me as far as corrupt I have been double charged on several occasions and they say we are glad you caught our mistake we will gladly fix it for you. If you think for one second they are not passing on others debts than you need a drug test,it happens daily not only with hospitals but many major companies,for instance American Express. I am not trying to be an ass but it happens and I bet it has happened to you as well.

@bass, the pricing isn't corrupt. You can't charge different amounts to different people for the same thing. Pricing is also set by taking a regional adjustment or "factor" and multiplying it by a medicare number and getting the "usual and customary" fee for a region. It's not corrupt, it's a formula that all providers use across the country. If you think it's so easy to get free care, then go to somewhere you aren't from get care and leave. Don't pay your bill and see how far that gets you.

To add ,bills from Mercy will give you seizures as well !

baeg- "Nobel prize by discovering it is usually caused by bacteria. Interesting story."
not directly but indirectly. If stressed or weakened immune system due to illness or medicines- because of the other issues you are more likely to get a viral or bacterial infection.

Ulcers are not caused by stress. An Ozzie doc on a Nobel prize by discovering it is usually caused by bacteria. Interesting story.

Of course procedures but, I have decent insurance and after a recent procedure I still owe 4500.00,which is BS,if I had no insurance and I was not from the area if you know what I mean I would not have to worry about it now would I ? Hospitals and their pricing is corrupt in my opinion.

earlier this year had to have radiation surgery in my eye - no insurance - its a toss up between paying and the procedure (i found on youtube a video of how it was done) - since my income etc was low enough i was able to get the bill "written-off"

it's illegal to guarantee a result as a health care provider in this state no matter how good or bad it may be.
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and a lot of procedures do have poor long term outcomes, it's why they give the "some never recover speech" because it's true. People have a very unrealistic expectations with what procedures should be able to do.
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It's most evident by how little thought your average American puts into actually taking care of their self. If they had any clue what happens in and to a body, they might pay it more mind.
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and in the "good 'ol days" you did have a great chance of living a long healthy life having never seen a doctor. That is if you could avoid starvation or severe trauma. It's much the same today. Avoid those two things and you can bet most people will live well past 40. and that's been the case for a thousand years.

I just meant it was a good thing they weren't hounding me to pay a bill that was delayed in being paid because of their initial mistake.

Just forget all those sciencey doctors and let God take you when it's time.
You should live naturally, and organically like in the good old days when you had a somewhat reasonable chance of making it to 40.

I have Medicare and a supplemental w/ copay. No problems there.
I struggle with the "system" of procedures. The Doctors are always vague about outcomes and NEVER commit themselves to how good the results will be.
I get a lot of "some people never completely recover" comments from the docs, both before and after procedures, because they are afraid of malpractice lawsuits. (CYA?)

It's frustrating when your procedure does not "fix" the problem, as no one will even admit that it's not completely fixed. They do not even want to hear your side of it.
"It's OK, next patient".
There should be more upfront discussion of the probability of poor results and an honest discussion of why the outcome is not as good as expected.

Mercy is very well known to miscode their billings.

Why is slow billing a good thing? I like to pay my bills on the spot.. I hate loose ends. It would be a nightmare to manage your finances if every place waited 6 months to bill you...wow. Sounds like Mercy isnt very good at managing finances...just like everything else there.

The one good thing about Mercy is that they never seem to be in a very big hurry to collect on the bills they send out. Once it took over 6 months to get a bill paid because they initially coded it incorrectly, resulting in a lot of back and forth with my insurance. When I finally got the correct bill, it was quite a while before I got around to paying it because I needed to go in to Mercy to pay it with my flex account card, and they never even sent me another notice.

The whole coding thing is a total nightmare with Mercy. I can't tell you how many times I've gone through trying to have a bill corrected because it was sent through to my insurance coded incorrectly. I'm beginning to think that because they negotiate rates, and have to charge based on those contract negotiated rates, at least half the time Mercy codes it wrong resulting in a higher charge than it should have been intentionally for their own benefit. The breakdown from my insurance company always includes the originally charged amount and the "allowable charges" based on the contract. Sometimes it's a pretty big difference. There must be a lot of people out there that can't or won't take the time to understand the bills and just pay what it says they owe. Mercy has got to be making a mint on people like that. (BTW, I have only seen doctors at Mercy as an adult, so I can't say whether they're better or worse than other health systems in terms of billing, but I sincerely hope they're not better.)

I would have to say there needs to be a third choice...Billing
For some procedures, depending on what type of Ins you have, it's the phone calls and mailings to get apporovals thats a pain. I can deal with a bill that has 1 charge, a ledger that indicates how much ins covers for each charge, and a ledger showing what I'm responsible. Unfortuanatly I'll recieve 5 other letters, showing how each charge is allocated, some require doctors approval (you'd think that the doctor would have checked that box before submitting), then a form for me to fill for further approval. I really don't need 10 statements (not bills) for 1 MRI...seem costly on their part for postage. And a trip to urgent care they send you those nice comment/tell us why you came to urgent care...before we approve you slips...As if the 5 nurse that I spoke to all forgot to put that in their report.

I am fortunate to have excellent insurance so I'll have to say procedure.

I too have ins and so far no major issues with billing. SO I have to say procedure. I have had things done to me in the last few years that usually doesn't happen until you get older. Trying to get this thing under control has been a nightmare.

I have insurance but I believe it is a huge corporate scam. I wonder sometimes if there was no such thing if prices would be exceptionally lower? I'd rather have the money that I pay for my health insurance to go to the medical research field.. This way it would offset cost of health care... eliminate the insurance companies completely as I feel they are dominating everything and driving the costs of everything sky high.