> I'm surprised medical billing scams aren't rampant, considering it's 100% normal to
The difference between honest-to-god scams, and just these meaningless me-too bills that accompany every medical procedure or test... well, is there a difference?
If a scam is some scheme or trick to get you to pay for something you never agreed to pay for and wouldn't agree to pay for if it were said up front, through deception strategies like opaque policies and maneuvering you to a point where you can no longer back out of it...
Then pretty much all of it is a scam. That the people performing the scams have professional degrees in medicine, that they're gainfully employed as hospital and medical company employees, and so on, that doesn't really change the nature of it.
Originally, the "scammy" behavior was developed (and not deliberately) to try to coerce the insurance companies into paying. But the insurance companies could afford employees to counter all those tactics. This didn't mean the experise was wasted though, they simply turned that onto the patients themselves.
The crazy thing to remember is that none of that expertise will go away, no matter what happens. Maybe they'll turn it on the government too, at some point, if we ever get universal healthcare. That could be a hoot, couldn't it?
The difference between honest-to-god scams, and just these meaningless me-too bills that accompany every medical procedure or test... well, is there a difference?
If a scam is some scheme or trick to get you to pay for something you never agreed to pay for and wouldn't agree to pay for if it were said up front, through deception strategies like opaque policies and maneuvering you to a point where you can no longer back out of it...
Then pretty much all of it is a scam. That the people performing the scams have professional degrees in medicine, that they're gainfully employed as hospital and medical company employees, and so on, that doesn't really change the nature of it.
Originally, the "scammy" behavior was developed (and not deliberately) to try to coerce the insurance companies into paying. But the insurance companies could afford employees to counter all those tactics. This didn't mean the experise was wasted though, they simply turned that onto the patients themselves.
The crazy thing to remember is that none of that expertise will go away, no matter what happens. Maybe they'll turn it on the government too, at some point, if we ever get universal healthcare. That could be a hoot, couldn't it?