FWIW - I FINALLY got the insurance company to pay the bill mentioned in the OP. They paid ~$620 on a $1260 charge, and the provider accepted that. If I was in individual with no insurance, it's likely the bill would have been for the full amount with no discount for someone trying to pay what they possibly could out of pocket.
Currently, all health care providers are having you sign something that says you are responsible to pay for what your insurance doesn't. In my prior post, my insurance does cover almost all of the test that was done, but I don't feel that I should be responsible for paying 100% of a bill because the provider did not submit the bill in a way that the insurance company could accept it.
The provider suggested I pay the bill and work it out with my insurance company, and I told them that the problem was in the way that they submitted the bill, which I have zero control over.
Apparently you can negotiate the cost of a procedure with a provider, sometimes. Insurance companies do this all the time, but they have a lot more leverage than an individual. Ideally it would be nice if providers had an out-of-pocket rate. So many times the cost of something is ridiculously inflated because of all of the people that don't pay. Many don't pay BECAUSE the procedure cost is so ridiculously inflated.
This topic seems to have taken over the WTF topic, so looked as if it could use it's own topic. Not sure about others, but I do sometimes go back and look at old forum info and I'd not think to look under the WTF topic for Health Care, though it isn't much of a stretch ;-)
Also, the SLS forum search doesn't allow for just topic title searches, so finding things in here tend to be difficult.
My own recent health care hell was a one-time test my PCP ordered for a physical due to me being an ex smoker, albeit I quit over 30 years ago. The bill for the test was $1200+, and the insurance company rejected it, not because itt wasn't covered, but because of how the submitted bill was coded.
I've been working with the provider and my insurance company trying to get it resolved and it went on for so long that it was sent to collection, even though the provider was still actively billing me for it.
So, now I have a debt collector calling and it's still not resolved with no new status beyond what I've already give them, so I simply stopped answering their calls till I have new status. Doesn't stop them from robo-calling me daily. The whole thing is a clusterfuck. The test was a simple ultrasound, and the fact that it cost over $1200 is part of the problem as well for such a quick simple test.
