The Cost Of An Emergency Room Visit

[Moozik: Devo - Gates Of Steel]

As someone who grew up with the National Health Service in England, it still feels odd to have to pay any amount of money when visiting the Emergency Room (A&E or Casualty for readers from Blighty). Instead of leaving the Hospital after you are evaluated and treated, you are ushered into an office for some fun questions about your health insurance provider and have to fill out some paperwork.

After a rather comedic billing error which could be a blog post in itself, I got to see exactly how much a recent Emergency Room endeavor cost. Or I should say how much the Hospital billed the insurance company. Cutting a long story short, the Hospital padded the bill by 69%. The insurance company paid their "allowable amount" and instead of eating the remainder, the Hospital decided to bill us instead.

This was all finally cleared this morning with a Hospital billing technician saying "oops, you should not have received that" (you think?) but was a real eye opener to the games that are played in health care.