A few weeks ago, my wife and I were at our wits’ end: our 4-month-old daughter wouldn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time at night. We had consulted books and seen our pediatrician, but nothing was working. So my wife called a pediatrician who specializes in babies who struggle with sleep problems.
The next day, he drove an hour from Brooklyn to our house. He then spent an hour and a half talking to us and examining our daughter in her nursery. He prescribed some medicine for her and suggested some changes to my wife’s diet. Within two days, our baby was sleeping through the night and we were all feeling better.
The only catch was this pediatrician did not accept insurance. He had taken our credit card information before his visit and given us a form to submit to our insurance company as he left, saying insurance usually paid a portion of his fee, which was $650.
A couple of weeks later, our insurance company said it wouldn’t pay anything. Here’s how the company figured it: First, it said a fair price for our doctor’s fee was $285, about 60 percent less, because that was the going rate for our town. Then, it said the lower fee was not enough to meet our out-of-network deductible.
While we were none too happy with the insurance company, we remained impressed by the doctor: he had made our baby better and was compensated for it, all the while avoiding the hassle of dealing with insurance.
Read More at cnbc.com . By Paul Sullivan.
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Wouldn’t it be great if we had a network of Doctors who charged realistic fees for services that didn’t take into account the added burden of insurance (like the old days)? We all know that they markup everything. I mean really, $285.00 for a 30 minute visit where you sit in the waiting room for 20. I’d pay cash for such a service.
What the public doesn’t understand is that they are paying for all of the years doctors work eighty hours a week minimum while living on income below poverty level for all of the fat mediocre wage-earners who put in a few hours of real work a day and then head home to plop on the couch and watch American Idol. Four years of college followed by four years or medical school or dental school(in my case both as I am an oral surgeon and many of us have M.D. as well as D.M.D. education) then four or five years of residency training. Figure it out. We do not make too much money. For the most part we don’t make nearly enough and all you have to do to get the bottom ten percent of society instead of the top becoming doctors is keep obongocare.