How to Not Pay Your Medical Bills

[ck4829]

The American healthcare system is not the only marketplace with made-up numbers. There are also Middle Eastern bazaars, used car lots and Pentagon budgets.

As you probably recall, I had a mole removed about a year ago. As fresh as this is in all of our memories, a year is a fair bit of time, so I was surprised to get a bill in the mail for $604.80 from a company called DermTech. Apparently, much like wedding gifts, you have a year to send someone a medical bill.

Had this bill been for anything besides health care, I would have been far more surprised. If a restaurant supply company mailed me an invoice, explaining that they had encountered some extra expenses for a burger I ate at a restaurant a year ago, and now I owed them $604.80, I’d be confused. Especially if that restaurant didn’t have prices on its menu.

Luckily, I’d been through this unexpected, unexplained medical bill situation before, due to the fact that I’m an American. So I knew that I did not need to review the specifics. Such as the $1,485 original charge, which my insurance company had paid/adjusted by $880.20, thereby reducing the cost of the testing sticker to $604.80.

https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/how-to-not-pay-your-medical-bills-e9d195e6

[sinkingfeeling]

1. The article is behind a paywall.

[ck4829]

2. Weird, it wasn't for me