Are you 2 watching? Throwing the
ball to your dogs on a beautiful
winter day is fun. Rushing
to the hospital in excruciating
pain though, is not.
It just felt like a knife in my
side like a flaming hot knife.
Try this one here. Just
trying to make heads or tails
of your bill when it's all over.
Well, my jaw dropped to the floor.
Michelle Slaughter has a chronic condition.
How is it pronounced?
Diverticulitis that means
her food can get trapped.
Something as simple as a seed can
cause a serious infection that
tears a hole in her digestive tract.
When I go to a burger
joint, I can't have sesame seeds.
I can't have poppy seeds on my bagels.
I can't have strawberries.
Michelle's husband Dave says it is
centered to the ER three times in the
past decade and that last visit costs
nearly double what they expected.
And it's not because of their copay,
it's because of that column on
your bill that tells you the rate
negotiated by your insurance.
So it was in network, yes?
Your health insurance had not changed.
It's the same company, same company.
Through the same employer, yes.
So the only thing that changed
was the location you
went to for treatment. Yeah, that's correct.
The reveal studied her last two
hospital visits and the first thing we
noticed were wildly different costs,
but the gap got even bigger when
we saw with the insurance company
agreed was a fair price, for example,
that CT scan in this case signal allowed
hospital A to get reimbursed $740 but close
to $3000 at hospital B for the same service,
and when we added up all of
those higher negotiated rates,
the difference was.
More than $3700 and it was the slaughters
that had to pay the bulk of that Bill.
We stay in network.
We do what we're supposed to do,
and they pull stuff like this.
Cigna declined to talk on
camera or answer any of our
questions regarding their rates.
They did send a statement expressing
their commitment to high quality,
affordable health care and encourage
customers to reach out with
questions so the slaughters did.
They said it is what it is,
you just have to pay it.
It creates a marketplace.
That's impossible for the
average person to understand,
and I think that's by design.
Liz Coyle, the executive director of the
consumer advocacy group Georgia Watch,
says medical bills are almost
always a guessing game.
Last year, federal lawmakers mandated
hospitals post prices online.
We asked the slaughters to see
if those reports could help
them find a cheaper hospital.
It took a while to find the information,
not this looks like you.
It doesn't look like me at all.
This is beyond frustrating.
Give up, I'm done. I'm done
so I popped in to try to help what the
what they found was a huge string of data.
I don't need to
be looking at code yo codes
that meant nothing to them
when these were first implemented at
the federal level, we did provide
comments to suggest that these data dumps
will not be helpful to patients and
Anna Adams with the Georgia
Hospital Association understands
the confusion and the frustration,
while insurers negotiate rates
with an entire hospital system.
Thank Piedmont or Wellstar.
The rates at each facility will differ.
One part of town might have to pay
more to attract nurses and physicians.
Another hospital may treat a higher
percentage of low income patients.
They're being reimbursed,
either not at all or below what it
costs them to provide that service,
and so it would be in an insurance
company's best interest in that
scenario to negotiate really good
rates with the hospital to make sure
that the hospital remains financially
viable and can stay in that community.
Georgia is in the process of creating
what's called an all payer claims. Database
that's a real win for Georgia,
Georgia is ahead of the curve.
In theory, every medical bill
will get dumped into that
database for this state to study.
Don't worry, it won't include
names and personal information,
but the hope is that it will
reveal what a service really
should cost her and say, OK,
we should have a better understanding of
why there might be those discrepancies
and whether they are justified. But
it won't be until the end of next year
before that database is up and running.
That's why Coyle encourages.
Everyone to fight their bills
when they don't seem right,
challenge and question and pray every dog
has its day.