Negotiating Health Care Services

[drivingdaisy]

Do any of you negotiate the cost of items or shop around for different Health Services? How do you do it? Does it work?
(I used to have much better insurance while I was teaching so I never really paid much attention to the cost of things, but now that I have a deductible I am paying more attention.)

 

[officeguy]

You'll have more luck doing that with small practices rather than the large corporate providers. The person to talk to is the office manager, neither the doc nor the front desk person is going to be able to give you an answer.

If you have a high-deductible plan, one thing to be aware of is that if you give the the insurance card, the provider has to charge you whatever price he has negotiated with the insurer that administers your plan. Now, you can tell the practice not to run it on your insurance and negotiate your own price, the problem is that now whatever you paid doesn't count against your deductible. So if you anticipate that you are going to max out in a year, you may not want to pay cash.

So, find out the CPT codes for the service you are about to receive. Then call your insurance and have them give you the rate they have with the provider. Then decide whether it is worth negotiating. Most of the time, you are not going to beat the insurance rate.