Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Aldeer General Forum Health care officially sucks.

This "in network/out of network" is the biggest scam in insurance.

I know I've told the story here of when my son was born. Wife's water breaks at 10:30 on a Friday night...we're 100% having a baby. We load up, and drive 50 miles to Mobile Infirmary...an "in network" hospital. Her OB/GYN is out of town, so one of the other doctors in the group who is on call shows up...also "in network". Everything is awesome, as I've paid my $200 copay. Anesthesiologist and nurse anesthetist come in and do their thing. Son decides he isn't ready, so 17.5 hours later, decision is made to do a c-section. Goes great. Son enters the world, and we go home 2 days later.

One month later...we get a single bill in the mail from the anesthesiology group. Somewhere in the neighborhood of about $3200. Turns out, even though we did everything like we were supposed to do, the anesthesiologist that was on call that night was "out of network". Something we had ZERO control over. Insurance had paid 50% of the "out of network" charge, and they wanted me to pay the other half. I asked them how much they would have been paid if they were in my insurance's network, and it was about $1600. I told them to pound sand, and I'd send them $25/month until it either got paid off, or they got tired of getting that $25/month. About a year into this payment arrangement, with them calling wanting more money about every two weeks, they finally sent me a letter saying that if I were willing to send them $400, they'd consider it paid in full. I called and told them that I would send them $200, and consider it paid. They agreed...I made them send me an invoice for the total amount of $200 with a letter saying that would pay off the bs debt. When it arrived, I wrote a check, put "paid in full" in the "for" line, and never heard another word from them again. Still mad about it.

United Healthcare, for anyone wondering.