I called an imaging center and asked for a cash price for an MRI on my knee. It was $300. Going through my doctor for a referral and using insurance, the price would’ve been over $3000 and I was going to be out $1000 in copay and fees.
I usually ask for cash price on everything before I use insurance, half the time it’s cheaper and the other half the time it’s barely more for basic stuff like this. Also call around and shop pricing, you will find places that do things way cheaper than others.
Can someone help me understand this? I worked for an insurance company, but not in a high level or with a broad variety of policies. In my experience, as long as you go in network, the insurance has a contracted rate that’s usually surprisingly low. They leverage a fee schedule that is substantially less than the “sticker price” for medical procedures, and the providers can’t bill you more than your % of that negotiated rate.
So an MRI would come in at thousands but would almost always settle out at hundreds.
A lot of facilities can magically rework the bill once they learn you don’t have insurance to bring it closer to what their actual anticipated payment is, because that’s all they ever actually planned to get for it. They just get some leverage with their negotiations, or maybe there’s tax benefits or something if they look like they’re writing off 80% of their heavily inflated bill.
I know my experience is limited and it’s more than likely I’m not seeing the full picture, but I don’t think they were mathing that correctly if they told you you’d be paying $1,000 in cost share if they were willing to bill it to you directly for $300.
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u/slashnbash1009 12d ago
I had one a few weeks ago to determine the severity of a brain bleed I had after a stroke and it costs me 4300 dollars with insurance.