I know a man whose job it is to call up doctors and hospitals and knock down their fees. He has a large home and shiny sports cars and acreage and stocks and bonds and his kids will go to Big Ten schools and he is very affable and is known as a man who knows how to negotiate. But what Frank does is call up a doctor after you go and get a stress test and say, listen, we aren’t going to pay a thousand dollars for that stress test, we will only pay seven hundred. And right there the doctor takes the hit.
Or you have just gone into surgery and emerged minus an appendix and after all is said and done there is a bill for fifty thousand dollars then Frank swings back into action and tells the hospital that they need to knock it down to thirty thousand. That’s what Frank does. He decides what an insurance company will pay and the average is thirty percent that he knocks off the bill.
Imagine if someone came in and lopped off thirty percent from your paycheck just because. Or you have just charged a client to do their taxes or prepare their will or remodel their basement and you have figured your costs and then a middleman comes in and goes, nope, we get thirty percent of that and you are just out.
So what do the hospitals and doctors do to compensate for this thirty percent hit? They factor it in on the front end and crank up their fees and so when the bill appears it is thirty percent higher than it should be. So who really pays for that thirty percent extortion which is what it is…YOU DO! You know that bill you get after you have paid your monthly premium, you know that bill that is thousands of dollars even though you have health insurance and have paid in and now you get a bill. You arepaying the thirty percent fraudulent charge. Your credit gets trashed. Ultimately you are the one who pays for Frank’s shiny sports cars and his kids top flight education and his stocks and bonds and his large home. You pay for this thirty percent whack off the top. You would be better off working for the mafia, even they don’t take thirty percent.
William Hazelgrove writes in Ernest Hemingway’s attic. His latest book is Rocket Man.
