Section
Patients and bills
Medical debt, surprise and inaccurate bills, billing and coding practices, collections, and the lawsuits and investigations over charges.
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Patients and bills
An urgent care asked an uninsured patient for $400 before an epinephrine shot
KFF Health News' latest Bill of the Month shows that urgent care centers, which generally fall outside the federal law requiring emergency departments to treat first, can ask for payment before treating a patient in anaphylaxis.
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Patients and bills
Doctors' offices owned by hospitals can bill 10 times more, Washington Post reports
The Washington Post found that routine care in offices bought by hospital systems is often billed at hospital outpatient rates plus a facility fee, raising what patients and their insurers pay for the same service.
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Patients and bills
Oregon hospitals doubled financial aid after a law required automatic screening
Once Oregon made hospitals check patients for aid without waiting for an application, the free and discounted care they gave rose sharply, a Tradeoffs analysis found, while many Texas hospitals still bill patients first.
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Patients and bills
Illinois says its program has erased $1.4 billion in medical debt in two years
The state buys unpaid medical bills in bulk for a fraction of what patients were charged and cancels them, showing how little old medical debt is worth once it goes unpaid.
