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If every medical billing "error" was subject to a strict liability penalty in the amount of 10x the amount overcharged, all medical billing errors would cease overnight.

yeah. we could call it weaponized incompetence. "oh whoopsie our system says you owe us $65,000. okay well how about $6500"

It seems that this stuff is an actual great use of AI. I heard of some writer or actor or something using it to find bullshit in a contract for a television show they were offered to push back on in their next meeting. They had found 3 issues themselves but the AI found 3 more.

I had to get my appendix out in 2021 and they still charged me like $2500 with my insurance doing most of the heavy lifting. New York doesn't collect on medical debt so honestly they can go fuck themselves.

This is the scenario addressed by the 'no surprises act', right? www.healthinsurance.org/glossary/no-...

there’s a larger point here imo that if a bill that huge is at all plausible in the healthcare system (and it is) then that is a fundamentally broken system

and also the actual-criminal extortion process, which is STILL not an error NOR fraud on the patient's part despite what the chucklehead gov't wants to say for medicaid and medicare funding

It's the car dealership business model applied to human lives.

even if you accept the argument, it's incredibly traumatic?!? And as i recall, i was not entirely in the best frame of mind with sleep and emotional regulation the first year of my daughter's life, and that's without a NICU stay. your job is not to make that error, hospital guy.

Even if they are! the stress of seeing them and the time cost of fixing them is not mitigated by "oh, it was just a paperwork error." If I got a wrong $500k bill it would ruin my life for weeks in ways that would have lots of compounding bad effects, and my life is relatively easy.

Thank you! I can't believe there are people on this site who believe this was a good-faith clerical issue. If it was genuinely a mistake, the first time the parents called a billing rep, the rep would have realized they were $450k over the right amount. This was intentional.

The focus to me seemed to be the insanity of the people acting like this was no big deal.

every american must be a lawyer, a scientist, an engineer, financial planner and a doctor in order to not get poisoned or scammed or ripped off or over charged and if they aren’t then its entirely on them.

yeah this was the part that really rankled me, for whatever reason. "you got $500k in services" no the fuck they did not, what