Comments on: The bill for my wife’s surgery arrived with errors

By: Bob Mitchell

Bob Mitchell — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:00:21 +0000

I just got a nasty call from a collection agent for a bill for a physical (which is supposed to be 100% paid once a year under my policy)….excellent post! Hey, do you mind if I use the picture of your bill on a blog that I write?

Bob

By: Make You Go Hmm: » Hmmcast #20:

Make You Go Hmm: » Hmmcast #20: — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 21:07:09 +0000

[…] - The bill for my wife’s surgery arrived with errors (3) [aug 23] - A Chip in Jeopardy (6) [aug 24] - After death MySpacees don’t part with MyDeathSpace (0) [aug 25] […]

By: Kiltak

Kiltak — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 01:41:18 +0000

Canadian Medicare may look free, but trust me, it is not..

Can you beleive that people earning more then 50k in Quebec have to pay an income taxe of 55% (for every penny earned after 50k).. from 28k to 50k around 35%.

Apart from that, people that need to pass special medical exams such as Magnetic resonances have to wait up to a year before receiving it.. and I’m not even talking about all the other absurdities we have to endure when we’re sick.

Bleah.

By: billg

billg — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:03:11 +0000

From my experience, deaiing with the post-surgery billing bureaucracy is almost as painful as the surgery. As you’ve found, mistakes happen. Hospitals, at least those familiar to me, don’t seem to have any single control point to check on the accuracy of bills before there released. Most of the people in the operating room and the folks who poke and prod you on the way there are not hospital employees and they generate their own bills. When I’ve called hospitals to ask “Is this cost correct?” the frequent response is “That’s not the hospital’s bill. We just include it in our statement for the patient’s convenience.”.

By: Mark Thomson

Mark Thomson — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 05:05:29 +0000

This is the first medical bill I’ve seen in my 32 years. It’s such a strange concept to me, having never had to think about these kinds of things. Medical problems are stressful enough, without having to worry about finding the money to pay for treatment.

Canadian Medicare is far from perfect but when I see things like this it make me realize how lucky we are.

Anyways, glad to hear everything went well with the surgery.