A CT scan costs $1,100 in the US – and $140 in Holland
Wife recently needed a CT scan of the chest. It was the correct imaging modality for the potential DX in question. An X-ray would be useless as it wouldn’t show the suspected issue. First insurance denied saying we had to have an X-ray first and that X-ray needed to be abnormal in order to justify the CT. But this would just be a waste of time and money since the X-ray is useless for the suspected issue in question, and then it would also undoubtedly caused problems because they would deny the CT when the X-ray wasn’t abnormal.<p>It took 3 hours of my time. About 3 hours of medical assistant time and about an hour of two different doctors time to get this simple 5 minute CT approved. This is all on top of the time of admins at the insurance company.<p>The CT was done and low and behold did show an abnormality.<p>The charge was around $2000 to insurance which was lowered to about $1150 by the negotiated rates. Of which we paid the $115 coinsurance (10%). We asked what the cash price would’ve been to avoid all this, $450.<p>So our 10% coinsurance is actually more like 25% of the real price. And the insurance companies denial and absurd process could only possibly make sense over just always unquestionably paying the cash price if 1 in 3 CTs ordered by doctors in such a scheme was fraudulent. I seriously doubt that would ever be the case. And that’s still ignoring the personnel cost in this example. And the opportunity cost of those personnel not being able to spend that time on actual medical needs of other patients.<p>The system is disgustingly broken in this country, we need to move to a single payer system and get these insurance companies out of the way.