Hospital Billing Scam: Ignoring Health Insurance, Billing Taxpayer Instead

U.S. hospitals fraudulently writing off huge "losses" after inflating prices beyond insurance approval limits.

Health services networks collecting full retail prices from federal government by writing off bad debt of three to six times the billing amounts approved by health insurers.


TYPICAL SCENARIO

You are injured in an auto accident. An ambulance takes you to a hospital, where you are admitted. The hospital collects your insurance data, and provides service.

Your auto insurance, and/or that of the other driver(s), is billed for it's medical coverage, typically in the range of $15,000 to $30,000.

Three months later you get a bill from the hospital for the remainder of your hospital costs, which may be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. You tell them to bill your health insurance, but the hospital shows you that your health insurance finally declined your claim, 4 months later. They seek a statement from you that you can not pay the bill. They then write it off as bad debt, and assign it to collections.

You file a "medical bankruptcy", just like over half the consumer bankruptcies filed.


WHAT HAPPENED?

Your health insurer is tough for the hospital to deal with. The insurer holds down the price of services by not allowing the hospital and health care providers and suppliers to overcharge. The hospital would rather not deal with this.

Instead, the hospital bills the auto insurance for the limited medical coverage. This insurance does not fight the hospital on the overcharging. The hospital can therefore bill you 3-6 times what your health insurance would pay for the same services.

The hospital ignores the health insurance for (in most states) three months, beyond which time the health insurance will deny the claim by expiration clause.

The hospital then simply writes off the bill, at an average of 3-4 times the amount they would have collected from the insurer. The write-off credits back the hospital about 1/3 of the amount written off, in taxes.

The end result is that the hospital is paid 100% or more of the amount it could have collected from the insurers, and they do not have to invoice or negotiate. The government pays the bill. the debt is simply passed on to the tax payer.

800,000 personal bankruptcies were filed in 2007. Medical bankruptcy accounted for 62% of personal bankruptcies filed in 2007, with a national average of $26,971 included in bankruptcy filings, for each uninsured person, and $17,749 for each insured person.

If half of the filers were insured and half were not, then the total discharged debt is just under $25 Billion for 2007 alone, not including those who did NOT file bankruptcy and did not pay the medical bill.

Industry estimates are that 66-90% of charged-off medical bills are not included in any bankruptcy filings. This would bring the total to between $75 billion and $250 billion in medical receiveables written off by healthcare providers in the US, in 2007 alone.

These writeoffs gave $25 billion to $83.3 billion to the healthcare providers, directly from the federal government- no billing, no negotiating, no oversight, no customer service to have to bother with. The present system might be considered the wost government-paid health care system in the world.

This ripoff bilks everyone, in favor of the institutional health care provider and the insurance company which typically owns it.

Cyber Attacks Clobber USA

Sustained attack closes off many sites:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090708/ap_on_go_ot/us_us_cyber_attack

I noticed this when for the past few days the FTC website would not load. It is not much better as of this writing. Security professionals please comment.

pissedconsumer.com, ripoffreport.com, complaintsboard.com Extort, Facilitate Identity Theft, Potential FTC violations

The new, for-profit model of consumer complaint websites have left the old BBB in the dust, generating tremendous profits with which they have successfully combated nearly every legal challenge to their bold-faced facilitation of slander and libel.

Complainsboard.com, ripoffreport.com and pissedconsumer.com (formerly pissedcustomer.com, before they lost their old domain) have all jumped to the top of the Google pile whenever a search is done on the name of a person or company who has been bashed on their servers. Their successful trade in advertising to all who search the web using the name of their mark has been second only to the thinly-veiled blackmail perpetrated by their offer of "Reputation Management" services to those who have suffered form the illegitimate complaints.

Hiding behind the Right to Freedom of Speech, these clowns openly refuse to remove any posting, true or not. Unlike the Better Business Bureau, this new model is closed, and offers no third-party arbitration. Rather, these new 'slander sites' allow you to post your rebuttal. This of course is of no use when the damage is done by the illegitimate initial report, which remains in the initial search results, which show that the mark is perhaps the next Charles Manson or Bernard Madoff.

The so-called "reputation management" services offered by these anonymous providers will charge the mark about $2,000. typically to remove the damage from the site of the "reputation manager". Sound familiar?

This is a protection racket. Pay up, or we 'facilitate' the first amendment rights of anonymous people to slander you. It easily crosses the line to organized conspiracy to extort; blackmail.

The perpetrators have weathered many lawsuits attempting, for the most part, to have the name of the mark removed from the URL generated by the services. These suits have failed due to the strength of the right to free speech.

THE WEAKNESS

It appears that these sites, do not well police their own postings. Many seeking vengeance simply slander individuals as best they can put a sentence together, and post anything they can which they feel will embarrass, humiliate or endanger the mark. Herein lies your ability to combat the scam.

Many complainants have posted personally identifiable information (PII) on their marks, in hopes of doing them damage. This could include combinations of name, address, birth date, telphone number, financial information, social security number, family member names and family member financial information. Slander sites gulp the information in, without regard for the liability of posting it, because they sell the ads viewed by the many who seek the information posted by the conspirators.

But The FTC may not like that. Personally identifiable information about you can't be traded in without your consent. By posting it on ad-supported sites and not allowing you to remove it, they are certainly trading in your PII. That's an FTC violation.

With enough complaints to the FTC, this practice may be quashed. Let's try it, shall we? If you or someone you know has been a victim of some one posting your personally identifiable information on any of these slander sites, post your complaint here: https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

If you would like help with the wording, I offer my assistance free of charge. It is critical to keep the complaint honest and accurate. Just email me the links to the PII posted, and I'll draft your complaint for you to post if it meets your approval. Again, free of charge.