Billing - Hospital Style

Yesterday morning I was reading in the Boston Globe that local hospitals are padding their bills with charges as high as $500 called “faculty fees” and/or “facility fees.” (It must be for all that enjoyment that we all feel sitting in the waiting room for the doctor while our parking fees rise.) To, personalize it, later the same day I received bills (there was more than one.) from the Lahey Clinic totaling close to $1,000 for what my coverage did not pay for a recent surgery. I’m part of the 47% for which that is not a trivial amount. The surgeon and staff were very good, no complaints. What irks that hell out of me is that the surgery is routinely performed at the hospital. So the hospital billing department must know within a reasonable amount what the cost was to be. There were no complications. The hospital billing department also deals with my coverage daily. They must know what the difference would be before the surgery. It was not an emergency. So why could they not inform me? Would it possibly have been because I might have shopped around to minimize my out-of-pocket expenses? In addition to the bills, I received a begging letter. Gee, guess how much I am inclined to give? Why is there not some legislation that requires that informed consent also involve information about the costs to the patient? It is time to bug our legislators to create some useful legislation around this.