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Old 05-14-2023, 12:17 PM
rothbear rothbear is offline
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Start by going to Medicare.gov and look at your EOB (Explanation of Benefits) for your stay. The EOB will show the date of the hospital stay, but the EOB will probably be dated 1-2 months after. You will see there what Medicare paid for and what was submitted to your UHC supplement. You didn't state which supplement plan you have, but you can see what they paid for out of what was submitted to them from Medicare. Then you can look at your supplement EOB and see what was submitted to them and what they paid. If you have UHC "F" plan, they pay all "Medicare approved charges" that Medicare didn't pay. Note that if Medicare didn't approve the entire amount, which they almost never do, the supplement isn't required to pay any of the unapproved amount, either. If for some reason any of the providers at the hospital (radiologist, pathologist, etc.) aren't participating (yes, that can happen, rarely, but it does) then you will get a bill from them. But as long as it says you don't owe anything on your EOB then they shouldn't come back and charge you.

Be aware of providers that don't accept Medicare doing business with places that do. I went to an off site hospital ER one time and had to be transported to the main hospital by ambulance. They wouldn't allow hubby to take me even though I wasn't that sick. The hospital CHOSE and called the ambulance service, but never said that it wasn't participating, even though the ER was. I ended up with a huge bill that I had to fight for about 6 months until I finally convinced Medicare that I had NO choice in the ambulance and wasn't told they didn't participate. What a pain.

Yes, pricing is ridiculous. I used to work for a company who sold medical laboratory equipment so I knew how much the hospitals paid per test. And how many "free" tests, i.e. free reagents, the lab got. Believe me the average of what they paid us for the reagents was mere pennies compared to what they got from insurance companies.