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October 2013 Moms
Kate025
member
Insurance question??
Kate025
member
Do any of you have to pay your deductible before you have te baby?? My dr's office requires I pay it before the baby arrives. I was just wondering if this is standard or something my office does.
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Re: Insurance question??
I think so, mine is requring that I pay the ded now. But just be careful, I had to pay for blood work (and some other things) that my health insurance applied to my deductible but my doctor is trying to charge me for my full $500 deductible when I've already paid about 1/2 of that.
They request it, but don't require it. Most of the time they set up a payment plan.
Since ours will be paid out of an HSA, they waived it because HSAs (apparently) get pissy if you pre-pay for services.
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That's when you have to be your own advocate and keep track of all that. Most likely you will end up getting a refund from someone. But your doc's office only knows what they see when they check your plan. So to them, you do owe the $500.
I am sure it is because it is a larger bill than most are used to paying for what seems like 'regular doctor's visits' and they have probably had trouble collecting in the past, especially afterwards when people are looking at a hospital bill as well. It's a dollars decision no doubt. It did make me stop and think, geez, what if the worst case scenario happened and I ended up miscarrying, the last thing I'd want to have to deal with is getting my $ back from the doctor.
I have not met my deductible yet and this won't apply to the deductible until September when they file the claim with insurance. If I've met my deductible by then I may get a refund, if not, I may owe more
For my office, it's because they charge 1 fee for the ob care, labor & delivery (they assume a vaginal delivery). So, they contact my insurance company, find out I have a $2500 deductible to meet and set up a payment plan. Their fee is $3200 for all of that. I don't have to pay separately for extra appointments. I do have to pay for bloodwork if something unusual happened and for the a/s (because that's done with an ultrasound tech in a different department). I don't pay extra if she does one of those quickie wheel-in-an-ultrasound-on-a-cart ultrasounds or when I have to start peeing in a cup regularly.
If I had a much smaller deductible, I'm guessing they wouldn't worry about pre-payment.
I think I can insist to pay-as-I-go, but in the end, it's more expensive that way. This way, each appointment isn't a dr's visit...it's just part of the "one fee and you get it all, whatever you need" plan.
It isn't that different than when my son had surgery last week - they asked for $250 payment up front. No big deal.
Last year, when my son was born, they did find out that I overpaid by the time all the bills got crossed in the mail. No big deal again - they just credited my HSA the difference. It was a couple hundred bucks, which is practically nothing when you're carrying a $2,500 deductible.