Quote:
Originally Posted by southerndoc
You have a right to view an itemized bill. This is an absolute must for you to view this if you do not have insurance.
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It is an absolute must for
everyone even if you do have health insurance. Nobody should
ever pay a hospital bill without first reviewing an itemized list of charges. 90% of hospital bills contain errors.
I've shared before that after my wife's gallbladder surgery a couple of years ago, I found an error of over $1,000 on her bill. That is money that I would have paid out of pocket over and above what our insurance covered.
Call the hospital's billing office and have them send you the bill. They are required to do so.
As for the timeline here, after my daughter was born, it was 18 months before the last bill was settled so I don't see this as unusual. What often happens is the provider has 90 days to submit the claim to insurance. The insur. co. then may take a few months to process the claim and respond back to the provider that info was missing or incorrect. The provider resubmits the claim after some time and the insurer reprocesses it. Only after all of that happens will the patient get billed for any charges not covered by insurance. It is very common for 6-12 months to pass during that process.