The hospital already billed me for my outpatient procedure last month, so I was surprised to receive another bill for about $300 of charges not covered by my insurance.
This morning I talked with the hospital billing rep, and she told me that even though I'd paid in August based on a 15% discount from their estimate of my share after insurance, the actual amount was higher than the estimate.
Chrome wouldn't let me log in to the insurance company's site, so I used Firefox instead. On the site, I found another EOB (explanation of benefits) dated today, which backed up the billing rep's description.
After the call, I did some amateur auditing, and learned that the estimate was based on a 70% discount off the original nominal mid-five-figures bill, while the actual bill had just a 65% discount. After the discount, insurance paid 80%, leaving a 20% co-pay for me. Some calculator and spreadsheet work filled in the rest of the blanks, and I understood where the extra $300 was coming from.
So anyway, I learned something.
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