Instant Insights / Health Care Cost Transparency, Surprise Billing, and the Employee Benefits Industry

Typically, patients, and their employers, don't know the cost of health care or are given inaccurate estimates. Then come the surprise medical bills and costly overruns of employers' benefits budgets. Here's a look at the health care cost transparency problem and how people are trying to solve it.

Balance-billing court cases force hospitals to justify charges

As balance billing becomes more common, courts have stepped in to mediate cases and determine what "average market price" a hospital can actually charge.

By Julie Appleby, Kaiser Health News | December 26, 2018 at 10:36 AM

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Joaquin Lopez had emergency gallbladder surgery after rushing to an ER last year. He has been haggling with Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis over what he owes ever since.

The 37-year-old college professor was hit with a nearly $8,000 bill from the out-of-network hospital — that was after the $11,000 he and his insurer had already paid.

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