Terrible Triplet, I am curious, where do you live?
My health insurance plan costs me $9,000 a year. That’s just for me. I live alone.
About estimates. There are a lot of health care professionals and specialists who will be upfront about their prices because they are offering services that they know insurance won’t cover at all or will only inadequately cover.
But I have never in my life known a regular doctor, surgeon or hospital willing to give me a price estimate. If there are such doctors and surgeons in the U.S., I have never met them. If you ask a doctor for an estimate, he just looks incredulously at you and grins and chuckles at your naivete. If you ask over the phone, his front desk clerk will say curtly that they don’t give estimates.
The really scary thing is that you have no control over who your doctor consults with, which lab he uses, etc. Your doctor does not care if these people/businesses take your insurance or not. You will get bills in the mail and wonder who these people/businesses are and why they are billing you. You will find out that your doctor consulted with them, used their lab, sent your tests to them to be read, etc.
