The Hidden Fee Costing Doctors Millions Every Year (Pro Publica)

[Nevilledog]

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-hidden-fee-costing-doctors-millions-every-year

It was a multibillion-dollar strike, so stealthy and precise that the only visible sign was a notice that suddenly vanished from a government website.

In August 2017, a federal agency with sweeping powers over the health care industry posted a notice informing insurance companies that they weren’t allowed to charge physicians a fee when the companies paid the doctors for their work. Six months later, that statement disappeared without explanation.

The vanishing notice was the result of a behind-the-scenes campaign by the insurance industry and its middlemen that has largely escaped public notice — but that has had massive financial consequences that have rippled through the health care universe. The insurers’ invisible victory has tightened the financial vise on doctors and hospitals, nurtured a thriving industry of middlemen and allowed health insurers to do something no other industry does: Take one last cut even as it pays its bills.

Insurers now routinely require doctors to kick back as much as 5% if they want to be paid electronically. Even when physicians ask to be paid by check, doctors say, insurers often resume the electronic payments — and the fees — against their wishes. Despite protests from doctors and hospitals, the insurers and their middlemen refuse to back down.

*snip*

[Casady1]

1. The only two innovations that the insurance industry

has done is the copay and the deductible.

[ret5hd]

4. Well, they did devise the system...

that codes a splinter in your finger as: S60.459A

[Victor_c3]

2. Health insurance is all a criminal enterprise as far as I'm concerned n/t

[spooky3]

3. Pres. Biden's team on fees--please look into this one, too. Nt