So - Seattle Children's Hospital is upset that it is being dropped by some insurance companies -

[hedgehog]

Left off many networks, Seattle Children’s sues

People buying insurance through the exchange may not realize that the pediatric hospital is not in the health plan’s network of providers, Children’s officials say.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021968776_acachildrenssuitxml.html





Maybe this has something to do with it:

Revenues Compensation
SEATTLE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL WA $707,928,519 Thomas Hansen - CEO $1,209,562 $1,209,562

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2011/September/28/Chart-CEO-Pay-Packages.aspx

[marlakay]

1. My next door neighbor was one of their managers

She retired well paid, and is a total screaming against obamacare republican.

[hedgehog]

2. It's easy to miss that the site lists only the highest paid

manager, not total managerial pay.

[hedgehog]

3. Not to mention - other charts at the link shows that

even with the high executive pay, the hospital is making a profit of 5.6% a year!

[ShadowLiberal]

4. It might also be because of 'creative billing' that they aren't covered

I don't know about that hospital, since I live on the east coast far from it, but the local children's hospital where I live engages in shall we say 'creative billing' of insurance companies frequently. Or, by the correct name, insurance fraud.

Most people without medical knowledge probably wouldn't catch it, but boy did my mother, who's a nurse, catch quite a bit of it when my older brother had cancer and went there for treatment for several years, including having multiple hospital stays in that time.

They did things like bill for blood transfusions he didn't have, but what should have really given it away as insurance fraud to anyone with medical knowledge is they didn't bill them for testing what his blood type was, even though that's required every single time you give someone blood. I've also seen them bill visits to a Nurse Practitioner to our health insurance under the name of a doctor we never saw (because nurse practitioner visits pay less then doctor visits).

The people that the health insurance companies hire often have no medical knowledge once so ever, and no motivation to catch insurance fraud (no incentive pay or bonuses for it). When my mother reported some of the tests/etc they were billing the health insurance company for that my brother didn't have their people on the phones would say stuff like "oh no he had that test, you must not have known what it was when they did it", even though my mother with all her medical training knew exactly what the tests are they were billing the insurance company for. Yet after much effort of getting them to call the hospital to check on the validity of those stuff the hospital would always go "oh that one was a mistake, get rid of that bill".

[ChazII]

5. It would be interesting to hear what the parents

have to say about this situation.