Not NY resident but recently had an experience that I think is basically fraud but also "legal."
replyWent to clinic for fractured arm. Was given a sling, told it was included with the visit, verbally by the staff.
Later get a bill for nearly $500 for the sling that costs $50 if you get it outside of the clinic. Was told they think they accidentally billed me the insurance price. I can understand "convenience" being baked into the price but not at a 10x markup. The more I talked with the clinic trying to get them to fix it, the more it sounded like they had a partnership with the stupid sling company where they put slings on people and bill the insurance 10x the cost of the sling.
There is this whole stupid game between insurance companies and medical suppliers where the medical suppliers put a huge markup on the price and then the insurance companies negotiate a big 'discount' on that price. It's thoroughly unproductive for anything other than inflating the size of the bill the patient sees (and, in the case of someone uninsured, putting a ton of pressure on them to negotiate the price with the supplier themselves).
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