Got the wrong health plan?
Then your shoulder MRI may cost NINETEEN (19) TIMES what others pay if you happen to go to UC Davis Medical Center (UCDMC) in Sacramento.
Sound like a scam?
Yeah, that’s because it is.
UCDMC charges as little as $182 or as much as $3,446, depending on your insurance plan.
If you want to be treated fairly, you can drive about 60 miles down I80 to a much higher-priced area and visit Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa. There, you will pay $306 for that same MRI, no matter which insurance plan you happen to have.
Huh. So, Queen of the Valley takes the position that an MRI has the same cost to them no matter what logo happens to be on their patient’s medical card?
Radical concept.
The national average Medicare reimbursement for this MRI is $295 ($62 doctor & $233 Facility).
If your health plan uses Reference-Based pricing (RBP), we’d pay between $370 and $415.
At UCDMC, the Cigna PPO pays $1,525, Blue Cross PPO pays $1,452, UHC PPO pays $3,003, and oddly, Aetna is not even listed.
Employers, how much longer can you recruit top talent and pay quality wages if you have competitors paying 35% less for healthcare than you because they took the step to exit this systemic pilfering with RBP?
The hospital pricing data comes from trybilly.app and I’m not affiliated with them in any way – just a paying customer trying to shine a light on the health cartel attempting to strangle our businesses.
Medicare pricing here: https://lnkd.in/grwsbJtj
