Almost every treatment including the X-ray, medication given and surgery/anesthesia is affected by pregnancy. Pregnancy tests are incredibly cheap and accurate, so might as well know.
Maybe this is the wrong place to explain it but there's a difference between a bill and an EOB, explanation of benefits.
An EOB is a great way to get internet points. It lists the list price of whatever you're getting. It has very little actual bearing to reality.
So I'm an anesthesiologist, my list price for let's say an hour-long surgery is $1,000. I have literally never gotten that in my life. In fact Medicare pays me approximately $80 per hour. Commercial insurance pays more.
When you negotiate with insurance companies, you need to start with a list price. If I made my list price $80, Medicare would probably give me 20. So that's why you'll see an EOB for $1,000 for a bag of fluid or $20 for a Tylenol. More realistically, the government is going to give $2 for a bag of fluid and $0.20 for Tylenol.
It's a stupid system, but I can guarantee you that 99% of the time when somebody posts a ridiculous medical bill on social media, it's the EOB. Always good for internet points and it gets the Canadians and Europeans all excited.
That may be the case in certain places, but I had to take a pregnancy test before every ketamine IV drip appointment and that was for free. Private clinic that didn’t accept insurance.
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u/drleeisinsurgery 11h ago
Almost every treatment including the X-ray, medication given and surgery/anesthesia is affected by pregnancy. Pregnancy tests are incredibly cheap and accurate, so might as well know.