Medical Discounts

 "I wonder about Beagles getting that 20 percent discount on his hospital bill because he had no insurance.  As we all know insurance companies make deals with hospitals so that they actually pay quite a bit less than that number on your bill.  So if the insurance company pays less than full price and the uninsured pay 20 percent less, who pays full price?" - Uncle Ken

To be fair, this happened 12 years ago.  The hospital in question has since gone bankrupt under suspicious circumstances and was bought out by a big conglomerate chain that turned it into an outpatient clinic.  If you need to stay overnight, they ship you to their big hospital in Petoskey.  I would be surprised if I went there today and was offered the same deal.  Somebody told me at the time that the reason they gave uninsured patients a discount was that they saved a lot of paper work and didn't have to wait as long for their money.  As for my dentist, he did a lot of work on both of us back when we still had insurance from the paper mill.  We went to him for over 40 years and, since he retired, have been dealing with his daughter who took over the practice.  Maybe those discounts were a reward for customer loyalty.

Since we have been on Medicare, we have noticed on bills from different doctors that they  sometimes accept the 80% as full payment and don't charge the 20% copay.  There used to be a chiropractor in town who did the same thing with other insurance programs, but he moved to Arizona a long time ago.

The wife of a friend of mine survived a bout with cancer some years ago.  Last I heard, they were still paying the bills in monthly installments.  The only difference between that and insurance is that, with insurance, you pay the monthly installments before you get sick and,  if you never get sick, they still keep your money.