My fiance broke here leg and needed surgery. The pre-registration personnel called and told us that the hospital cost would be 2,167 dollars and that if we paid it in full upfront we would receive a 20% discount.
One week later we went to register her for surgery and spoke with another personnel member who was to take our payment. She said the same regarding our payment and we expressed our gratitude for the upfront discount.
She then said, "there may be a slight additional amount that is owed after the surgery due to the difficulty in providing an exact estimate".
Three weeks later we received a bill for 2,812 dollars that our insurance did not cover. The "slight" additional amount she had referred to was roughly 14,000 dollars. Our insurance did cover a large portion of the bill, but at no time were we made aware that slight meant thousands of dollars.
My issue is that we would have chosen to not pay the upfront cost and to billed in full after the surgery so we could pay on a payment plan instead of wasting 1,734 dollars of our savings that were to be used on a home loan down payment.
I feel that the hospital failed to execute due diligence in expressing the real costs of the surgery in an attempt to obtain the maximum amount of money they could from us upfront.
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