Health Care: How To Compare Prices
Summary
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Learning the prices charged for different procedures, tests or use of medical premises requires work. There is no single source that has the information. To make matters more confusing, there is no single price in the health care industry. A doctor may charge one price to uninsured patients, another to patients covered by Medicare, and yet additional prices depending on what insurance company or plan covers the patient.
One alternative to learn about prices is to contact a service such as CoPatient 
. CoPatient will analyze your bill and send you a report including how much it believes you should have been charged. You can then either negotiate yourself or hire CoPatient to negotiate for you. If CoPatient negotiates for you, it charges a percentage of the amount of money it saves you.
Alternativle, consider the following steps:
- Step 1: Learn the name of the health care you need.
- Step 2: Look online to find what you can about the different prices charged in your geographical area.
- Step 3: Call the providers that have the quality you need which look to be the least expensive. Confirm what they charge.
- Step 4: Negotiate to find out if you can get a lower price.
NOTE: It is advisable to check the quality of a health care provider before agreeing to work with that provider. Information about how to do that is included in:
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