> Your insurance doesn't pay us enough to do the whole "personal estimated bill"

I respect that you are a MD from Harvard Medical School. Obviously you are very smart, and hard working.

Deep inside you, something must be telling you that it would make no sense for a provider to be in business of seeing patients if they were making no money in it.

I am also confused if you disagree with me that it is reasonable to be told of costs that one is expected to pay BEFORE one is made to incur those costs?

Someone is paying you and for the computers and GPUs you run your code on. Infact you made a very similar comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10930242

But let's keep that aside; that's a completely separate discussion.

To clarify: I did not ask the provider to tell me what my OOP will be. I am educated enough to figure that on my own. I know how to call my insurance company and speak in English.

All I want the provider to tell me is what they typically bill during a routine service so I can figure out how much my visit will be billed to my insurance company.

I am more than happy to talk with my insurance company to figure out how that cost will be settled.

I don't want the provider to do anything extra for me.

> I'd simply give you my charge-master-highest-rate and say "I don't know what your particular insurance company has negotiated and which contract will be in effect at the time of bill submission, so the resulting charge may be lower than this. It will not be higher"

GREAT!

That is fine and I would welcome it! Seriously. Let me sort out what I need to pay and what my insurance pays.

Just tell me what my maximum financial liability could be and I am a happy camper!

I don't think you still have understood my "rant" but in this case I was not told about the possibility of a "surgery" before, during or after the appointment, with me asking the doctor and office staff at each of those steps if I owed anything. I came to know about it months later when I got the invoice with a due date.

Anyways, I do not want to repeat the detailed discussion that are already in the comments on the Quora post. You are welcome to expand the comments and read them yourself once you are over being condescending.

FYI, the last comment I made there clarified I am more than happy to pay for the consultations and estimates. No one works for free.

I would rather pay $500 for consultations and estimates to figure out what I am going to get and whether its worth it to me than $1500 that I had no say in that just happened to show up in my mail.

Since your first line is all so very dismissive of my whole rant, I will not longer engage with you, as it's probably wasted energy.

You read the anonymous answer, you agreed with it, got what you were already decided on and did not even bother to read further.

For your sake I hope you never get a medical bill you never even thought you would get that would end up destroying you financially and put you in extreme debt.

This actually happens to people in the U.S. on a regular basis, and I dont think that's normal.

I cant personally imagine why smart people even think this practice is OK.

What happened to me during that visit can be summarized by: "oh that peek we did into your ear? yeah, that's $1500. sorry we didn't tell you in advance. If you don't pay it, we will trash your credit".

For other people possibly reading this: the office did not even tell me that the visit might involve extra costs INSPITE of me EXPLICITLY mentioning that I would need to be made aware of such.

TLDR: I am HAPPY to pay for costs that are shared with me BEFORE they are incurred SPECIALLY when I am asking to be made aware of costs that I am expected to pay.