[_delirium]

It's true that they can't just make up services, but they can do a pretty wide range of things and bill you for them, without giving you the price in advance. My dad was in the hospital once, and got something like 20 separate bills, for different services he had no idea he had received (and had no way to verify if he had even received). And my mom actually did get a half-dozen or so bills for services she definitely didn't receive. She went to the ER, checked in, but ended up leaving before getting any services whatsoever: after >1hr waiting in the ER's waiting room, she started calling around to see if she could be seen somewhere else, and left when she found a nearby urgent-care clinic that could see her. They still billed her for a "standard" ER work-up, including line items for a blood test and lab work! She had not had blood drawn, and clearly no lab work was done. Obviously she didn't pay that bill, though: if you really have good evidence that the service was not performed, you can challenge it.

[pc86]

Honestly I'd be shocked if an ER doctor knew the price of a service before doing. They probably know a general range (give or take a few hundred dollars?) for a given test, but even that I'm mostly guessing on.

Unless they're a small operation, I don't know that they'd have any direct visibility into the billing/insurance/finance side of the operation. Maybe that is the issue? I don't know how to combat that in a large hospital setting.

The one time I had surgery I ended up getting 3 separate bills for varying amounts, but any time I asked for documentation about a given procedure or test it was provided in writing well before the due date of the bill.

[fargolime]

I once asked the financial adviser for a hospital, how much the CAT scan will be. He said $1700. On the bill it was $4500. Here's how it really works, according to a relative of mine who works in the billing dept. of a major hospital: each month they decide how much to charge patients for services already rendered, so they can meet their monetary goals for that month.