Money Saving Tip: Check Your Medical Bills

I've recommended before that you should always check your medical bills since they're likely wrong (for specifics, see Money Saving Tip: Watch Medical Bills and Money Saving Tip: Check Your Medical Bills, Part 2.) Well, here's a reminder not to accept your hospital's/doctor's bill without looking it over closely. Why? Because it's very likely that the bill is wrong . In fact, MSNBC says 8 out of 10 hospital statements have multiple mistakes and ignoring them could be very costly:

Errors on bills for doctors, medical tests or hospitals can result in overcharges that run from a few dollars to tens of thousands of dollars.

And let me go out on a limb here and guess that the incorrect charges are hardly, if ever, in your favor.

So what should you do if you find a mistake on a medical bill? MSNBC says you may want to get help from a medical-billing advocate. But if you prefer the do-it-yourself method, check out these suggestions:

• How to Get an Incorrect Medical Bill Corrected

• Another Way to Get an Incorrect Medical Bill Corrected

• A Third Way to Get an Incorrect Medical Bill Corrected

Comments

[Kevin]

We just ran into this a few months ago while having our baby boy. They charged my wife extra for a "private room". The only problem is all the rooms are exactly the same and they are all private. We called about it and they adjusted it without much effort.

That was the only problem we found, everything else seemed to be ok, although they did charge like $3 each for Motrin.