I wrote recently about my recent experience in trying to get itemized receipts for medical procedures. Readers have offered helpful feedback.

Coincidentally, the feedback arrived as I was reading an article published last month in Time magazine.

The article Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills are Killing Us , by Steven Brill is worth your time, although its long.

Ill get to the Brill article in a sec. First, a recap of my own recent experience.

I received two medical procedures in the space of a week, each in a different office.Continue Reading

In both, a desk clerk accepted my payment of hundreds of dollars, needed because I hadnt reached the deductible limit for my employer-provided health insurance.

Each clerk then told me she couldnt provide an itemized receipt. To get one, I was told, Id have to call a billing office in a week.

I needed itemized receipts so the company that manages my flexible spending account would permit me to use pre-tax money for the payments.

Two readers pointed out how providers use of procedure and diagnosis codes makes it difficult to know the cost of any office visit in advance. The codes determine how Medicare and private insurers pay.

Either the provider of the services or the charge-entry person enters those codes in the computer after the test/procedure/visit is completed and the payment captured, wrote one of the readers, a front-office supervisor for a Triad-area health care provider.

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What if we priced cheeseburgers like health care?