As you have probably heard from your employer or insurance company or even Medicare, it pays to use in-network participating doctors when receiving health care. This is true for several reasons. It saves you money by keeping your out-of-pocket costs lower, it helps keep premiums lower and when an insurer has a larger group of people using the services of a participating doctor it provides greater leverage in negotiating fee payments.
There is one group of doctors that leverage their unique position of not having face to face contact with patients by not participating in health plans and by charging high fees with the accompanying bill for the patient. These doctors are the ologists, more specifically the anesthesiologists and radiologists who rarely are selected by the patient, in fact you may never see them, but you will see the impact of their high fees.
Read my blog post on this important often overlooked issues on Health Insurance Illuminated.
Remember, the primary, if not only, reason health care providers do not sign participating provider agreements is because they want to charge a fee higher than other health care providers providing the same service. They want the higher fee because they want to make more money or because they run such an inefficient business they need to charge more. You should not be paying more in either case.
And no, there is not a relationship between high fees and high quality.
Pay the bill already!
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 