Hospital Claim For Cardiac Ablation

Wow, medical costs in the US is both ridiculously high, and super confusing. I just got the statement from my work insurance. The hospital charged $98k for the procedure, and that is not including charges from non-hospital staff, like the cardiologist that did the procedure. However, the Medicare cost is only $24k, and my work insurance only paid $1,500. That seems low if Medicare only pays for 80%. Maybe Part A pays 100% for hospital services and Part B pays 80% for other stuff. So far, I’ve had two insurance plans since April and have not received any third party billing so maybe everything is getting taken care of somehow.

Medical costs are tough. Did my procedure help? Of course it did. My heart rate has been pretty stable for the past two months, except it’s now settling at about 70 bpm. The cardiologist thought it was too slow at high 50’s anyway so this is probably better. It’s just weird that 10 months after surgery, things are still not settled yet. I assume that if I did not have insurance, then my cost would be the ~$100k. Would I pay that? Probably, if the alternative is to have fast heart beat and a-fib all the time. Would I pay $200k? $300k? $1 million? I don’t know. I guess you pay what you can afford to stop the pain and discomfort. Again, I don’t know how medical care reform is going to work in the US when the costa are so high, yet very opaque. I’ll bet the hospital never gets paid $100k for an ablation but yet it’s probably on every claim they send out. Why? Also, with every new doctor expecting to get paid a lot of money, what happens if everyone pays Medicare rates and 90% of the profit in the system disappears?