Donor Billing

I received my first bill from UCLA for the kidney transplant. The amount due was ~$112 and it was for some pre-op charges for my sister, the donor. I checked my work insurance’s website and there was no rejected claim for that amount. Since I still have Medicare, they did pay for most of the bill, and UCLA billed me for the rest. I checked with my work insurance and they said transplant donor medical expenses are covered, before and after surgery. I also messaged UCLA’s billing department on Monday and they finally answered me today. Evidently, they do not have my secondary insurance information, yet the medical center has billed Blue Shield over a dozen times for doctor charges, hospital fees, tests, and pharmacy co-pays. It it a different account since the charge is for my sister? I believe they use a common patient number across all billing accounts so why are they missing insurance information?

To make things worse, you cannot include attachments to a message reply. You can attach pictures to the initial message, but only two files or something. Anyway, I ended up copying all the information on the insurance card in the reply message. Strange, they can perform a perfect kidney transplant in 3-4 hours but cannot coordinate medical data within the same building. I hope this resolves this billing issue.

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Here is the billing statement. The initial amount was $3,900 but there was an adjustment of $3,330.31, which is probably reducing the billed amount to the Medicare price of $569.69. Medicare then paid ~80% (not sure why it is not exactly 80%) which leaves a $112.75 balance.

Again, if I do not have insurance and pay for the transplant out-of-pocket, would I then be billed the full $3,900? That is messed up!