the hospitals can be worse than the insurance industry too. The wife went in for some prevent maintenance -- this being her 50th year -- and got confirmation several times that the procedures would be pretty much 100% covered except for a few hundred bucks. pretty much horrible service the whole way thru -- just inept practitioners, an absentee doctor, podunk administrators asking for her social security # in a crowded waiting room, hospital employees smoking outside the exits. She gets thru all that, everything checks out, until the bill comes. $1800 for some trumped up b.s.

Wife calls the hospital, they call back two days later say "yes" she owes the $.

She calls Blue Cross and they explain the hospital initially checked the correct box but then changed it from prevent to diagnostic or whatever their language is. Insurance says no problem that they will take care of it, but then can't get a hold of the hospital admin.

Me, I prob would have just paid the bill like a dummy. Going forward we''re going back to using Northwestern Hospital & doctors in the city. Amazing how Northwestern can handle 20 times as many patients, much more effectively, than this local hospital.