Quote Originally Posted by Sirrahsim
This whole insurance thing is just crazy! When I lived overseas I got all of my medical care on base so I had no idea what civilian clinics charged! Now that I am in the states I am seeing a civilian OB and am SHOCKED at the amounts they are trying to charge my "insurance company". With one particular bill, the clinic billed them over $700 for some blood tests. I was even more surprised when my company payed them less than $200 of that and "disallowed" the rest. My doc isn't allowed to charge me a penny over what Tricare gives them but is perfectly fine with that. It makes me wonder how much the tests actually cost the clinic to perform if they don't mind a $500 mark off?!?!

It would be interesting to see how much the tests would have cost if you were paying cash for them instead of through insurance.

I had to have 6 blood tests after one of my OBGYN appts. They had a price book and they had price for insurance and price for cash. It was going to cost over $500 if we had insurance.... but we were paying cash.... it cost us $140. What a difference.