Around the end of last year, Ronmel Rangel, 63, began to feel a familiar discomfort in his lower abdomen. Twenty-five years earlier, while living in his native Venezuela, he had undergone surgery to repair a hernia on the right side of his groin.<\/p>\n
Now, the same pain had returned \u2014 on the left.<\/p>\n
This time, Rangel was in the U.S. and lacked health insurance. In 2019, he moved to Portland, Maine, where one of his daughters lives.<\/p>\n
As a green-card holder, he qualified to purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. But he quickly realized that the premiums for someone his age were beyond his budget. He decided to go without insurance, even though it had been a priority for him.<\/p>\n
Instead, Rangel signed up for a plan at a concierge practice where patients pay as little as $70 a month for services, including unlimited office visits and minor procedures such as stitches and biopsies.<\/p>\n
But when Rangel was diagnosed with a hernia, surgery became unavoidable. Ben Hagopian, his primary care physician, helped him compile a list of hospitals and surgical centers to consider. Rangel has a PhD in management, a field he pursued while serving in the navy in Venezuela. Armed with that knowledge and a naturally inquisitive mind, he began researching prices.<\/p>\n
His efforts paid off when the bill came.<\/p>\n
The Medical Service<\/strong><\/p>\n Rangel had what is called an inguinal hernia<\/a>, which occurs when the contents of the abdomen bulge through a weak spot in the lower abdominal wall. The condition is relatively common, particularly among older adults.<\/p>\n In most cases, surgery is required to fix the muscle wall and can be performed as an outpatient procedure<\/a>. There are three main surgical approaches to repair an inguinal hernia: open, laparoscopic, and robot-assisted. Studies have shown that the three approaches have similarly low rates of hernia recurrence and are safe and effective<\/a>.<\/p>\n Rangel underwent an open repair, an approach often preferred by physicians for recurrent hernias. He said his operation lasted less than two hours, and he walked out of the surgical center shortly afterward.<\/p>\n The Bill<\/strong><\/p>\n $2,900:<\/strong> The flat rate Rangel ultimately paid for his hernia repair at an outpatient surgery center in Maryland, including the surgeon\u2019s fee and anesthesia. He said he also paid around $1,800 to travel to the surgery center from his home in Maine, including airfare, meals, and lodging for him and his wife.<\/p>\n The Billing Problem: No Insurance \u2014 But Time To Shop<\/strong><\/p>\n Because Rangel did not have insurance, he had no protections from high costs \u2014 except time and his ability to shop for an acceptable price for his procedure.<\/p>\n Rangel\u2019s first stop was a nonprofit hospital close to home. He scheduled a consultation with a surgeon with MaineHealth, the state\u2019s largest health system, and received an estimate showing it would cost approximately $23,000 to repair his hernia laparoscopically.<\/p>\n Laparoscopic procedures generally cost more because surgeons use more advanced tools. Still, the average laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair costs nearly twice as much at a hospital as it does at an ambulatory surgery center for a patient covered by Medicare<\/a>, which pays $5,280 for the hospital-based option.<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t going to mortgage my life just to have surgery and spend the next 30 years paying off the debt,\u201d said Rangel, now 64.<\/p>\n So, he kept shopping. He considered a surgical center in Oklahoma that was far cheaper, but he ultimately ruled it out because it was so far away. He also explored traveling to Universidad de los Andes in Santiago, Chile, where another of his daughters lives. There, his hernia repair would have cost about $7,000, but once he added thousands of dollars in travel expenses, that option no longer made financial sense.<\/p>\n Gerard Anderson, a professor who analyzes healthcare spending at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said patients without health insurance are often the ones hit hardest by wide price variations.<\/p>\n A closer look at any hospital bill helps explain why. \u201cEvery hospital is different,\u201d he said, \u201cbut generally about half of the total charge is the facility fee,\u201d a charge added to hospital care to help cover overhead costs.<\/p>\n Anderson said hospitals often mark up prices far more than smaller facilities do.<\/p>\n Medical billing researchers say the price gap between hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers partially reflects the higher overhead costs of operating a hospital.<\/p>\n Hagopian, Rangel\u2019s physician, acknowledged that hospitals have higher administrative expenses. \u201cBut that doesn\u2019t explain the high costs.\u201d<\/p>\n MaineHealth declined to comment to KFF Health News, directing questions about the hospital-based procedure\u2019s cost to Jeffrey Austin, president of the Maine Hospital Association.<\/p>\n Austin said that, unlike surgery centers, hospitals must absorb the costs of providing \u201cmoney-losing\u201d services, such as behavioral healthcare and care for Medicaid patients. He added that revenue generated by large hospitals in a health system supports other facilities, improving access to care.<\/p>\n Hospital prices, which can vary widely, are also driven by negotiations<\/a> with insurers and market concentration. For uninsured patients, those list prices can become the starting point for negotiations \u2014 or the full amount owed.<\/p>\n Anderson noted that standardized payment rates exist for Medicare and Medicaid but not for most privately priced medical services. \u201cIn the private sector, providers can charge whatever they want.\u201d<\/p>\n Rangel collected estimates from facilities near and far from his home in Portland, Maine, including some outside the United States. \u201cI wasn\u2019t going to mortgage my life just to have surgery and spend the next 30 years paying off the debt,\u201d he says. (Brianna Soukup for KFF Health News)<\/p>\n The Resolution<\/strong><\/p>\n Rangel has another daughter in Argentina, a son in Venezuela, and other family in Spain. But he decided to stop looking around the globe for a good price, because he finally found what he was looking for in Maryland.<\/p>\n In April, he traveled to the Affordable Hernia Surgery center in Rockville, where he said \u201can efficient, well-coordinated system\u201d guided him through the entire process.<\/p>\n \u201cI received professional and very human care,\u201d Rangel said. He was fully recovered within two weeks, as his surgeon predicted, he said.<\/p>\n The surgery center charged Rangel a flat fee for his hernia repair. The added travel expenses for the two-day trip with his wife went toward airline tickets, transportation, meals, and one night in a hotel.<\/p>\n Rangel said he paid about $4,700 total.<\/p>\n Alan Kravitz, the surgeon who performed Rangel\u2019s operation, said the price difference uninsured patients face compared with insured patients is far from fair. \u201cIn the predatory and strategic world of U.S. healthcare pricing, uninsured patients generally get charged more than providers would accept from Medicare or commercial insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n Kravitz then pulled out an estimate another patient had received for an inguinal hernia repair from a different large health system. The price: $37,000.<\/p>\n The Takeaway<\/strong><\/p>\n Without insurance, many patients are on their own to negotiate.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the help of their primary physicians, patients can dig into prices and compare their options to avoid falling into medical debt,\u201d Rangel said.<\/p>\n That approach, however, is most feasible for elective procedures with several surgical options offering comparable outcomes.<\/p>\n Patients facing medical emergencies do not have the luxury of comparing prices before seeking care, though many hospitals offer cash-pay discounts or charity care for those paying without insurance.<\/p>\n Billing analysts say patients who do have time to shop should look beyond cost alone. They recommend checking the quality of hospitals and surgical centers by reviewing publicly available ratings and patient reviews. Research has found<\/a> that higher prices do not necessarily translate into a better quality of care, but it\u2019s also important to select a reputable care provider.<\/p>\n Comparison shopping for medical care can be time-consuming. But for patients facing elective procedures, the effort can pay off \u2014 sometimes saving thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was a learning experience for me,\u201d Rangel said, \u201cand I hope it will be for other people, too.\u201d<\/p>\n Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by KFF Health News<\/a> and The Washington Post\u2019s Well+Being<\/a> that dissects and explains medical bills.\u00a0Since 2018, this series has helped many patients and readers get their medical bills reduced, and it has been cited in statehouses, at the U.S. Capitol, and at the White House. Do you have a confusing or outrageous medical bill you want to share? Tell us about it<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on KFF Health News<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Around the end of last year, Ronmel Rangel, 63, began to feel a familiar discomfort in his lower abdomen. Twenty-five years earlier, while living in his native Venezuela, he had undergone surgery to repair a hernia on the right side of his groin. Now, the same pain had returned \u2014 on the left. This time,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14792"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}