Fortunately, if you are on Traditional Medicare, this is prohibited.
intercst
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Not on Medicare yet. Your docs will allow us to request an invoice once the EOB is issued. But the imaging lab wants payment. I just had to call them last week to request a refund of less than $10 because their “estimated insurance coverage” was off. Really a waste of their time and mine. But that’s their policy.
Oh…one doctor does require payment upfront, but she’s part of a larger system (Banner), and I’m sure that’s their policy.
Interesting that this is forbidden with vanilla Medicare.
As is oftentimes the case…it’s a bit more complicated than that.
At provider level, Medicare has heaps of rules and regulations for participating providers…one of which is that financial incentives to attract Medicare beneficiaries as patients are, in fact, prohibited. Failure to collect co payments is considered one such financial incentive. FWIW, I wasn’t aware of all these fine print details either until I went on a Medicare coding course to help dh with his claims submissions decades ago (when I guess Medicare beneficiaries were more of a financial benefit and not a potential burden to a practice)
In practical terms, a supplemental plan would be enough of a reassurance of payment (eventually) that providers/facilities rarely bother with asking for payment in advance or at time of service, from what I’ve seen…but without, then I imagine it wouldn’t be unusual for a practice to ask for this payment. If the folk responsible for making sure that these payments are collected have any gumption, and recognise where their paycheck is coming from, it’ll be at time of check in and not after any appointment…which is pretty much a recipe for “forgotten” payment devices, accounts receivable stretching for months or ultimately failure to collect co payments (aka an unpaid bill)
My office manager was one such person with gumption and was very skilled at accurately calculating copayments when insurance was involved and conveying the expectation of payment. When I commented on this once, she replied that her next week’s paycheck was in that Kate Spade handbag and it was her job to get her hands on it.