“I recently read that 80% of hospital bills contain errors!”

“Dear PoPville,

I wanted to share some information on something I recently learned about bills at Children’s National.  We unfortunately had an 18 hour hospital stay with our son earlier this year and got a very hefty $2100 bill even with our “good” insurance.  This seemed outrageous so I started poking around and followed the internet advice to request an itemized bill which revealed a couple errors.  I recently read that 80% of hospital bills contain errors!

It is infuriating that there is so little care spent on this incredibly important process that greatly impacts families at their most difficult times. We are lucky that I had the time to go through and check into this, but I also learned that Children’s will waive 20% of any bill if you call and pay it in full–no questions asked.  Again, this feels outrageous and another example of an arbitrary billing system that is overcharging people so frequently that they can just waive that amount for no reason.  Between the 20% “discount” and the mistakes I found, our $2100 bill ended up being $760.

I know most people already know to look into their bills, but I thought the community should be aware of the 20% they could be saving just with a simple phone call if they intended to pay their bill in full anyway.”