By adding tons of paperwork and time and effort. When a denial happens, often the doctor himself has to communicate with the insurance company via phone, instead of, you know, doctoring.

This often proceeds over multiple rounds. And then either the company eventually pays, or the consumer has to pay and try to get reimbursed later.

You asked this question 30 minutes after even a casual reading of my other comment, and a little thinking about it, would have fully answered it.

I would like to assume good faith, but your other comments indicate a high probability that you are an insurance company shill.

And in response to your other question about collusion, no there doesn't have to be collusion. Insurance companies putting onerous bogus requirements on providers will automatically drive up the costs.

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akramachamarei 3 days ago | parent [-]

I am deeply offended by your allegation. Not everyone who disagrees with you is a shill. I would not make the same accusations about you, nor would I act as if I can estimate the probability that you are. HN's commentary guidelines address this.

You can consider my mistake to be in conceptualizing the cost of "medical services" too narrowly, as just the medicine, and not the providers' surrounding administration. To that end I take your point. In theory, at least. Do you know how much this has? In particular, you refer to the back-and forth negotiation of claims--on what do you base this claim?

	▲	zephen 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> I am deeply offended by your allegation. Be offended all you want. It's a free country, but, to be perfectly frank, you are still making it difficult to believe you are writing in good faith, as I will show. > You can consider my mistake to be in conceptualizing the cost of "medical services" too narrowly, as just the medicine, and not the providers' surrounding administration. Which is fine, except that my very first comment that you responded to explicitly explained "More direct costs, more costs at the provider they have to cover..." So I already explained that which you said you missed, before your first comment questioning it. > Do you know how much this has? In particular, you refer to the back-and forth negotiation of claims--on what do you base this claim? When I wrote "You asked this question 30 minutes after even a casual reading of my other comment, and a little thinking about it, would have fully answered it." I was serious. You still asking this question, instead of looking at that comment, indicates that at best you are completely unserious. For your edification, here is a link to that comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48480873 When you wrote your first comment in reply to mine, there were already two comments there -- that one and its very short parent.