How do payments work?

Hi, first time having my own health insurance.

So for starters, I have UHC high deductible insurance and have met it already, if that helps.

Sometimes, when I go to a doctors appointment, they won’t bill me up front and sometimes they do. For the ones that don’t make me pay upfront, they say that I’ll get billed through my health insurance. So I go to my UHC portal to pay, and looked through all my claims. And in the claims in the portal, all it shows is the EOB and what I should’ve paid for the service. It also doesn’t have a way to know if you paid up front or not so it has a box that you can check that says whether you paid it up front already. Very unorganized and very confusing because like why wouldn’t they know if I paid it ?? idk?

For example, I got an order for a MRI at a hospital I’ve never been to before. The hospital never sent me a bill, and the portal had a claim that told me how much I should’ve paid for the mri. If the hospital never sent me a bill, and I have the ability to mark that I already paid it. Then is there a way to just not pay for things ??? (I paid it btw like a good citizen but still). And if I didn’t pay it would I just have random debt left and right and my social security score is going to tank? Like is there consequences to this? I’ve been on top of it so far but I’m human and will likely slip soon like will I go to jail? Or be denied a loan in the future because I didn’t pay a medical bill 10 years prior. Who’s keeping track of all this and what’s going on? How am I able to walk out of there without anyone making me pay anything that’s so weird?

Another example, I went to a new doctors office and presented my insurance. At the end of the appointment, they made me pay upfront like $100 or so. When I went to the portal to mark the claim as paid, it said that I should have only paid $75. ??? like ??? This really doesn’t make sense to me like I feel like everyone’s just making up numbers and going with it. I was able to get my money back from the doctors office but this same scenario has happened yet again with a different office where I paid more than I should’ve. And they never told me I paid more than I should’ve too I had to call them !!! Like they’re robbing me atp. Idk what’s happening guys. I don’t understand insurance.

I hope that explanation makes sense. Please help me with this if anyone has any experience.

submitted by /u/uraverageloser
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