Huge bill for unnecessary medical consults: how to address?
My baby had a broken arm (unfortunate accident with sibling trying to help). We had an awful experience at the hospital because they suspected abuse (no factors to trigger this: we have two happy kids with perfect health records, both have high levels of education and overall good socioeconomic status), we were told we had to go through vigorous testing to rule out more trauma in baby (we knew there was no more trauma because this happened in front of my eyes, sibling turned baby and her arm got stuck, that’s all). I am OK paying the bill for the unnecessary tests (cat scan, additional X-rays) that totaled to something around $800. But we also saw FIVE different doctors in about an hour (surgeon, orthopedic doctor, er doctor, pediatric orthopedic, orthopedic surgeon), each of them except the ER doctor said “yeah, the trauma lines up with your story, there is nothing to do to keep it from healing so we won’t do anything other than wrap for a few hours a day”. They kept coming though, it was strange to us the doctors kept coming, the ER doctor told us CPS will be alarmed if we don’t stay overnight so we did (nothing happened in those hours, they didn’t even give baby Tylenol). Now we got a bill with about ~$1000 charge for EACH doctor consultation and ~$1200 for the hospital stay. How do I address this? I am waiting for itemized bill (initially they sent the itemized bill that wasn’t complete) to talk to the hospital, but what do I say? Where do I begin to negotiate the bill down? I am very much not inclined to pay for this, especially since we kept saying we wanted to decline services but were told we could not (overnight stay), did not ask for additional doctors consults and didn’t agree to them being requested (we were not even notified more doctors were coming).