Couldn't find a better forum to post this in so trying here. I'm going to do my best to cover all of the details but not give everyone tired head to who reads through this. I'll probably fail at the tired head part. Just trying to get an idea of how to approach this and what can happen if I just keep putting off paying anything.

In late November I had a severe pain in my abdominal area, pretty close to where your appendix is. It was bad enough that I felt like I had to go see someone about it and I pretty much never go to the doctor or really ever get sick. So I jumped on the BCBS website and found an Urgent Care facility local and In Network and drove the 5 minutes to their facility. My wife suspected it might be an umbilical hernia and sure enough that was what it was.

While at that Urgent Care facility, I talked to a doctor and told him where the pain was and that my wife suspected an umbilical hernia. He poked around and confirmed that is likely what it was. They then hooked me up to an IV and started to work on getting me setup for a CT scan. I walked out at that point because I realized that CT scan was going to be god knows how much money. My brother works in the medical screening world so I wound up getting a free CT scan later that day and that's where the umbilical hernia was confirmed.

Late March, I get two bills combining for roughly $3,300 for that Urgent Care visit. I literally laughed when it showed up based on the treatment I received. I figured they must have billed me for some out of network stuff so I double checked with BCBS and the 3rd party billing company and nope, this was all billed In Network, it just turns out this Urgent Care facility was also an Emergency Room clinic and I got hit with a "Facility Charge Level 4" because of the IV.

I'm medically dumb because I just rarely have any issues (that I'm aware of) so I'm sure I got lost in some medical lingo, but I can't help but feel big time taken advantage of here. Shouldn't I fight this? I've already complained to the 3rd party billing company and they magically and instantly dropped it about 30% to around $2,300. But I'm thinking I need to keep at this. Thoughts?

I would keep fighting. You may want to try to get your insurance involved because they're getting bilked too. It sounds like the urgent care/ER is billing you for the max rating they can instead of the min, regardless of what you received, and at that point they're an ER posing as an urgent care.

Keep fighting. Do they have an itemized cost for each item/task?

I wonder if they billed you for the CT scan and didn't say it...

That was one of my initial thoughts, they must have actually charged me for the CT scan that I said thanks but no thanks to. But they provided an itemized bill with some descriptions that don't strike me as poor, but probably would mean more to someone who knows what they're looking at. Any reason I shouldn't take a snapshot of the line item charges and post them here? I'll clip out any personal information obviously.

Same thing happened to me. I had elbow pain so bad I thought I broke something. I went to an urgent care place for various reasons. I knew it was going to be expensive but they rung me up for $2600 for an x ray and a shot of anti inflammatory meds...and it took 4 hours for that.

Insurance and the urgent care place both told me to pound sand.

I think the issue is some places are urgent care but also do hospital grade stuff.

Not sure I'm much help...but I went through the same thing recently.

this post just crossed over some sort of HIPAA line

EDIT: Took down the photos just in case.

Not to get on my soapbox but this is exactly why we need billing transparency. You should be able to go to an app and select an urgent care on price structures just like you shop for an airline ticket.