6 March 1998 — approximated & paraphrased
Patient with a brokered account: “Time to settle up.”
Receptionist: “Well, looks like we’ll send a bill to your insurance company for a hundred and twenty dollars, but we’ll need your co-pay of twenty dollars, please. You can mail it in, if you like.”
P w/ aba: “Thanks! Have a great day!”
Receptionist: “Thank you, hon! Next please.”
Patient without a brokered account: “Time to settle up.”
Receptionist: “Uh… you don’t have any insurance.”
P w/o aba: “That’s correct.”
Receptionist: “That’ll be three hundred dollars. Right fucking now!”
update 210108: Mrs Axis once explained this to me. Insurance companies deal in large numbers, and can therefore negotiate lower rates because they represent a bloc of reliable payers, whereas I am an unknown quantity, and they’re not sure they can get even a fraction out of me. But they didn’t know me, did they? So they couldn’t know in advance that for EVERY time I ever walked myself into a doctor’s or dentist’s or other skilled contractor’s office, and incurred a debt, they ALWAYS got EVERY DiME! Which makes me considerably more reliable than every bookie who ever went belly up and left thousands bereft.
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