How Much Did Your Sleep Study Cost?

Lazer1234 wrote:I paid about $ 85 (550 SEK) for my medical sleep study overnight AND ResMed S9 autoset with mask.

Evil socialized medicine.

Sorry, I shouldn't be interjecting political comments but I am in a bad mood right now for various reasons. So please forgive me for my momentary lapse.

49er

I had to have 3 ( based on my reading of my sleepyhead printouts i knew that i needed an asv machine) - i had another sleep test to confirm i had sleep apnea, then a second one to do a titration, and then after the Pressure they gave me Failed to control the apnea ( as i told them prior to the first meeting with them) they sent me for an overnight ASV test. Since i've gotten my asv machine my apnea has been under control - last night for example i slept 8.2 hours with an 0.2 ahi. The sleep center billed 8500 for each night - insurance paid 2500 each night and i had to pay 100 each night - what a waste of time and money because they won't pay attention to the machine readouts

I have no idea of what my night cost in the sleep center in my local hospital. It went very well in a sound proof and darkened room with a very comfortable bed.....not a typical hospital bed.....it was a "sleep number bed" set to my level of comfort. Part of the night I was just hooked up to all the wires on my head, chest and feet, and the later part of the night I had a cpap machine on. My results were an AHI of 39 without the cpap hooked up to a nasal mask.

I am on Medicare, with a very nice Medicare Advantage Plan through UCare of Minnesota. My sleep study was covered 100% due to it being ordered by a physician after a bout with ventricular fibrillation, for which a stent was put into a coronary artery at a different and later date than the sleep study by a couple of weeks.

I never saw a bill, as I had no co-pay or deductible with the higher end Medicare Advantage plan I selected when I became eligible for Medicare part A and B, and thus eligible to sign up for a Medicare Advantage Plan.

My sleep study cost $2,800

my insurance deductible is $500
after that they par 70%

I was scheduled to get my sleep study done one evening at 8:30pm
I called the hospital after work to see how much it would cost
they told me I had one hour to get there with a check for $1,450

never had the study

instead I did a home study through 1-800someone
and after the results showed moderate obstructive apena bought an Resmed S9 muself

It was still cheaper than the $1,450

and I never had to pay for the inevitable follow up titration study either

Wouldn't it be nice if we had access to some kind of guide to costs, by city, state, or even provider?
I can't help thinking that price transparency would be a huge factor in lowering the cost of healthcare.

chunkyfrog wrote:Wouldn't it be nice if we had access to some kind of guide to costs, by city, state, or even provider?
I can't help thinking that price transparency would be a huge factor in lowering the cost of healthcare.

I wish! The private insurance companies and the doctors don't want that or wont allow it -- at least not now.

It took me weeks, yes weeks, to compare costs for my sleep study. It was virtually impossible, and in the end, almost pointless. I called local hospitals, the sleep lab my MD referred me to, and the sleep labs listed by Blue Cross. Each one was a nightmare to get estimated costs from. They all needed the diagnosis code, and procedure codes, etc., in order to give me a guess. The sleep labs gave a rough guess, but only with the codes could they be more accurate. At the end of the day, it wasn't the billed cost, but what BCBS would agree to pay that was important.

In the end I just said to heck with this and went with the preferred provider that did full home testing. The sleep lab people billed Blue Cross $6,000. The BCBS preferred provider 'discount' was -$5,021, and so the contracted amount allowed was $979. BCBS then paid out $783.20 to the lab and my portion I owed was 195.80.

Welcome to American healthcare! (Pre-ACA....). Where we pay more for care than any other civilized country, and have worse medical outcomes....

I used to have United Healthcare and they had a rudimentary online cost comparison tool for some procedures like knee replacement, gallbladder surgery, colonoscopy, etc. However nothing like sleep studies, etc. was included. And it was still very rudimentary. Nothing like Dr. Jones charges X for a bypass and Dr. Smith down the street charges $100 less. Because, frankly, with the private healthcare insurance industry, it makes little difference what Dr. Jones 'charges' unless you pay cash (Gd help you!) -- it's what the special contracted rate the insurer will pay Dr. Jones for that procedure that matters to the patient in the end. If you have a 20% co-insurance you have to pay, then it would be helpful to know what your insurer pays, and what your share will thus end up being for using the 'preferred provider'.

But trying to get those minute financial details out of the insurer is virtually near impossible. It is all part of the secret contracts they have with the individual doctors and hospitals. The insurers will not usually ever divulge the amount. You, as a patient, only learn the dollar amount when the bill comes!

I have used three different labs. Cheapest was 850 per night. Current lab is 3,500 per night. Previous lab was 1,500. Thus far the old adage you get what you pay for seems to ring true.

Mine cost 25 years of hard work in poor working conditions, that's the cost of my healthcare, unlike Obama Care, I worked and paid for mine. It seem to have cost me part of my health. Jim

I'm a brand-new CPAP user, and just joined this community.

After a visit to my GP for a sleep study referral due to very loud snoring, I have had one sleep study and follow-up with the doctor, a loaner APAP for two months, a titration study and another follow-up. To date I haven't been out-of-pocket a dime. Everything has been covered by the Ontario government (OHIP.) The government also covers (as mentioned earlier in this thread) up to $750 for a CPAP machine. My employer benefits will cover the rest, including a new mask each year and a new machine every five years.

But this isn't free. Ontario has a population of 13.5 million, which if a US state would be the fifth largest by population (just ahead of Illinois.) The Ontario health care budget for this year is just under $49 billion (see http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/budget/onta ... #ch2_t2-24.) Given the population of the United States is approx 315 million, the Ontario health care budget per capita is equivalent to the US government spending 1.14 trillion each year on health care to insure everyone.

Although I'm not out of pocket, if I were to calculate the percentage of my household taxes (income plus sales taxes) that ends up (a) with the Province (the rest goes to the Federal government) and (b) the fraction of the provincial budget assigned to health care, the amount I contributed this year to the Ontario health budget through my taxes is MUCH more than any of the costs I have seen in this thread (with the exception of the $21,000 bill that someone mentioned a few pages ago...) But OHIP has also covered almost all other health care expenses I have incurred in my life, and will (hopefully) continue to do so in the future. My total contribution through taxes over my entire working life could pass $1,000,000 by the time I retire.

I'm also very happy that my doctor referred me to a sleep study and subsequently I learned about CPAP (I have obstructive apnea and had an AHI of 50 prior to using a CPAP, now it is less than 0.5.) My quality of life has improved tremendously.

Goofproof wrote:Mine cost 25 years of hard work in poor working conditions, that's the cost of my healthcare, unlike Obama Care, I worked and paid for mine. It seem to have cost me part of my health. Jim

Yeah, and my relatives were marched into gas chambers and a bunch of folks' ancestors toiled for hundreds of years on plantations... Excuse me while I play my tensy-tiny violin for you.

A real man doesn't wallow in his misery, or begrudge the poor and the sick a pittance of basic aid just 'cause he may have had it bad.

A real man reaches out, to act and to make the world a better place, for everyone. To leave humanity in a small bit better state than what he himself had.

Think Jesus would turn his back on the poor because he thought they were undeserving? Well the fact is the working poor do most of the real work and suffering in this country -- working the near starvation level jobs no one else wants to do. And thanks to our fine educational system, there are plenty of such folks being churned out every single year, straight into a permanent underclass. And they don't deserve something as basic as access to healthcare? Only college educated need apply, apparently? Because outside of Hawaii, no US state mandates employers (both small and large) must insure their workers. They are at their complete mercy. And we all know how well that honor system has worked out...

What a sad, short epitaph is awaiting. "He hated."

hyperlexis wrote:

Goofproof wrote:Mine cost 25 years of hard work in poor working conditions, that's the cost of my healthcare, unlike Obama Care, I worked and paid for mine. It seem to have cost me part of my health. Jim

Yeah, and my relatives were marched into gas chambers and a bunch of folks' ancestors toiled for hundreds of years on plantations... Excuse me while I play my tensy-tiny violin for you.

A real man doesn't wallow in his misery, or begrudge the poor and the sick a pittance of basic aid just 'cause he may have had it bad.

A real man reaches out, to act and to make the world a better place, for everyone. To leave humanity in a small bit better state than what he himself had.

Think Jesus would turn his back on the poor because he thought they were undeserving? Well the fact is the working poor do most of the real work and suffering in this country -- working the near starvation level jobs no one else wants to do. And thanks to our fine educational system, there are plenty of such folks being churned out every single year, straight into a permanent underclass. And they don't deserve something as basic as access to healthcare? Only college educated need apply, apparently? Because outside of Hawaii, no US state mandates employers (both small and large) must insure their workers. They are at their complete mercy. And we all know how well that honor system has worked out...

What a sad, short epitaph is awaiting. "He hated."

And my relatives closed those gas chambers, and taught you to speak english instead of german. You can now burn those 50 flags in the closet, save the wear and tear on your flagpole changing them. Jim

Goofproof wrote:Mine cost 25 years of hard work in poor working conditions, that's the cost of my healthcare, unlike Obama Care, I worked and paid for mine. It seem to have cost me part of my health. Jim

Of course it never occurs to you Jim that under different circumstances, you might have been without healthcare and needing it badly. Instead you take a holier than thou attitude and act like the people who don't have insurance are in that position because it is their own damm fault. That is truly disgusting.

Even worse, in another thread, you admit that you're not doing everything you can to keep your diabetes under control such as losing weight which is a drain on the healthcare system. But yet you have nerve to pass judgment on the folks who desperately need Obama Care so they can be less of a drain on the system, which of course has never occurred to you.

By the way, I was nodding off so I don't remember the exact details but one person who signed up for Obama Care said it would enable her to go back to work since she would be able to access healthcare to treat a medical condition that was preventing her working. I suspect there are many people like this woman.

And as Black Spinner keeps pointing out, the rest of the world mostly doesn't have a problem with providing insurance for their citizens as but for some reason, the US can't figure it out and turns people's lives into a political football. Unbelievable.

49er

At different times I have had no insurance, fair insurance, lousy insurance, and pretty good insurance;
mostly depending on good or bad fortune. Even though my best insurance was when I had the best job, I cannot honestly take full credit,
as I was fortunate enough to be in a position to get an education and then a decent job.
I worked the hardest when my insurance situation was the worst. This is not unusual, rather it is generally the rule.
How arrogant does a person have to be to assume they work harder than someone who merely has bad luck?

This is crazy:

for split study:

charged ins: $8000
ins. paid: $96.69
ins. adj: $7,329.14
payment due: $574.17

I called a medical university sleep lab about their 'cash' prices (no insurance):

Initial sleep study: $3700 for the facility fee, $1240 for the medical professionals. If you are a resident of that state, take a 68% discount on the facility and a 50% discount on the professional fee.

titration sleep study: $3720.50 for facility fee, $1314 for the medical professionals. Same discounts as above.

I can't recall if that included a doctor to interpret the PSG -- I think not.