Calling all SELF-PAY

umonica · February 18, 2004

I am a Self-Pay. Surgery scheduled for March 8th. My biggest fear is something going wrong and my hospital bill skyrocketing. So I would like to hear from some of our self-pay folks.

1). Did you have any complications/problems? If so did the insurance help with any of the cost or did you have to self-pay for that too?

2). Was the Price you quoted the actual price or did somethings get added on at the end that you were unaware of?

3). Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm nervous about being a self-pay.. But I still want to do this.. ha ha Am I crazy!

donali · February 18, 2004

I was self-pay, went to Mexico. I did not have any problems during the surgery. I paid what I was quoted. I pay for all my fills under fluoro ($110).

However:

I did have to have port revision surgery, because my port flipped. I self-paid that ($1821). I did not try to have it fixed by my insurance (Kaiser) because they do not do/cover banding, and I did not want someone unfamiliar with the equipment working on it (assuming they would have, which I doubt anyway).

My attitude was that I would probably have to absorb ALL the costs of my band and maintenance, since I went outside insurance. I would imagine if I had some sort of emergency where the band had to be removed and I couldn't get to my surgeon that Kaiser would cover that, but I'm hoping I never have to find out.

Vera · February 18, 2004

I too was SELF-pay

Paid exactly what I was quoted. I didn't even give them a deposit.

I did however sign a statement prior to surgery claiming if anything were to go wrong additional cost could occur, but that it rarely happens.

I know if I have a matter of life or death, my insurance (BC PPO) will cover me anywhere in the world. Of course for the cost they think the service is worth.

Bright · February 18, 2004

I was self pay too - I I had been looking at paying around $12,000 to have the op in the UK which was a lot of money for me to find :rolleyes: - then Babs (bbrecruiter) on this site went to a lot of trouble to find me the name/website of a banded women who now runs a consultancy service to help have the surgery in Lyons in France - this would only cost around $6000 which I was thrilled about! THEN I decided to have the surgery in Paris, in France after meeting another really nice person on this forum, who suggested I use her surgeon. After recieving a quotation from him and his hospital for "only" $4000, I was delighted and went ahead and had the surgery there - I found it quite difficult as my french isn't great, and NOBODY in the hospital spoke english - ANYWAY (sorry for rambling!) now it turns out that the hospital want to charge me another 2000 euro (about $2000)! I thought it might be a little extra but I was really annoyed at it being 50% more expensive! I know I ended up paying a lot less than I originally thought but in the end, it's not easy to find an additional $2000 lying around when we hadn't budgeted for it - we spent a lot of money on car hire, flights, hotels etc too, so my advice would be: find out all you can BEFORE you have the surgery or commit to anything - talk to two or three other patients of your surgeon to find out their experience!

GeezerSue · February 18, 2004

Rumbaut's deal was...You pay him a flat fee, which covers everything... apparently, no matter what. OR, you pay him and hospital separately and deal with any overages. I chose the former.