Health Care Advocates’ Kit:
Negotiating Lower Amounts on Your Medical Bills

The local or state medical society will often have a reasonably honest mediation service for billing disputes. Go here for a list of medical society ethics committees that cover these issues:

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/13365.html

NOTE: It’s a waste of time to ask the local or state medical society to investigate a quality of care complaint. They have no power to do anything and are likely to side with the providers. They are, after all, membership societies whose members include the person you are complaining about.

A service like Insnet will do billing advocacy and negotiation for about a third of the ultimate savings. Other companies, like Medical Billing Advocates of America, can help with bill review.

Here is a good article in the New York Times on reviewing and negotiating medical bills.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/health/14brod.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=medical%20bills%20negotiate&st=cse

And a blog at the NY Times that has valuable comments from consumers:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/finding-errors-in-the-hospital-bill/?scp=2&sq=medical%20bills%20negotiate&st=cse