What costs for a biopsy/surgery??

Hope this doesn't make you feel worse: My surgeon's fee was $4,500.00 and the hospital was $45,000.00 . But with insurance, the fees were reduced to $2,500.00 and approx $8,000.00 .

Hi Wilf,

If you are uninsured get ready for a battle besides the one against the disease. Hospital quoted me $25,000 + surgeons fee + anesthesiologist + incidentals for an open prostatectomy and $45,000 + surgeons fee + anesthesiologist + incidentals for Da Vinci (got to pay for the robot). I wound up getting radiation through my urologist practice and they gave me a 30% disocount from their list. Total for radiation and oncologist was $37,000. The biopsy was $1250 at the uro's office. Add another $700 for pathology. Add $800 for anesthesia during the fiducial seed implants and $6,000 to the hospital for the same (about 7 hour stay). So to summarize:

   Biopsy   $1250

   Pathologist  $700

   open RP  Est $25,000 +++

   DaVinci RP Est $45,000 +++

   Radiation and seed placement  $43,800

For a comparison had I been insured under my previous employers plan the cost would have been 40% of the above and no copay. Medicare reimbursement is roughly one quarter to a third of the amount. So much for insurance companies "carrying" the uninsured. The doctors were very willing to work out a cost for cash at the time of service. The hospital finally told me that there was a 10% discount for cash after a great deal of haggling. Not to mention how condescending their attitude was and is. Told me that uninsured have a higher risk of non payment and I am standing there with my check book in hand. I could begin to curse here so I will get off the soap box.

Wilf, good luck with your treatment.

Don

My biopsy was $900. The Surgeon was $25k, Hospital was $33K

If you do not have insurance or are not covered at the hospital you want, do ask upfront about cash paying. Tell them you know insurance will cut 40 to 50 percent off, so they can do it for cash on the spot. My hospital quoted me about 27,000. I do not think that included the doc cost. In the end, my insurance did cover and hospital plus doc was about 30,000. So the figures people have been putting are good examples.

For my biopsy: my Urologist and the hospital billed Blue Cross $2,250, but BC paid less than $800 and I paid about an additional $125. I contracted sepsis following the biopsy and was hosptialized in intensive care for sveral days and Blue Cross was billed $8,700 of which it paid $3,600, and I was billed for (and paid) $450 separately.

For the da Vinci prostate removal surgury: pre-surgical testing was billed to Blue Cross at approx. $2,000 and BC paid about $1,000. I wasn't billed anything additionally. For the surgery and hospitalization afterwards Blue Cross was billed about $63,000 and it paid approximately $30,000; I haven't been billed separately for a portion of this larger cost.

All of my testing and surgical procedures were performed at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, an affiliate of Northwestern University.

I'm grateful that I have excellent health care insurance as one of my empoyer-sponsored benefits, for which I pay a relatively small percentage of the monthly premium cost.