A girl from Texas received a bill for $ 17850 for a simple medical test.

Фото: Depositphotos

In March, 2017-year-old Elizabeth Moreno, a Texas patient, underwent an operation on her back, after which she received a bill for $ 28 17 for her urine test, which she passed on in January, 850, writes NPR.

Elizabeth Moreno, a student at Texas State University in San Marcos, suffered from debilitating back pain due to an abnormal spinal disease.

“I just couldn’t live with the pain. I couldn't dress myself or move around the house, let alone attend classes. And none of the prescribed medications relieved or even dulled this pain,” says the girl.

She tried alternative medicine in the form of acupuncture, but it also did not help. As a result, she was sent to a specialist in the field of orthopedics, who discovered a problem with the spine, which could only be solved with the help of an operation.

She had successful surgery in Houston in 2015, and the surgeon prescribed her the opioid painkiller hydrocordone. During one visit to the doctor in January 2016, the girl was asked to leave a urine sample for a drug test.

After that, the girl received an invoice worth $ 17 850 for this test from the company Sunset Labs LLC from Houston.

In the laboratory, they tested a lot of drugs that were passed in January of 2016, including cocaine, methadone, anti-depression drugs and other drugs that the girl hadn’t even heard of.

A urine test for drugs was introduced to reduce the incidence of overdose with opioid medications that patients took. But in the end, doctors began to abuse this test in order to get additional profit. Doctors recommend patients to take opioid drugs, and then conduct a test for many irrelevant substances.

Experts questioned the need for a urine test for such a vast amount of elements that Sunset Labs LLC and were shocked by the cost. According to experts, such tests rarely cost more than $ 200. The cost of such analyzes can be expensive only if the laboratory checks the tests for the presence of a particular substance.

Moreno Insurers - Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas - refused to reimburse this bill, stating that the laboratory should have warned about this analysis. If this service had been registered, the company would have reimbursed $100,92.

Sunset labs states that their prices were competitive and that they could not "question the tests ordered by the doctor."

Fearing a deterioration in his daughter’s credit rating, Dr. Moreno's father, Dr. Paul Davis, paid $ 5000 to the lab to cover the April accounts for 2017. The father also filed a complaint against the invoice with the Texas State Attorney’s Office, accusing the lab of “luring money of a staggering amount”. A lab attorney said he was unaware of the complaint. A representative of the Attorney General of the State of Texas confirmed that the office received a complaint to the laboratory, but declined to comment further.

Conclusion: When a doctor asks for a test for a urine or blood sample, always ask what it is for, and insist that the laboratory notify your insurer.

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