major problem with our healthcare system<\/a> and a significant contributor to high health care costs.<\/p>\nRegardless, after Alice asked that question, I set about to find the true cost of my MRI, and now I have decided to share that information with the world in hopes that disseminating good information on the subject can help some people make more informed decisions about their health care.<\/p>\n
In each case below, there are four costs: The total cost of the procedure, how much my insurance at the time (United Helathcare via Honeywell) paid, adjustments (usually these are contractual changes to the price based on your insurance), and patient responsibility, which is how much money I ended up paying when it was all said and done.<\/p>\n
Date of service: 2007.10.05
\nCost of MRI: $1871.00
\nInsurance Payment: $1227.38
\nAdjustments: $336.78
\nPatient responsibility: $306.84<\/p>\n
In addition, a radiologist had to look at the film to diagnose the torn ACL and sprained LCL. That breakdown:<\/p>\n
MRI, Joint of Leg: $195.00
\nInsurance payment: $8.41
\nAdjustments: $84.49
\nPatient responsibility: $102.10<\/p>\n
Furthermore, a surgeon had to refer me to the MRI and he did a follow-up visit where he basically agreed with the findings of the radiologist. For each visit, the breakdown went like this:<\/p>\n
Office Consultation: $256.50
\nInsurance Payment: $179.95
\nContract Adjustment: $46.55
\nPatient responsibility: $30.00<\/p>\n
So, how much does an MRI cost? The short answer is about $2000.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe long answer is it does depend on your insurance, but this really doesn’t change the base cost which remains around $2000. With relatively good insurance (like I had at the time), expect to cover around $400-$500 out of your pocket for the whole process. Of course, if something bad is diagnosed, your adventure into the vagueries of modern medicine has just begun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Opinions around the internet vary widely in regards to how much an MRI costs. I’ve seen estimates from $200 to $5000. I had an MRI performed on me after I tore my ACL just over a year ago, so theoretically I should have a pretty good idea of how much they actually cost. However, amidst […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,10],"class_list":["post-1270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything","tag-life","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1271,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions\/1271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}