Just wondering if any one else had run into this. My mother is looking to get a gastric sleeve, she has three different insurance coverages, ChampVA, Medicare, and Medicaid. She's got approval from her doctor, and from the insurance, we're told she would be completely covered. We live in Fl so we find a place in the area that does the surgery, get her set up with a doctor who wants her in for a consultation for which he wants 500 bucks won't be covered by the insurance. Neither of us has that kind of money to just throw down. The only reason we have been able to go through this far is because the insurance was covering everything. Now don't get me wrong a 20000 dollar surgery for 500 bucks is a steal, but she has low income, and I'm not doing much better than her so can't lend her the money right now, as a result we would have to cancel the whole thing until we could come up with the money, which we'd rather not do as that could take quite some time. So now that the exposition is over the question I have is this; has anyone else heard of this, or had it happen to them, or is the doctor just trying to get an extra 500 bucks? Thank you in advance for any information.

I work in medical billing so I can say the primary insurance is the one that is going to be billed first is really does not matter which one you have had longer. Insurance you have on your own is always going to go as primary over insurance you have through a spouse. One thing that they are going to do is try to coordinate the benefits so any copay is probably going to fall under the secondary policy and not out of your pocket. I am going through the same thing, I have UHC as primary and Coventry as secondary through my wife because of the amount of health problems I have ( hench why I  want to get WLS). It is frustrating because neither is going to want to pay and more then likely try to pawn off the bill to the other. Good luck. 

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HA!  I have pages and pages and pages of links and posts that have been removed.  Advertisers....  That's all I have to write.

The US, Canadian, AND Mexican govts are not warning about all of Mexico, just specific cities and most of all, Tijuana.

But if price is that important to you, go to Tijuana.  Enjoy yourself.

HA!  There are doctors in TJ that the Canadian govt warns about.  They have socialized medicine, when someone returns from TJ with a hack job the country of Canada is responsible for paying to fix them.  Thus, they have govt warnings about them.

Those doctors have the highest leak stats, perforations, infections, and death stats.  But, people see a smoking good price and they don't know what the actual costs are for doing surgery such as the cost of staples and such.  So, they put up with untrained staff, black market supplies, and store front clinics in a home depot strip mall instead of an actual hospital.

One of those surgeons claims he is a Top surgeon.  Top Surgeons are a US thing, not a MX thing.  It's where US doctors vote for their fav US surgeons yet this guy claims he is a top surgeon.  Impossible.

One guy claims he is board certified in surgery when in fact, he is not.  He's tried that test three times and failed it three times.  But people just listen to the coordinator and they don't research.  So... they get what they get. :o(