Even worse, when I go to the doctor, I have no idea what I'm going to pay. You can possible decode it, but good luck - and if he or she sends something to a lab, etc. one day a bill will just show up and you'll just have to pay it. The doctor doesn't say "we can do a lab test, it'll cost you $40" or anything. Imagine if your dry cleaner wouldn't tell you what the charge would be until your clothes had already been cleaned!

Oh, and that bill is probably gonna be full of medical coding mistakes too. Tests and procedures and all kinds of things marked up, put in the wrong category, and so forth. Expect to have to wrestle the insurance and the hospital for corrections.

I've had to do that once. I got denied short term medical insurance because they said I had diabetes (this is before Obamacare).

I've never had diabetes. I called my doctor and it turned out they coded one of my visits wrong and said I had diabetes, and it had been in everyone's system for at least a couple of years. Wonderful. Got it fixed, at least.

They do if you are a Qliance subscriber.