Lab Cost Savings at One Health DPC

I wanted to share some light on the inflated prices of healthcare in America using this lab bill (*Posted with permission). While it is important to have health insurance, it’s also important to understand how it inflates and distorts prices for health care.

Young patient without insurance visited her doctor and needed some labs. She got her labs results a week later and everything was good.

Fast-forward 3 weeks later she gets her lab bill in the mail. Definitely NOT what she was expecting. Unfortunately because she is uninsured, she has to bear the cost of the entire bill, $602.25 for lab tests. That is crazy!!

Now let say she had insurance that had 80/20 coverage, meaning her insurance pays 80% and she is responsible for 20% after she has met her deductible.

In this scenario, her insurance will pay $481.80 of her labs and will be responsible for $120.45.

Now if these labs were obtained in our clinic, she would have paid a fraction of the cost. The comparison of the pricing is below: $39.55, that is the actual cost of labs.

Price mark up is bad for those with insurance and even worse for those who are uninsured. The patient in this case was billed at a 96% mark-up from the actual cost of service. It may seem unbelievable but this one of the reasons why health care in America is so much more expensive. Cost of care whether it be medications, lab studies or imaging studies are marked up so much for patients that even with insurance, you are having to pay hundreds of dollars more than you should for care.

Thank you for reading and have a great day!

-Dr. Elsie Osei @ One Health DPC.

Education. Advocacy. Family Medicine. Asheville, NC.