Board Certified Plastic Surgeon reveals that the massive medical bill totals insurance companies send to you are really “fictitious numbers” that don’t represent real money anyone is being paid He just did a surgery for a patient, the insurance company said the procedure cost $170,000. The patient gets a bill and thinks that’s coming from the doctors office, it’s not The bill is coming from the insurance company, on the $170,000 bill for the surgery his office only gets paid $2,000 So he says none of this makes any sense because none of these huge bills are actually ever paid to anyone “The procedure was approved by insurance and it led to, according to their billing statements, $170,000 claimed. The total hospital billing for which our practice was reimbursed, $2,000. So just amazing, the bizarre discrepancy. And where does the rest of it all go? Fortunately, you know, this patient doesn't account for nearly that amount for their payment because their insurance does cover a significant portion of that as well as it not actually total billed to that amount. But it just illustrates some of the madness that there is in healthcare billing practices, because one, nobody knows what the bills are before we do them, including doctors. We have no idea And then patients get this astronomical number that is really kind of a fictitious number that doesn't get represented by real money that anyone collects” This sounds like a racket and outright fraud. How do the insurance companies getting away with it