{"id":26391,"date":"2026-08-12T08:16:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T12:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/?p=26391"},"modified":"2026-08-12T08:16:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T12:16:46","slug":"hospital-prepayment-requirements-add-new-wrinkles-to-patients-financial-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/?p=26391","title":{"rendered":"Hospital Prepayment Requirements Add New Wrinkles to Patients\u2019 Financial Responsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(By Julie Appleby for KFF Health News) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas Zordani flew from his home in Denver to Phoenix for a consultation with a Mayo Clinic neurosurgeon, hoping to find out what could be done to treat his debilitating headaches after worrisome brain scan findings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When making the appointment, Zordani said, he\u2019d been told the clinic was in his insurer\u2019s network. Upon arrival, Zordani was summoned to the clinic\u2019s financial office and told he had to make a $5,000 preservice deposit, because Mayo had since determined it did not accept his insurance. He was automatically designated \u201cself-pay,\u201d even though his plan had out-of-network benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not having that kind of cash on hand \u2014 and angry on principle \u2014 he refused. His appointment was canceled. Continue reading here…<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health polity news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notice:<\/strong>\u00a0The link provided above connects readers to the full content of the posted article. The URL (internet address) for this link is valid on the posted date; medicarereport.org cannot guarantee the duration of the link\u2019s validity. Also, the opinions expressed in these postings are the viewpoints of the original source and are not explicitly endorsed by AMAC, Inc.; the AMAC Foundation, Inc.; or medicarereport.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(By Julie Appleby for KFF Health News) Thomas Zordani flew from his home in Denver to Phoenix for a consultation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,200,39],"tags":[166,385,238,2138],"class_list":["post-26391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care-finance","category-health-insurance","category-price-transparency","tag-health-insurance","tag-healthcare-costs","tag-healthcare-finance","tag-hospital-prepayment-requirements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26392,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26391\/revisions\/26392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}