A Refund

The $62 charge for copying my 56-page medical history to send to a potential health care insurer (to use to up my premium) has been forgiven. This is the message from a Promedica director who in the same conversation advised me that $62 was a “fair and equitable fee schedule adopted by Michigan and Ohio in concert with multiple legal groups.”

“Nobody did anything illegal or inappropriate,” she informed me. According to the Ohio Revised Code, “physicians can charge for copying medical records.”

Indeed they can. They can charge up to $2.83 a page and it’s absolutely legal.

“I understand,” I replied, “but because something is legal, doesn’t mean it’s right.  Because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

That’s “an interesting question,” the director admitted, and for a second I imagined her thinking it through from a less corporate perspective. But no. “Promedica prefers to “err on the side of standards,” she followed-up, suggesting that the “protocol” of photo reproduction does not come cheap: an employee to feed pages; paper; ink; the machine lease. Indeed that’s why Promedica in Toledo chooses to subcontract copying to a firm from Atlanta, Georgia.

Imagine the cost of the airfare.

But no, that’s unlikely. The firm in Georgia no doubts subcontracts to an individual with superior copying technique near-er by. Toledo to Atlanta then back to Toledo. How many people does it take to screw in a light bulb?

I asked the director if I could borrow my medical record and make a copy. I have access to a fast-speed copier, I told her. It would take five minutes and cost four cents a page: $2.24, a savings of over $59.

She told me that would not be legal. Promedica want to be sure that the contents of patients records are copied “appropriately.”

I thanked her for forgiving my fee (which apparently Promedica will remit out of its own pocket to the company in Atlanta).

I remain unconvinced there is any connection between legal and appropriate, legal and fair, legal and equitable.

Because they can, they do. And will continue doing.