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As much as Kaiser Permanente has been giving me awful, awful care, they tell you how much something will cost you before giving it to you, and you have to explicitly agree to pay that amount.

(In my case, I also pay before getting whatever it is, but it's possible to have the charge added to your bill instead.)

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How do you do that? I tried to get Kaiser to tell me how much my wife's delivery would be and what they told us was much less than the actual bill, even though there weren't any complications

I have not made any effort to get them to do that. Most of my experience with them has been really routine stuff -- "visit copay", "get a blood sample taken", or the like -- but this also happened for a stomach biopsy involving cramming a huge device down my throat, and for which they wanted to have me sedated, which seems like a pretty close analogy to a childbirth with no complications. :/

I have never, ever had the experience of getting an answer to how much a health care procedure will cost, and believe me I've asked. Also never had Kaiser - mostly BCBS.

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