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Jaw droppingly expensive practice

A reader called Niamh contacted us after encountering a very odd charging practice for surgery. She is preparing to have work done on her jaw and her orthodontist referred her to a surgeon. “After a consultation, which cost €220, I was advised the surgery would be mostly covered by my insurance but that the surgeon would require a top-up of €2,000. He muttered about this covering the building of a splint and post-op consultations,” she writes.

She found out that a friend of hers who had slightly less health insurance, had the same operation but only paid the initial consultation fee. “Her surgeon said the insurance covered everything else. I started doing a bit of digging and found it really hard to get information. I did manage to find out that the difference could be explained if the surgeon was only part- participating with the insurer, in which case they are allowed to ask the patient to top-up the payment. I checked with my health insurer and my guy is fully participating,” she writes.

She looked at her friend’s bill and saw that the surgeon was paid around €1,100. Niamh’s friend saw her surgeon twice post-op and the bill also covered the making of a splint. The anaesthetist and hospital were paid separately. In total, the bill was around €2,100.

Her insurer was really surprised. “As far as they are concerned, with a fully participating surgeon, the patient doesn’t pay any more than an initial consultation and maybe for a second consultation after the operation.” She says the lack of transparency is “just madness”.

For guidance, we went to the VHI, the State’s largest private health insurer. We were told that 99 per cent of hospital consultants agree to accept an insurer’s benefits in full settlement of their fees, with no additional “balance bill” charged to the insured patient.

“There are a small number of consultants who do not participate in the full cover scheme and who reserve the right to charge what they believe is appropriate for their services. As consultants are independent practitioners they are quite entitled to do so,” said the VHI spokesperson. She said that consultants have a duty to inform members of any shortfalls in advance and that members should always contact their insurer in advance of any such treatment to check their cover and ascertain if their consultant is participating or non-participating.

Poor customer service at Vodafone

An 80-year-old reader lost his phone and went into a Vodafone shop in Youghal to buy a replacement at a cost of €40. It was only the next day that a friend pointed out that as he had an O2 account, the Vodafone phone was of no use to him. He returned to the Vodafone shop and they would not give him a refund on the grounds that the phone was now second-hand. At no point did the Vodafone staff ask where he held his account or if he wanted his number ported over. He clearly made a mistake and is not entirely up to speed on how the mobile phone networks operate. He is now very distressed by the whole affair so we contacted the company on his behalf. A spokeswoman described it as “an unfortunate incident with an accredited agent who works for Vodafone”. She said the company fully accepted that the customer’s details should have been handled better and “regrets any distress the mix-up caused. Vodafone has been in touch with the customer and apologised for the inconvenience and has come to an agreement that the customer is happy with.”

Not berry good practice from Tesco

Siobhan Corcoran has become a big fan of fresh berries. “Adding them to my morning porridge is tasty and allows me to incorporate one of my five-a-day that we hear so much about,” she writes. “They are, however, very expensive. Tesco do a deal at the moment where you get two packs of berries – raspberries, blueberries or strawberries – for €5.”

She says this initially seemed like a good deal “as the blueberries came in 225g boxes. Recently I’ve noticed that they are selling them for the same price in 150g boxes which seems a bit of a raw deal. I feel robbed!”

She suggests that with the rising popularity of fresh berries, “evidenced by the ever-increasing shelf space they get in the supermarket”, Tesco is “making a killing on this small change which I suppose they thought would go un-noticed. Well it hasn’t!”