I Bet You Don't Understand Your Medical Bill...I Don't, And I'm A Doctor.

Cracking Open Medical Jargon Case #5: EOB or Explanation of Benefits

This is the fifth in a never ending series of screeds that attempts to crack open words that are misused, misguided misnomers in the healthcare arena.  Ladies and Gentlemen, step right up to the most ignominious of the words to be cracked open yet: the EOB . That’s the ridiculously confusing document you get from your insurance company whose goal is to, well, Explain the Benefits.

We’ve all gotten them in the mail, opened them up, rolled our eyes, taken a deep breath and sighed when we see that we owe more money. Theses EOB's are more like a statement, similar to your cell phone bill….and these are as cryptic as they come; not at all user friendly.

As you can see from the graphic above, this statement has 32 data elements (and this is just one of the pages). Most of the language is not clear at all: let's look at item number...