Hey there. A couple of months ago, we asked you to help us report on a type of fee that seems to be

sneaking on to more and more medical bills. They're often called facility fees. It's like a cover

charge just for walking in the door. And these kinds of fees, they're

familiar to a lot of folks from places like emergency rooms, which do have a lot of specialized

equipment and staff in the facility behind that door.

That's basically the case for a cover charge. Once you get in the door, there's a lot of

stuff there. But in some cases, with facility fees, the door is just the entrance to a doctor's office.

Because facility fees, they're often charged by hospitals.

And hospitals own a lot of doctor's offices these days. And once they take over, there's no law

that says they can't just call that doctor's office part of their facility and

start charging. So we ask what you had been seeing.

And a bunch of you sent us stories and copies of your bills and your insurance statements.

And when we called the follow-up, you took our calls.

You had a lot to say.

Oh, it made me so mad, so mad.

I mean, it's a 10-minute appointment for a prescription.

I don't understand any of it.

Where did this number come from?

We learned a bunch, especially from those of you who are not new to this sort of thing.

It was a running joke with my husband and myself that like okay it's time for my weekly like one to two hour phone call with Cigna.

People who've been contending with the health care system for a while, dealing with chronic illnesses or going to the doctor

for monitoring or having some kind of ongoing treatment.

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