You're in that ugly place where you don't know what you don't know, and you're lecturing someone who does. Once more with feeling: those listed prices are what my medical facility - the one I built, the one my wife runs - is allowed to claim for Medicare patients. They were negotiated by our trade organization working in concert with the state. They are the official contracted prices that all Medicare assignees must pay. This is why they are publicly available. Yes. It is the "negotiated lower price" and is "what they will pay out for a specific service." "Those with other insurance plans, or no insurance at all, ARE NOT ON MEDICARE. They are not relevant to this discussion. For any given ICD10 code we are contracted to be paid about twelve different prices depending on the insurance provider... but five of those insurance providers are Medicaid and they all pay the same. They all pay the agreed, published rate.

Let's back up a minute: you're speaking in abstracts. I'm speaking in concretes. Those rates put food on my family. They pay for my kid to go to gymnastics. They are things I know, live and breathe, not things I've thought about once or twice to win an Internet argument. So when you tell me I'm wrong, when you imply that I don't have my facts straight, when you demand to see proof, you are calling me a liar. You may not think you're calling me a liar, but I'm here to tell you: you're calling me a liar. You're insulting me. If you didn't mean to insult me, you need to ask the question differently. But then, if you're asking for evidence directly underneath a statement linking to two forms of evidence, you shouldn't ask. The polite thing to do, by the way, would have been to apologize for missing those links and acknowledge they were there all along.

The polite thing to do now would be to apologize.