Spilling the tea.

Former Bachelorette Katie Thurston was diagnosed with breast cancer early last year and has been keeping followers updated throughout her treatment journey online.

Katie later shared that her breast cancer had spread to her liver and progressed to stage 4. Soon after, she began a new treatment plan, and the tumors in her body started shrinking.

Recently, Katie received a double mastectomy and has been keeping followers updated with her health and recovery journey.

Now, the Bachelor Nation star is opening up online about how much her surgery cost and how she was able to save thousands of dollars. 

In a new video, she shared, “Recently, I saved thousands of dollars on my medical bill. But it wasn’t easy and it took several months to figure out… Continue to advocate for yourself. I recently had a double mastectomy, which came to a total of about $229,000 before insurance was billed.”

“What I wanted to know was what was being covered by insurance, specifically nerve preservation,” she went on. “Finding out the answer was not easy. Because all parties involved are using different descriptions and different codes.”

Katie said that after reading through her explanation of benefits, she realized that they were using different language for the nerve preservation versus her surgery. She asked for an itemized list from the hospital, specifically for the cost of the nerve preservation. 

“From there, there were over 60 individual items posted. Now, none of them equaled $20,700 but I did see two individual charges for $10,350,” she said. “Now this is the first time where I do see the word ‘nerve’ being used. So at this point, I’m fairly certain at a minimum, my insurance was billed for nerve preservation, but did they cover it?” 

She revealed, “I was able to actually request something called UB04. Now what this form does, is it shows you exactly what was billed to insurance and exactly how much was covered. Again, to no one’s surprise, the word ‘nerve’ is never used in this form. But I do however see that number of $20,700. But the biggest win was seeing that the amount owed by the patient was going to be $0. My nerve preservation was actually going to be covered by insurance.”

“We pay for insurance to cover our medical needs, and when something isn’t covered, especially as a breast cancer patient, it is worth asking more questions, digging a little deeper, and in some cases even filing an appeal,” Katie recommended. “Navigating the health care system is stressful. And with so many companies and health professionals involved, it gets complicated fast… I ended up paying out of pocket anyway. Fast forward to months later, I was able to actually get a refund on the supplies related to nerve preservation* because insurance actually did cover it.”