@88lance Do you have any sense of what procedures or tests are needed for your vision or what medical departments you might be seeing? If you have local doctors referring you to Mayo, you could ask them what tests Mayo may do. I know that may be hard to answer, and vision can involve neurology because vision happens in the brain when the signals from the retinas are processed. That may involve an MRI of the brain, and that might be around $3500. Sometimes you can do an MRI on a cash basis for a lot less if you call the place that does them and ask what price they can do it for. Ask a local doctor you know which places do better quality MRI's. The prices of everything are based on being "in-network" with insurance companies to get a negotiated rate or "discount" according to their contract and prices are set by medical facilities knowing the insurance will not pay retail prices. You can ask for the same "discounted" cash price that they would be receiving from an insurance payment. You could ask Mayo if there are any tests you can do locally before you come and send them in ahead of your appointment and see if you can get them for less. Mayo accepted my MRIs done at other places. Make sure your provider clears this so you won't have to spend more money to repeat the same test at Mayo, but an MRI is pretty standard. You could also call the department where you are starting and ask if they have a ballpark guess of what tests they might do; again that may be impossible to answer because they haven't seen you yet.

For my 2nd surgical visit, I set up a payment plan in my patient portal that stretched my payments out 10 months. If you are expecting a $20,000 bill, talk to a real person at Mayo about a payment plan and be honest about what you can afford each month. Discuss this with all the providers at Mayo; they will not want to do unnecessary tests that would increase the bill unnecessarily. I had insurance for my treatment at Mayo, so my portion of the payment was reasonable. My out of pocket maximum from my insurance company was $6000 annually, and I didn't have to pay after that, and I did hit that max the first time I came to Mayo because I had been through seeing a lot of providers and testing before I came to Mayo, so when I had a spine surgery that was $65,000, I didn't have to pay anything. The 2nd visit was surgery for a broken ankle that cost a lot less, I don't remember how much, but my portion was around $4000.

Call your insurance company to verify what your benefits are, and if Mayo is in network with them. There is also an online cost estimator for certain procedures that lets you get an estimate based on what insurance you have, and you can select no insurance to see a cash price. You can find it at this link. https://estimator.mayoclinic.org/mychartguestpay/GuestEstimates/

They have some typical tests and procedures listed. Some people say Mayo is more expensive than other places, but I don't know what I would have paid if I had gone elsewhere. Mayo is thorough in their testing and they have to be to be confident in a diagnosis. They do neurology testing differently, and I had to repeat that at Mayo for the spine surgeon, but my MRI was 9 months old and that was new enough for surgery.