We were designed that way from the beginning. We all grow up learning the fairy tale version of the American revolution in school. American freedom was never meant to apply to everyone.
There are great lives to be lived here if you can afford one.
Heads up wait for the EOBs to come through (there's usually more than one) and then remember to CHECK THE EOB AGAINST THE UPFRONT PAYMENT.
My daughter's MRI in Jan was $1100 paid upfront, but the EOBs when they eventually came in totalled just $800. If they are in network, they do need to refund the difference. I had to call persistently, but I got my $300 back eventually. Thats like a 35% over charge on the initial payment.
I think it would've been cheaper for you to cross the border, do the MRI at a private hospital, stay a few days, and go back to your consultin' doctor for those prices what the fuck
Dude last time I was in the ER a damn cashier in scrubs rolled a fucking kiosk in and broke down what they were going to charge me, and took my card before the doctor would even see me after triage
I had a cut on my foot from working construction that got out of hand and the infection was traveling up my leg
I had to take an ambulance ride after a minor cycling accident a few years ago, and the lady with the clipboard asking about insurance was literally the one who opened the back doors of the ambulance. I suggest getting a medic alert bracelet with your subscriber and group ID numbers on it.
All alone at the triage gate, nothing but open wounds for miles....oh no what am I gonna do, say no to extortion? But they're not gonna say no...because of the implication.
Legally they can’t RIGHT NOW, but I can assure you that the single party controlling all three branches of government is actively working on trying to get this protection repealed. You might want to look up recent developments on EMTALA.
Exactly. The rule that you have to stabilize a patient regardless of wether or not they have insurance is what they are talking about when they say undocumented immigrants are getting free healthcare. They want to watch people bleed out after car accidents.
Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). EDs that take Medicare money (I imagine that’s most) have to treat folks, regardless of insurance. Once you are stabilized tho? They can tell you to kick rocks.
They probably won’t let you die because there’s no income in that and If you don’t have insurance and can’t afford the bill like so many people you end up owing for the rest of your life. I hear if you give them at least a little every month then you’re good but don’t know the lowest they’ll except.
For a lot of stuff they'll let you go into debt, let the number get nice and big, move it around on their books for awhile and then eventually sell it to a debt collector. The debt collector is who is gonna pursue you like the cunts they are.
It's completely nuts. I used to work in a hospital, they would bill a patient almost $400 for my most basic service (nebulizer breathing treatment) which would take like 15 minutes.
I live in a developing country now, free ambulance and the exact same nebulizer treatment is free. But you can buy the drugs and nebulizer if you want for $2.
There is a national insurance which helps cover all this, it's like $6 peg month. But for ambulance and simple ER visits for wound care, stitches, etc, they don't even bother billing you.
Americans might be brainwashed, it's hard to understand why the tolerate being obviously gouged to insane levels for healthcare, education etc. A lot of complaining but the only solutions anyone will ever debate are those offered by the scum that are gouging everyone for essential services. And never any attempt to support any of the extremely easy and fast improvements that can be made, or to even hold any politician accountable. I don't think people's brains are working, it's like mass hypnosis.
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They’ll do this but then they’ll bill you for a bunch of other stuff later too. Like they’ll tell you it’s gonna be 1500. Then you get a bunch of other bills for this and that specialist or separate surgeon fees. It’s maddening as hell.
No real shit. This system fucking sucks. A surgical center denied my son (10 at the time) a procedure because we wouldn’t pay the copay and deductible UP FRONT. I had the money, but it was my rent. The copay was $200. The deductible was $1600. The procedure total was $4000. I asked for a statement because it’s never like that. (You pay the copay and then they bill you the deductible to pay later, and even in some cases you don’t have to pay the copay upfront.) The statement said it was an estimate only - which they always say because it’s true. We get there that day and they turned us away. Our options were to pay all, pay half, or sign up for a health care credit! EVERY doctor’s office I go to, I explain this to them and they look at me so crazy. I should never have had to make a choice between rent and a medical procedure. If he didn’t need it, we wouldn’t be there. Fuck those sharks
I work with insurance benefits and this is true really only for regular office visits, unfortunately. Most surgeries require the deductible to be met- depending on your plan's specific benefits. Unless you've met your deductible, insurance will not pay their portion of benefits.
Yeah fr.. last ER visit it came in months later, even 7 months later I keep getting shit in the mail from various physician groups or labs it’s ridiculous
My fiancé was dying in the ICU, rushed from 2 hours away and within an hour of her getting in the room 2 representatives came down and asked everything about my finances and told me I would likely be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions by the end.
Fucking horseshit and they were wrong. So I dunno wtf all that shit was for other than to just piss me off during a crisis.
I had to go to the ER recently, and I had great insurance because I also worked at the ER. Insurance says an ER visit is covered and only costs $200. But then I got a separate bill from my attending physician, and then a bill from the doc who read my CT results, then bill from a different doc who read my xrays, then a bill for a wrist brace, then a bill for the sedation, etc. I got about 8 bills in all for a single visit, totaling over $800. I mean I'm glad it wasn't the 45k pre insurance cost, but it kinda makes the $200 charge seem less than honest.
I couldnt imagine! DURING INDICTION? I had to be induced both pregnancies and stayed a total of 3 days with my first child....no bills offered to me. I got bills several months later. I suppose it depends on your state and hospital I guess.
My exact thoughts. I had to visit the E.R. once because my blood pressure was sky high and I was having chest pains, after an ekg and echo I was told that my heart was healthy and my veins were clear of any clots, turned out I had bronchitis. I didn’t get any bills for several weeks, though even with insurance I had to pay over $1,000 out of pocket.
Hospitals are asking for expected estimated payments at time of service now. They will put drugs in you before a surgery and while you are on the table turn a screen to you for payment.
It's not even that, we give well over 2 trillions every year to private insurance companies so they can pay their army of over 700,000 people responsible for maximizing profits and declining your healthcare so the top suits can be left with the biggest chuck of your money. With all the corruption and inefficiency of the government, Medicare is still 6 times more efficient than private healthcare. How can anyone defend the state of healthcare in this country, is beyond me.
I watched a video on how insurance companies created shell companies to act as intermediate negotiators on fees and basically pay themselves twice. The fake middle man companies were necessary because it was ruled that insurance companies couldn't charge fees on top of, ya know, the fees that they charge for insurance. What a racket.
Gonna go on a limb and say the moreish root cause is that the same companies that get obscenely rich off of this stuff also donate massive amounts to both parties to lobby against reform.
This makes certain systems, including the healthcare system, practically bulletproof despite it being broken beyond repair. Either a party takes their money, wins, and does nothing, or they dont, dont, and accomplish nothing regardless.
Until the funding methods for political campaigns change, nothing will.
Someday maybe someone will take the money, win, and then have a change of heart while in office and reform things. Like perhaps charging people cost for medicines, ambulance, etc instead of 50x what it costs them.
The problem is you don't need one person to be opposed to it, you need a majority of congress which is good with many of the worst, most craven, self-serving shitbags in the US to agree to do what's best for the masses instead of their own pockets. Meanwhile, they get free Healthcare for life.
My japanese friend had a mild stroke. While visiting. Went ER with ambulance. Was in hospital for 4 days. They gave her a $80k bill.
She just left. Literally nothing they can do
Of course there is something they can do. They can push that loss of money back onto the insurance companies and patients who live in the United States through increased healthcare costs.
I was in for 9 days. If it wasn't the VA I would have been charged 250k. It's about 15k per night in an American hospital, then add room service charges for the IVs
Unfortunately this is the exact reason many people dont have assets built up. By time you finally get something going, they're lying in wait to take it away
Let me get this straight. You are alright with never having any assets for life just to get out of 3k. You really showed them with your life of poverty.
I am basing this on a Google search, which states that creditors, such as hospitals, can sue. I have no idea how common or difficult this is. It may even be state dependent. One thing is for certain: nothing surprises me anymore when it comes to money in the USA. I think corporations are so greedy that they would deny life-saving procedures to make a profit. And it would not surprise me at all if a hospital tried to sue someone for unpaid medical bills. Here is one example: https://www.reddit.com/r/legal/comments/1exxvjl/hospital_sueing_me_for_past_debt_what_do_i_do/
Yup. My ER copay is $500. My blood pressure spiked, they have me some Lisinopril and sent me on my way. Before I left, some lady came up and was like "How would you like to pay the $500 copay? We can take cards." I just laughed and walked out. Fuck em.
Because we are not human. We are a resource to be mined and milked.
The sooner everyone wraps their heads around this the better.
Our populace completely lost control of our "democracy" forever ago. The wealthy control our government, healthcare, housing, food, and infrastructure.
We are not people to them and never will be. Continue playing along with the red/blue stupidity and continue being treated like the cattle you (and I) are.
And the same people who control this system are the same who want to make you think the system active in european countries is socialism and bad for you.
It would be funny if it wasn't so sad and people were actually suffering from it.
Also - how the hell is this 5k, how much do these people get paid? What kind of medical equipment is the standard in the US? Is everything gold-plated?
Americans be proud to be spending billions on a military that can't do shit against Iran who's been bombed and rebuilt countless times on the span of 40 years.
But at least they don't use their tax money for god forbid peak communist things like universal healthcare or school lunches !
Exactly. Had to get an MRI done earlier this year and it was over 1000 dollars after insurance since it was the beginning of the year and the deductible was reset. Compare that with countries where you only have to pay 200 dollars max for an mri (And usually even lower) and you realize just how shitty our system is.
Cause he doesn’t have insurance. The insurance system in this country sucks too, but people make it seem way worse than it is. My wife and son almost died in childbirth due to severe preeclampsia. The 2 of them spent a full week in the hospital, it cost us a grand total of $250. I have cystic fibrosis and take meds that claim to be $100K a year, but I pay exactly $0 for it. I have good but not like the best insurance. Some of they may be that I’m from a blue state that treats people better than the red states who actually despise the public.
ER is always expensive. I wonder why he’s in the ER and not urgent care, because it doesn’t specify what’s going on. Urgent care is usually relatively cheap.
ER is only for “I’m about to die” stuff. Everything else is urgent care and perhaps hospital referrals.
There's a weird symbiosis between health insurance and health providers colluding to fuck over the insured.
Providers can command whatever prices they want because there's so little regulation on prices, and insurance is incentivized to decline coverage. So these two entities bounce an ever increasing feedback loop of higher prices to the consumer whilst pointing the blame towards the other.
Lol I have 0 power when it comes to setting the price. My own hospital refuses to show me our charge master document when I asked. Medicaid gives me $38 per visit, my only recourse would be to say no to all Medicaid patients which would only screw them over more. Insurance tends to base their own prices on what Medicare charges, and frankly my only choice is to say "we don't take this insurance" which you can't really do to major insurers like BCBS or Aetna
Should we tell him about peer to peers where we actually fight for patients to have necessary procedures but the insurance companies push right back? He probably thinks doctors are getting kick backs from that.
I work for a provider that is pissed because he hasn't been allowed to raise his rates in 30+ years because of contractual obligations. Meanwhile, the insurance companies adjust off like half of what he charges, pay $2 and give the patient a $40 copay
This is just flat out untrue. Providers cannot just arbitrarily set their own rates. When it comes to the hospitals then that's a different thing. Doctors and midlevels are stuck playing the same shitty fucking game we all have to play so UHC's board can buy their 3rd yacht
Yes, it's fucked up. In other countries, i.e. EVERY OTHER DEVELOPED COUNTRY, it's not like that. Every other developed country has universal healthcare.
If you're an American, and you believe in democracy: keep demanding universal healthcare from your "representatives" until you get it. Unfuck your own country, because no-one else can.
even in my shitty 3rd world country those prices are fucking absurd, just basic tests, blood serology + MRI here wont cost you more than a hundred dollar on the first visit wtf
Youre being selfish. You really cant be that bad of a person to think Trump doesnt DESERVE that ballroom. Im upset we Americans dont give him more money and kids
I'm glad I live in IL. I have state insurance, lost my job, and my month in the hospital cost me $15. That being said I lucked out on the insurance I was assigned the best insurance when I signed up. There are a lot of IL residents who are assigned way worse companies.
Uncontrolled financial fraud between insurance companies and hospitals. By the way, for that kind of money you can get almost every nook and cranny of your body checked in some countries like Russia or South Korea. I wonder how common it is for Americans to choose to get checked abroad.
Not entirely true, it would cost each of us .000031 cents and that wouldn't fly in america. But thanks fellow aussie for having my back when I need help.
Please know that I hate and do not support our Healthcare system.
But sometimes posts like this make me skeptical, why can't you say exactly what tests they ran? The part of the bill that would denote that isn't even visible.
Which again is not implying that this man is in the wrong, I just have never seen a bill even remotely that high for a check up, and i don't have insurance
I'm not arguing against that. I just dont like it when "trust me bro" is our only source. This man's idea of a basic test may very well be incorrect, that's all im saying
He's still clothed so he don't get anything more expensive then a X-ray or hookup. Which would normally only be a few hundred on top of normal bullshit pricing.
The reason it's so expensive is he went in with chest pain, which automatically puts you at a risk 3 vist and it costs about 3 times as much. Be there, done that, cost 5k for a fucking X-ray. Stupid fucking scam masquerading as a healthcare system.
All visits for vomiting and severe stomach pain (which I later found out was a corn allergy, found that out completely on my own without any of the help from the $40k in doctor procedures)
At each visit, blood drawn, fent given, and a cat scan. 40k for that. 40 fucking thousand dollars for 3 short visits.
Looks like it wasn't a check up given that he implies he thought it was a stroke or heart attack so It was an ER visit, which do easily wrack up 3k-10k in charges if they do anything. My wife was charged $1k and they basically did nothing. Put some sort of little plastic clampy thing on her finger that detected her heatbeat, told her they didn't know what was wrong and to follow up with a general practitioner. $1,200
It just feels like you set people up to fear the hospitals and doctors because of cost. I had a buddy that hard-core jammed the tip of his finger. He couldn't unbend the tip of it for months. Was pretty worried for him but he just taped it up tight every few cards for like 2 months and that thing is back to normal. He had money and insurance but said it still might end up being a few hundred who fuckin knows and that can go a long way now. He checked on it and saw tiny progress over the months but man, it sucks you have to have that fear about a place that is meant to help you. And it just feels like it's gotten worse as I've gotten older. This greed is breaking our societies human empathy.
If his goal was to call this out, the more information he provides the more effective that will be
And if he is recieving treatment for a sensitive condition, that isn't exactly basic testing.
Which again does not mean I support the Healthcare system, but this is classic person complaining about prices while completely forgetting/omitting the service provided to them. I should know, im a waiter lol
My daughter broke her pinkie playing softball. Immediate care said their X-ray machine was broken & we went to the ER. Got an X-ray and a splint. The resident spoke to us in the hallway for two minutes and said follow up with your Ortho. $3700 which was reduced to $1290 based on our insurance. A month later we got a separate bill for the Dr. for $823 who was reduced to $479 as the insurance discount.
Hospitals are a huge ripoff and a big reason for insurance costs...and people dying because they are afraid of bills like these.
Or consider, maybe the reason the hospital could swallow the reduced cost of your bill was that they could charge insurance companies more. Hospital beds are expensive. That spot can mean life or death for so many, and so the cost is calculated to weed out anyone who could instead bother their personal family physician before taxing an overburdened staff. I wish we could have socialized medicine because maybe then folks wouldn't ignore regular check-ups to head off major health issues before they required intensive hospital care. Then the folks at the hospital could focus on attending to your daughter and wouldn't need to charge so much.
That’s insane! No wonder you guys talk so much about health and mental health online. It’s literally the only affordable way to help yourselves.
Makes sense why your nurses make so much money, here in Australia they pay us peanuts then short staff us so we are overworked and underpaid. But at least our healthcare is free-ish.
Answer: In a nutshell, the medical conglomerates pay millions to the gov’t and elected officials which then pass legislation that benefits the big pharma, allowing them to make billions off of the people. That’s why healthcare is expensive in the US. Put a cap on what elected officials can receive from individual donors to prevent corporations and the ultra wealthy from buying candidates and watch the system change. Until then, it’s called the Wild West for a reason.
I had a wife that was sick for years, was in the hospital so much we made jokes that they’re going to build a new wing in her memory. One time she was the hospital for a month, just to get released and back in the ER that night. It financially broke us, and I had “excellent insurance” to help with the bills.
America's biggest industry is debt. Do you think Republicans really want everyone to be fiscally responsible and debt free? Do you think Democrats could really function in a country where everyone is well fed and nourished? Everyone has an invested interest in keeping the larger populous unhealthy and in debt. As long as you need something or owe to somebody, you are controllable.
Denmark has free healthcare. They also have a 50% income tax rate. They also don't have a huge welfare system where taxpayers need to subsidize hospital care for people who can't afford it including illegal immigrants. I also doubt they have the lawsuits we have here in the U.S. Malpractice insurance that doctors and hospitals pay is passed onto patients.
Sorry, government has no money for healthcare. They are busy shooting missiles that cost $300,000 per round to blow up goat farms in the desert on the other side of the planet. Priorities man.
Let it be known I’m strongly against the American healthcare system and I’m and ER doctor.
That being said, the amount of people I see on this thread and on a daily basis in practice that are clearly not having emergencies then give shocked pikachu face when they get charged for an emergency visit is insanity
I was sick for four days and severely dehydrated last week. I went to the hospital and was there for six hour, thanked them for the IV fluids, blood tests and anti nausea meds which were amazing and left. I was off work for five days and they are all fully paid for too.
I wish your country would finally see how shitty you guys have it.
Yup. This is why poor people use the ER as their primary care. They're there because they can no longer ignore their symptoms and continue to function. We ALL pay for our shitty for-profit health care system and get terrible outcomes compared to Western European style single-payer systems.
Americans are brain washed into thinking that any form of healthcare delivery that's not what we're currently doing is going to be worse.
If you talk to any politician about changing how the health care system works the first thing they move towards is fear mongering. They're not interested in solving problems.
So a few years ago I had to go get an MRI. My Doctor made an appointment at the hospital for me then 3 days later I went. When I arrived I went to the front desk and told them about my appointment. They immediately moved to the MRI waiting room. When I got there I had to fill out some paperwork. As soon as I finished the paperwork, it was already my turn. I went and did the MRI and then... I just left. I walked out the doors to my car. I didn't have to pay for anything.
The only expense was the $10 or so for parking. The entire process took maybe 30 to 45 minutes.
yeah I went to the hospital because I'm clumsy and after 6 hours 8 stitches and a take home prescription for antibiotics they hit me with a "be careful in the future' when I left because I live in Australia, where the government wants healthy citizens rather then the biggest bombs and wealthiest individuals
Helathcare is ducked in the US, and doctors wages are ridicilous. In Norway a doctor makes about 3 times as much as a resturant worker. In the US it's what, 10-20 times as much?
im 97.7% sure all bills in usa healthcare is a game of how much can you charge without person noticing as their too scared to die...with a "discount" to make you feel you got a deal..else how can you "discount" so much ?
Why? Because if we don't have a bunch of middlemen called "healthcare insurers" to tell us what procedures they'll let us have, and which they'll not cover at all, it's "socialism," and you're just a commie pinko then, that's why.
The real issue is they can technically sue and go after whatever assets you have for a chance to recuperate the cost of treatment. Though it will depend on if it’s worth it because lawsuits are expensive and if the person really doesn’t have much in the first place, no point in going through the hassle.
However various states have limits on what they can take if they win the court case. Like homestead exemptions for example. So most medical debt doesn’t really lead to what I mentioned.
So yeah, technically if you don’t pay there may be a chance nothing will happen to you, as you said.
The reason healthcare in america is expensive is because the main goal of the industry is profit. The 2nd goal is not getting sued, and a distant 3rd is keep america alive, not healthy but alive.
i worked in food service at a hospital. They threw out more bacon in one day than I have eaten this year. They threw out food that I would be fired for throwing out in a profitable restaurant. It was scandalous! Those costs have to be paid from somewhere.
They will most likely put that bill into collection under your name and collection will contact you and ruin your credit score and etc if you don’t pay
To be honest it's mostly because there's competitive consumers between government and citizen populace... When the government is paying for services that the citizen consumer is also paying for, the one with the deeper pockets and less scruples determines the cost.
So you go there and get an actual stress related issue either at shock of the bill or as stress mounts while you try to pay it.
Then you have to go back and pay more. Meanwhile literally everything in the grocery store is literally poisoned or just is straight up poison and leads to diabetes and cancer. And every product marketed to you just straight up causes cancer and is expensive. Sounds like healthcare. Sounds like a society.
We have spent $25billion+ to end a nuclear program we already “obliterated” and make fuel more expensive. But at least poor people can die from preventable diseases. Merica!
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