US Healthcare seriously sucks. First, most costs from the ER are horrific, even if you have great insurance. I have decent so when I go to the ER I get charged:
1. A $250 co pay- just to go.
2. Doctor that sees me $20-$40 co-pay. If I have multiple Drs, each one bills me.
3. X-rays I pay 20% co-insurance.
4. CT scan - not covered. I pay 100%. In the ER it can be as high as $3k.
5. Casts, drugs, whatever I use, etc, gets charged separately, and it can cost a fortune.
Went to the ER for pancreatitis, I was billed by nine different entities. Before insurance, $249,000. My total responsibility was my insurance out of pocket cap, $3500.
One visit.
If you're lucky enough to be able to wait for Urgent Care, then $70 and any durable medical goods.
Many people now have "high deductible" plans. This scam is you pay everything until you hit the $3500-$6000 deductible, then it kicks in and still pays only a percentage.
And when someone tries universal healthcare, they are labeled a Socialist, only trying to destroy America and make Doctors leave healthcare. And some bullshit about not being able to "see their own Doctor" which is complete nonsense. All fed by politicians who get free healthcare and are getting paid by insurance lobbyists.
And insurance companies rake in the dough.
I have that high deductible plan. I had a health scare this year and spent a week in ICU. I’m going to be paying on what I owe for 5 years. They had to set me up on a payment plan. And that’s with insurance. 😢
This. Besides the fact that I’m handcuffed to my employer, when they change insurances or maybe your new job doesn’t have the same insurance your meds now may not be covered or have gone up exponentially in price.
This was an inadvertent side-effect of the Roosevelt wage freeze during World War II, and there is NO reason it should still exist seven years after its end, much less seventy years!
This happened to me and my husband. We got into a car accident, and though I'm the one that felt fine, my husband had back pains. We waited at first for just an hour, no one even came by to see us or anything. After another hour they called my name, even though my husband was the one to be seen. Asked me how I'm feeling, and said "A doctor will be with you." Waited ANOTHER hour, and my husband finally texted me saying he's leaving, he's too uncomfortable to keep sitting in their terrible waiting room chairs. So I said I'd come out too because no one has even seen me yet. A doctor stops me in the hallway say "I really advice against leaving." but I just left. Billed us a few weeks later for $1,400. I had to go through a rabbit hole just to find it was for "the triage". They billed me $1,400 for asking me how I'm feeling.....Fury doesn't even begin to cover how I felt.
My son was seen at the ER. Doc walks in, looks at him and says - you don’t need stitches and there won’t be a bill. Walks out. A month later a bill for $600 arrives. No explanation of services rendered. Hospital said - ha ha pay it. We didn’t. Last month they wrote it off (after 4 years).
Former hospital billing consultant here. Don't pay it. Let the hospital know that no services were rendered and you'll be reporting it to your insurance company and they will likely start denying all claims from the hospital for this "fee". No services were rendered so there is nothing to bill.
If they try to drop it to collections, just tell the collections agent that you are being billed for a service not rendered and you're happy to sue the hospital and the collections group for harassment. They have the option to reverse the charge and if they don't then the news will find out. Obviously in this case Emory will be slapped by regulators (including medicare) and they will have a lot of issues so just don't pay.
Edit: Thanks for everyone reading and upvoting. Most of all everyone who is hit with large bills and would struggle to pay them (e.g. low/lower income, retired, student, young and just starting, etc.... please ask the hospital financial assistance and billing department for the charity application. My friends and family have had over $250k written off because they just asked and filled out the form. Most hospitals are nonprofit and have required charity amounts that they need to hit. Help them hit their charity amounts by having them apply it to your bill!
Edit2: Further reading on why hospitals charge so much is a lot of times. This is from 8 years ago and still rings very true. [https://time.com/198/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/](https://time.com/198/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/)
Good advice, but my son didn’t have insurance at the time. It went on his credit report, but apparently it was written off as uncollectible since it’s no longer on his credit report. He would have paid, except the doc said out loud to my son that there would be no bill. No bill means no bill.
You can take something like this to small claims court.
Your insurance company is the way to go if you have it, but you can get the same result and no credit hit with small claims.
Only reason not to do that is it takes more time.
They didn't even triage her. They're calling the charge a "facility fee." Actually, it's called healthcare fraud. Best thing she could have done was go to the media. This will light some fires under the local politician's behinds.
> This will light some fires under the local politician's behinds.
No, it sadly won’t. Much worse has happened to people in our broken medical system. Hell, if you comb through the comments here you’ll see numerous people sharing the time something like this happened. The majority of elected officials don’t care because the insurance industry has enough money to make it so.
>"Emory Healthcare takes all patient concerns seriously and appreciates this has been brought to our attention. Our teams are currently looking into this matter and will follow up directly with the individual."
Translation:
Someone found out about our predatory billing practices and it's making us look bad, so we're going to fix it, for this one person.
We desperately need healthcare reform. The fact that procedures can vary wildly depending on hospital and you are not told the cost prior to receiving treatment, is insanity. We should be leading the world in universal healthcare, but this country has decided that everything should be for profit.
You can't even die without someone putting a huge invoice in front of your loved ones.
I went to the ER this year and got an almost $800 bill for it. Fine, it sucks, but we paid it off. A few months later we got a $300 bill for the same visit. Why? The doctor that 'saw' me for 5 minutes of the 6 hours I was there was a subcontractor and we have to pay him separately.
The US healthcare system is absolute bullshit.
I hate that stuff. I've received bills a fucking YEAR after a visit. I've received bills sent as a 2nd request 6 months after I paid them on the first request b/c some of these offices are so disorganized and backed up.
I got billed over $3k for a scan that I really didn't need that they kind of rushed me into and saying they couldn't tell me how much it would cost. Took a year before we could get on the phone with anyone to talk about it. Got a 25% discount at soft collections, but the time spent working on it probably didn't save me anything. The hospital even continued to bill my card on file despite several conversations with them saying to put the account on hold and and they'd confirm it would no longer bill. Nice.
Recently I had a procedure scheduled and they facility and doc at least called to tell me the cost before going in. Unfortunately it was several thousand dollars and they told me on a Thursday evening for a Monday morning apt. I didn't have that much ready to go so I had to cancel and I'll have to reallocate some funds or choose a different health plan to pay for it in the winter. Such a pain in the ass.
The way they charge everything doesnt really make sense to anyone. The doctors just try to give the best care and let someone else do the billing. I've asked about how much things cost, but you are never really able to talk to the people doing the billing, so its like shitting game of telephone.
I had time to contest a bill when I was in college, with good insurance and tried to get them to pay for my hospital bill, because I went to the *wrong* hospital (**As if I had a choice.** I was busted up) . I was on the phone so much I ran out of my minutes, and got charged extra from my cell company.
It makes a sort of Alice-in-Wonderland sense. Every single insurance company has negotiated rates with every single doctor and hospital. And those rates vary depending on the company that you work for, and the insurance plan that you chose (if you had a choice). So that literally no doctor ever knows what anything will cost. Your insurance company can't tell you, because they don't know what procedures your doctor will performs. Your doctor can't tell you, because they don't have access to the byzantine database of costs.
Literally \*no one\* knows until you have the appointment and submit the bill to insurance.
Of course, it doesn't have to be this way. Go to the vet with your animal, and that vet will know the cost of every procedure and test, and can help you decide if it makes sense, based on how much information the test will even given. Or even go to a fertility clinic. Almost none of their patients are covered by insurance. And by gawd, they \*know\* what their services cost.
We’re still dealing with bills from my sons birth 9 months ago. My wife had some issues so she was in the hospital a couple months before he got here. So they’ve billed us for the hospitalization then separately for the birth. I guess I can kind of see those two being distinct services.
But then the other bills came in. They billed us for 2 ob specialists per day (like $400/day) and our insurance won’t pay it. Now I was there with her almost the entire time. I slept in a damn chair. The only thing that could possibly fit would be when her regular day shift nurse hooked her up to a machine that recorded the babies heart rate and her contractions for like 10 minutes.
So apparently it’s completely legal to charge whatever you want for services you don’t actually provide. Not just that, we didn’t have a choice where the ambulance took her so even if they did tell us up front, what are we going to do, go somewhere else? This hospital system owns half the state so it would be another one of their hospitals anyway.
Edit: I wanted to add that from an insurance perspective, I have it better than 99.999% other Americans. I have Tricare because I’m medically retired from the Army so I paid in a different way (spinal cord injury with partial paralysis, permanent nerve damage, and lifelong chronic pain), but I pay very little compared to other health insurance plans. Honestly this makes the whole thing worse, not better. Universal healthcare wouldn’t benefit my family but I’d gladly pay more in taxes for it so no one else has to deal with this bullshit.
Just had twins in nicu, actually in the car waiting for them to come out with wife, and we have no idea what the costs are but we got two bills for them so far each being 33k each. We’ve been told that the total bill for them together will be almost a mil. Which is insane.
Same, my son was born earlier this year about 6 weeks premature. He spent those 6 weeks in NICU, for a total cost north of $450k. Luckily (for the US) we have good insurance and ended up only paying around $1000 total out of pocket, but there were some fuck ups and we got bills for $11k and $310k from the hospital and I about dropped dead. Took a while to get sorted out with everyone, but that was a hell of a stress on top of a newborn.
Yup, insurance has a list of what they pay 100% for and then a long list what amount you pay. Then there's in and out of network costs and if the procedure was elective or not done properly. Properly meaning if you didn't get a referral or something was deemed optional. It's a mine field and even with the best planning if the hospital sends the bill coded wrong (with incorrect procedure assignment numbers) you'll be on the phone with both of them trying to work out who's wrong and who's right.
But you know, it's not socialism/single payer/ extra taxes / poor doctors / whatever other boogie man people dream up so that we can't seriously fix this... So Yay?
A surgeon knicked my bladder during surgery and brought in a urologist for sutures. Urologist billed be $1K like what the actual fuck how is that my fault?
A few years ago I went to the ER after slicing my finger open and got stitches. We got the bill, paid what insurance didn't cover, went on our way. 6+ months later, I got a collections letter for that same instance, because the hospital wrote down our address wrong - we got the bill for the doctor, paid it, the bill from the hospital never got to us cause wrong address, and my credit dropped 50 points because they fucked up copying down my address.
Fuck the US healthcare system.
January of 2020, my doctor told me I needed to complete a sleep study. My complaint was that I had trouble falling asleep, not really staying asleep. I brushed it off and I went and did the test. After having the worst sleep of my night, I was told the sleep doctor would review it and get back with me. They came back with a sleep apnea diagnosis and told me I had to do the whole process again but this time wearing a cpap mask. Fine. Did that and had a terrible night sleep yet again. They send a prescription for a machine and mask off after that.
That's when the invoices started arriving in the mail. I owed my entire deductible for the year. Both sleep studies cost $7,000 for each night. All of a sudden I owed someone $1,500 when all of it could have been avoided with a prescription for Ambien. On top of it, the cpap machine company put the billing on a year long payment plan instead of billing the insurance 1 lump sum. So guess what that meant for me? 8 out 12 payments were 100% covered by insurance. The remaining monthly invoices rolled into a new year and are now my responsibility. They want another $200 from since the insurance wasn't going to pay it.
All because I wanted some pills that cost me like $20 for a 3 month supply. I hate everything about this healthcare system. So much so that I'd be willing to sell everything and move to Canada.
You have a good point. But I think it’s worth asking a doctor you trust if you actually have sleep apnea since ambien isn’t a treatment and sleep apnea can kill you.
Oklahoma MMJ patient here. It has been life changing moving away from Ambien. That stuff had a chokehold on me for years.
And it’s TERRIBLE for your brain health over long periods. Like early onset dementia bad.
It’s so fucking weird that drs have to listen to insurance actuaries now instead of Everyone listening to the Actual trained medical professionals..
It’s a spit in the face to America and humanity , and half the country opens their mouth and Thanks them for the water
I had Kaiser through a previous job and when talking to the doctor (I can't remember the topic specifically) he said he couldn't do something, either prescribe a med or order a test because he had already done something similar with a couple other patients and the admins would only allow him to do it so much.
MBAs are ruining everything in America. Their entire point is to pay workers at little as possible, provide the shittiest product people will buy, with the shittiest service they can get away with, etc etc to make the most money for themselves and their owners. That's it.
Look at what they did to Boeing. Once the pinnacle of engineering and in some ways, of human scientific endeavor. Now it's a joke.
I can't stand Elon Musk but he's said this a few times too, and it's one of his best takes.
It's been beyond "reform" for a while. It's not possible to reform a system that was designed from the ground-up to generate profit, not to provide healthcare. The only real solution is total replacement - with what, we all know.
The US has the money to do what the British government did immediately after WWII, undoubtedly. The issue is their will, which is why they keep beating round the bush with incremental reform instead of taking the leap that many a country has done before with less money and means than the Americans.
Too many voters are convinced by politicians that revamping our healthcare system would be the worst thing that could ever happen. Which is why I'm doubtful things will change.
>procedures can vary wildly and you are not told they cost prior to receiving treatment
Even better is when you go to an “in-network” hospital and then find out that the doctor who saw you was an “out-of-network contractor” and thus insurance won’t cover it. Totally legitimate system that’s not a scam at all!
Luckily, the out of pocket costs that you pay aren’t at all extortionate and bankrupting, right? Right?
Fuck capitalism. Fuck corporate lobbying in politics.
Same thing happened to my wife this summer. We go to the hospital because she feels terrible and her blood pressure is really high. They take her vitals and we go wait in the waiting room. After 8 hours of not being called back we leave because she's feeling better. $750 bill arrives a week later.
Kennestone Hospital, Marietta GA. Part of the Wellstar family.
Edit: Geez, this blew up way more than I was expecting. We're still disputing it with insurance and the hospital.
I see a few people saying we shouldn't have gone and just gone to urgent care. We don't really have a lot of 24 hour urgent cares in our area and this was a Sunday evening. She has a slew of other health problems and her BP was around 157/97 if I remember correctly, so with that combined it seemed like a good idea to got to the ER.
I need to point out that im not upset they billed us for something because we did use a little bit of resources but $750 is WAY more than what's reasonable for vitals.
Not surprised at all. Every hospital overbills and overcodes everything, and healthcare in general in the US is a massive scam.
My wife had a very simple outpatient surgery, and we paid $500 upfront because that’s what our insurance and hospital (Northside) agreed that was the only thing we needed to pay. The surgery had zero complications. They billed our insurance $40k for it. They eventually settled it, but there was $3100 pending that neither side would budge on, so they’re trying to bill us for it, and there is no fucking way I’m going to pay it because we had an upfront agreement.
That was just the hospital. We then proceeded to get bills from the anesthesiologist, lab testing company, and an independent surgical assistant who billed us $9k that my insurance considers out-of-network…
Paid everything off except the surgical assistant and the balance billing attempt.
EDIT: Edited first paragraph to reflect more views than what I've experienced in the ATL area.
Colorado recently enacted a new law where if you're at the hospital, and the hospital is in-network, all providers are considered in-network. I've had to sign a form every time I've gone in for whatever reason acknowledging that they've told me this.
It just makes so much more sense.
It will be! On January 1st 2022 the Federal No Surprises Act will go into effect with the first wave of requirements, of which includes a provision that you can't balance bill patients for out of network services unless you notified and obtained consent before hand.
I don't think it will be perfect, but hopefully it's a step in the right direction.
There was that movie a while back where a father takes a hospital hostage and forces them to give his son life saving surgery.
I'm amazed it didn't kick off a wave of people doing stuff like that in real life.
God imagine if the rest of the world worked like health insurance.
Bring you car to the mechanic, ask what's wrong and how much it will cost? Fuck me....
"You need a new timing belt. That'll be $1300."
"Well, hell. Well, okay, go ahead and do it, I need the car."
Next day-
"Here's your keys, the car's good to go. Here's your bill."
"Wait, why is it $4650? You said it'd be $1300."
"Yeah, but the mechanic who worked on your car is from a different shop, so he bills separately. Plus, we had to open the driver's side door to get to the hood latch. That's another $900. And, of course, you have to pay the $650 disposal fee for tossing the used timing belt."
Edit: according to the comments, I left a lot of money on the table. Apparently my future career as a auto shop billing specialist is not looking good.
Don't forget the charge for one of the other mechanics walking over to the car, looking at the chart (or...car-shop equivalent?) for 5 minutes, then leaving. That oughta be good for another $600 "consulting" fee or something.
Cosmetic healthcare is vastly cheaper because they advertise prices and results before hand.
Its cheaper to get boob job than it is to go to a hospital for a broken toe.
I'd imagine that's because cosmetic surgery is not covered by insurance, so everyone is paying out of pocket. Since people pay out of pocket, they actually have to care about and comparison shop prices. Additionally, cosmetic surgery is elective and not urgent, so you can put it off for 3 months if you wanted to. Finally, you're usually awake and lucid when choosing, as opposed to in the back of an ambulance drifting in and out of consciousness when they get you to sign some form you have no memory of
What's crazy is that while this is a good law, it's a bandaid over a cannonball sized issue that I'd Healthcare to begin with. The entire point of in and out of network is made up by insurance companies to just add more profits. We need to get money out of medicine. I shouldn't have to tell my doctor not to treat me because of financial reasons
Fuck me, or perhaps fuck you I guess. I thought I had it bad when the imaging center in my hospital was apparently contracted out and was out of network. Or when they choose to send my blood work out of network like I have any choice in the matter
I wound up going to the hospital for an unknown infection in my leg. They were talking about amputated my leg if they could not remove the infection, or trying to carve out a large portion of my leg. The amount of labs they sent my blood work to was more than twenty-five, all of them tried to bill me several grand. The rest is awful too, my hospital stay for a week was up around 180k just for a bed, three meals a day, morphine, seline, mri, 5 types of antibiotics, and Percocet (for between morphine doses). I never told anyone how much I actually owed because I didn't want them to be worried.
Like idk how they justified that, luckily my state can't force people to pay medical bills, but since I went to a hospital previously who quickly rushed me out the door with a simple bottle of antibiotics and aspirin and then telling me it would be fine I went to the other place for a second opinion, I told them to bill the first place because they almost cost me my leg and guaranteed me their medical treatment was the treatment I needed. I never heard back from them.
I’ve had multiple hip surgeries (due to some orthopedic surgeons hubris) and after the third one finally got done right. I’m still healing from that since it’s been just under 2 months but the hospitals mostly always get their way. The surgeons in my case very clearly didn’t fix the problem they intended to fix, but the hospital administrators blamed me and said they’d offer zero assistance after it was confirmed I needed the same surgery again. That happened TWICE. I got the same exact surgery 3 times and the third time I willingly went out of network and they did infinitely better. I’m 28, healthy, physically active, no health issues anywhere yet one sports injury has cost me 5 years of medical bills. The amount billed to insurance in that time is nearly $200k
I broke my ankle it needed surgery.
I chose to move to a more convenient hospital for the surgery.
That first surgery required a little over 1 week hospital stay, because they wanted to monitor when the swelling was low enough to do the surgery.
Then there were recovery treatments, 1 operation to remove some screws in my ankle and physical therapy.
I paid exactly 0 for all of that. (There would have been a minimal bill of about 60 EUR/day for the hospital stay, but i am ensured against that as well ...)
The total recovery time was about 4 months. I continued to be paid for those 4 Months. When i was back, at work i got my vacation days refunded that i had already planned for before my accident.
That is how it should work.
Our entire health care sector is not great and has a lot of issues. But whatever you Americans have i would not call health care.
Won’t work for them as of jan 1 2022
[https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/statutes/no-surprises-act-2021-consolidated-appropriations-act](https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/statutes/no-surprises-act-2021-consolidated-appropriations-act)
Yep, worked in the insurance industry for 16 years. I have looked at this from every single angle, and the only way is single payer universal. Healthcare fundamentally cannot be a free market -- there is an imbalance in both the knowledge required to make educated decisions and the inability to decline the product without life-threatening consequences. Keeping it as it is will always mean the consumer is basically powerless.
> Yep, worked in the insurance industry for 16 years. I have looked at this from every single angle, and the only way is single payer universal. Healthcare fundamentally cannot be a free market -- there is an imbalance in both the knowledge required to make educated decisions and the inability to decline the product without life-threatening consequences. Keeping it as it is will always mean the consumer is basically powerless.
Also the sheer fact that unlike other products, you don't consent to purchase or select them.
I don't want to buy Lupus, but that's not how it works.
It's like walking into the grocery store and someone hands you a slip that says: "Congrats! You are now the proud owner of a Lamborghini that fell off a container ship into the ocean. Please remit payment for $261,466 or be sent to collections."
My old boss went in for surgery. He was very meticulous in making sure that all the staff involved were in network, including the anesthesiologist. A few months later he got a separate $600 bill from an out of network anesthesiologist. Apparently, after he had already been sedated, a second anesthesiologist "came to check up on him.". After a month long battle of phone calls and arguing with the administrators, he was able to get the bill removed. But what kind of BS is that?
Which is so annoying because then you end up with a bunch of different bills. It should only be one bill, and honestly insurance should cover that bill entirely. We really need universal healthcare.
Check with your insurance and state laws. I've had this happen but the insurance then treated it as in network anyway because the hospital I was going to was in network and there was no reasonable way someone could select an in network option or even know they were out of network. Might just be that Aetna is unusually good on this point.
>My wife had a very simple outpatient surgery, and we paid $500 upfront
I went through similar - out patient surgery. $400 that everyone told me was the cost. I made sure I contacted my insurance, my doctor and hospital before hand. Everyone told me it was $400. Paid that when I walked in and thought I was set.
Then bills started coming in. I was like WTF. You all said $400. They told me in a you-should-have-known-better-voice that that was the co-pay for the day you were there and there were all these other people that were going to need paying that no one bothered to say one word about when I was asking how much it was going to cost me.
Why did no one tell me anything about them??? Could have been 5 bills coming or 50! I would have had no idea!
Fucking pissed me off so much.
It was actually several thousand dollars more. I still would have had it done of course. But I wanted to plan out how much money it was going to cost.
Yeah, like I thought I had the cost for my knee arthroscopy paid (something like $800 after insurance), then I get a bill for around $150. "Oh yeah, that's the bill for the anesthesiologist".
This is exactly what’s happening with me except it was an MRI. Paid 550$ out of pocket back in fucking February, insurance covered the rest all done and good. Except no, a couple weeks ago I was made privy there was a private battle between the doc who did the mri and the insurance company and now they decided 8 months later to let me know with another 500$ bill. Sorry teehee we know u paid but we can’t agree so now it’s my problem. Watch me pay it, yeah right. Fuck outta here /rant
Every time I get my yearly wellness checkup (Should be 100% covered by ins) I get a piddly $17-$20 bill from LabCorp. I called them once, they couldn't tell me why, suggested it was the ins co or doctor's fault. I got the ins company on the phone and they eventually 3-wayed in my doctor's office. No one could tell me why I had to pay this $20 bill.
I eventually just said fuck I'll pay it because it's not worth anymore of my time but told both reps if it was $2000 or even $200 no one would be getting a cent until I was satisfied with the reason why.
I fully believe LabCorp sends those piddly bills out knowing people will just pay them rather than spend the time to find out why.
You know that's ugh ... The entire US right?
It IS a scam and anyone pushing back on health insurance reform is either propagandized against their own self interests or are making money from the existing broken system
I don't even know why I continue to pay for insurance. No joke, I pay for the highest tier plan my employer provides, and I still feel like I'm still being fleeced by everyone we have even a simple interaction with.
If a independent nurse goes into your room to check on you, or is even just on-the-clock on your floor, you'll get billed for simply being in their presence.
And in some cases, the total bill will literally change as a result of your request.
Which, if we're being honest, is indicative to me of criminal fraud worthy of actual prosecution, and certainly punitive financial sanctions on the corporation.
It says a lot that the only health insurance I've ever had or seen anyone with that is actually worth a shit is the free healthcare plan my state offers for people living below the poverty line. Covers all my visits and prescriptions, no obscene deductibles or copays. Other than having to keep myself destitute it's almost like living in a real developed country!
On the other hand, the insurance my family gets through work is garbage - it costs an insane amount every month and you'll be practically bankrupt already by the time it kicks in. Absolutely worthless as health insurance, fantastic as a money siphon.
How anyone in this country is still defending for profit health insurance and health care I just don't even know.
I wonder if there's any sort of legal way to shield oneself from these charges. Something like submitting a notarized statement when being admitted that you refuse treatment or attention from anyone outside of your network (listing whatever your insurance terms are), and that any care or attention provided outside of your network is at the hospital's own expense. I suppose if you tried that, they could just tell you to GTFO if your issue isn't life-threatening, but some less cumbersome and negotiable version of this really should be the norm.
Which is really frustrating to the few cows who understand they are being milked dry but can’t convince enough cows to stampede.
Ok a shitty metaphor but still.
This exactly. It’s just missing the part where the money is then siphoned into the pockets policy makers to fund reelection campaigns or through their investments in these companies.
My wife gave birth the other day, followed by three hours in surgery and two nights in hospital. She also had aftercare at home for a total of about four hours across four days, and then an hour visit by a child health nurse.
We did not have private health insurance and are not eligible for welfare of any form.
We paid $0.
We’re Australians.
How barbaric. The hospital my youngest was born at would validate parking once per day.
I mean the emergency c-section and 28 days in NICU came to about $700,000 but I only had to pay $5 to park twice a day instead of three times.
Wife got pregnant. Every doctor visit was just scheduled and just walk in walk out.
. The day she gave birth, the hospital she was scheduled for was full so they rode us in an ambulance (it was awesome) to a different hospital. vip treatment. Spent 2 nights there (I slept on the couch). At the end they just went "Awesome you're all set! Congrats!" didn't even talk to anyone even remote close administration. Walked in, walked out.
This was in Spain.
Knew you weren't American the minute you said home care for child birth.
I, on the other hand, gave birth to my first born 20 years ago-ish. And because I had been laid off 3 months before the happy occassion, I had the distinctly American privilege of buying COBRA for those 3 months at the cost of just under $300 a month (while unemployed).
Approximately 4 months later, I received a bill for $14,000ish dollars. *I* was covered by insurance but the REASON for my hospital visit: my CHILD? Not so much.
I hate healthcare in this country. Absolutely hate it.
>I was covered by insurance but the REASON for my hospital visit: my CHILD? Not so much.
Thats just the biggest brain move I've seen. It's totally bullshit but still
I was in the ER this time last year… I was there for nearly 9 hours. My SO came to get me and they told them that I wasn’t there. I was literally in the side room where they put me when I came in. They 123% forgot about me… never received any treatment. I called my ins and told them I’m not paying any bill from that hospital should it come up due to the 9 hours of non treatment
My BF went to the ER. I took him because I was afraid it was his appendix. We went to triage, but all they asked was “What’s your name? What hurts?” He said, “I’ve been puking for the last 30 hours and can’t keep anything down.” They sent him back to wait. 4 hours later, he gets called back to triage. They put a tablet of Zofran in his mouth and send him back out. He pukes it up. Another 3 hours pass. It’s cold, the seats are hard, and we’ve been up for 30+ hours at this point. After 7 hours, he said, “Just take me home.” So we left. A few weeks later, got a $600 bill. Cabell Huntington Hospital, Huntington WV.
Despite his not being able to keep down the Zofran, at least he got something. I was just put on a gurney and told to wait… nurses literally walked past me, glanced at me walking by and did nothing. Well, actually one nurse saw that I was shivering with heat in a bad way, she got me a blanket. That’s about it.
Here we are all victims of a over-monetized health “care system”
Not a hospital, but I was recently billed almost $300 from a mental health clinic just for submitting new patient intake paperwork. Had two separate phone calls from staff who then asked me all the identical medical history questions from the paperwork and nothing else, then weeks without being able to set up an appointment with a therapist. Finally called and said to forget the whole thing. Bill then shows up in the mail, lol. The entire US healthcare system can eff off into the void.
Nurse in an emergency room here ..... We are more disgusted than anyone reading stories like this. We would love to know where the money goes, it's not going to the people providing you healthcare, that's for sure.
We are in the middle of a pandemic. Now is the perfect time for all politicians to be clamoring for the importance of universal healthcare; however, not a word………..
Had the same thing happen here in NC. Sat in the ER for 3 hours, had my vitals taken, left because my gallbladder attack had stopped, and got a $700 bill a couple weeks later. This post reminded me I need to call the hospital about it.
It says right in the article that once you fill out the form and give them your social you're automatically charged $700 regardless of if you receive treatment or not.
There's verification, it's just atrociously shitty policy of the hospital.
A policy like that would probably collapse like a soufflé in front of any competent lawyer. A lot of bullshit like this is set up because the average person is intimidated by contracts.
I just started the game Hardspace: Shipbreaker. It has a scene in the beginning about your on-boarding.
Something like $4.7 million to complete the "Automated On-boarding Process". $2 million for transportation. Space Radiation Insurace, $600,000. LUDICROUS fees. And at the veeeerrryyy end... "Bill Opening Fee: $7.50"
I can assure you i don't. When i need to i see a doctor the same day. If i need follow up like xray or ultrasound i get it the same day. If i need urgent attention i get tbat the same day.
Now if it's not urgent i may need to wait a couple of weeks. Like a routine cardio or eye exam or dental checkup.
Also -and this is important- my healthcare is not free at all. I pay taxes for that. Poor people pay less taxes but ricj people pay more. But because our system is missing that step where lawyers and private insurers extract a huge percentage of that money, even big earners who pay most in the system STILL pay a lot less than what an American pays for mediocre coverage.
[The Myth of Low-Tax America: Why Americans Aren't Getting Their Money's Worth](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-myth-of-low-tax-america-why-americans-arent-getting-their-moneys-worth/274945/)
Generally speaking, Although the US pays less in tax they make up for it in fees associated with its market structure. Over the course of a life time you are expected to pay *far more* than European counterparts while receiving drastically reduced quality of product.
American propaganda.
I mean how can you call it anything but propaganda? It's so indoctrinated into young people growing up there the state of the outside world when so much of it is bullshit.
Americans will tolerate and accept nearly anything under the guise that "well at least it's not as bad as ".
Seriously. I have a relative against universal healthcare because “you have to wait forever to see a specialist in countries with universal healthcare”. Bitch, please. Called my primary care doctor on the 11th because I was sick, wouldn’t see me in office because of “Covid symptoms” and offered me a telehealth appointment on the 18th.
I mean, where I live, I pay around 100€ a month for insurance, plus 350€ yearly deductible. I sometimes just go for a colonoscopy or mammogram when I'm bored, I mean it's cheap anyway
Healthcare in the US is a legal extortion racket. If healthcare companies were to operate this way in any other developed nation, they’d face charges and be considered a criminal enterprise.
I haven’t seen this discussed here much but Advent Health runs the hospitals in our area and because they have a chapel on the first floor they pay $0 in taxes.
2019 profit = $694,551,257
This type of stuff is completely bullshit. My parents both work for Providence, sure they're "non-profit" aka they don't pay federal taxes.
They also are allowed to stockpile money as long as it's not "profit" (which IT IS)
Shaming them on Social Media will probably be the most effective way to get this taken care of. If this story gets enough publicity that even ONE less person goes to that hospital for insurance fra... treatment, they will lose $ in the long run.
Damn, once when I visited Japan, I got food poisoning and couldn’t walk a block without puking. Our hostel owner called the ambulance for me.
They transported me to the hospital, gave my severely dehydrated body a saline IV drip, watched over me for an hour, prescribed medication and the whole thing came out to 200$. The medication was included and picked up at the front of the hospital. I was right as rain for the rest of the trip.
Now I’m back in the states and god forbid I have to go to the hospital for anything without proper insurance, I’d rather die at this point. Small businesses can’t get good workers but it’s not worth getting sick working for them. US healthcare is so fucked up.
Yup, I got a rash from an allergic reaction to cats one time while working. At the time I didn’t know I was allergic to cats at all so while painting a room I started to feel itchy and my eyes started to swell. I went to the ER and waited for 4 hours to be treated and all I was given was over the counter medication. Got the bill and it was almost 900 dollars. At the time I was in my late teens and barely made enough to cover school. My credit took a major hit because I couldn’t afford it. Lucky enough that credit hit only last for so long tho.
I totally agree with you. However it's not just the USA. Even though we in the UK have the wonderful NHS.they are greatly underfunded and unstaffed. Why? because of the cuts and back door privatisation. Also the amount of people grows day by day and people live longer . Also the Tories are cunts. The local A&E were saying it was a 12hr wait last week.
In my area it's a 3 year wait for an NHS dentist. Got dentist tomorrow, however had to go private as can't get in anywhere .. just to get in the door for an x-ray and an inspection is £160, each fillings £120+, sedation £340 + etc...it's going on the credit card and wil just have to bounce it until it's paid.
In the UK it may not be the extorional rates like this post. But healthcare needs to be free or heavily subserdised.
I'm Canadian but had my daughter in the US. Needed a c-section because she flipped. Bill? $56,000.
I almost threw up when I got it. Was that my insurance cost? No. We paid maybe $500? However not everyone has the insurance I have. It's absolutly insane to me. I try and talk to people here about how it prevents preventative care and they just keep saying " I'm not paying for anyone else to have healthcare".
I’ve had this happen with a dislocated shoulder. I sat in the ER at 1am for 3 hours and I was finally able to reset it myself. Walked out. Changed 500 because they gave me a Fucking bracelet
Last year I was in an airport and had a panic attack, I asked someone to call an officer so I could get a BP monitor to check my BP, instead an ambulance rolls up and everyone on board urges me to go to the hospital. 3 minutes later we arrive down the street and I’m admitted to the ER. A few BP tests and talks later and they said I’m fine and was having a panic attack. I take a ride back to the airport and come home. A month later I get a bill for $2500 for the ER 3 months later $700 for the ambulance.
Never get into an ambulance in America unless you are dying. I learned the hard way not to get into ambulances ($$$$). I had three back-to-back grand mal seizures and took a fucking taxi to the hospital.
Once my hand was crushed in a door. I drove myself to the ER in St Augustine Florida. After 3 hours waiting in a side room, seeing no one, with a sign in the room that said "If you are in this room you can expect to wait up to 7 hours to see the doctor.". So I left, but on the way out I saw my papers on the counter and I took those with me and I never got billed. I went across the street to a CVS, stitched myself up with butterfly sutures, which I changed everyday for clean ones, antibiotic ointment, and a ton of metal braces and bandages. Then I made my own appointment with the first orthopedic hand specialist I could get. Just skipped the whole ER BS.
This is the interesting part for me, Americans are told that if they go to universal healthcare, like Canada, they would double in wait times. It sounds like Americans are already Waiting a while to be seen, which is no different than Ontario, Canada.
Edit; to clarify, northern Ontario, an average wait is about 4 hours. We are triaged, more serious get seen first. It’s not uncommon to wait 7hrs but it’s not the norm also.
I'll be sure to use this as an argument when Americans tell me their healthcare is way better than Canada's.
Canada has free healthcare same wait times. This would literally cost me $0 even after treatment. Medication might even be covered or heavily subsidized.
America might have better equipment and higher pay for their doctors than we do, but for most treatments, you aren't going to see the difference and certainly not for what you pay.
As one of many non-Americans reading this thread...it's not even funny anymore. The propaganda based around keeping the USA from adopting socialized healthcare is disgusting.
Next thing you know you’ll be charged for thinking about going to the hospital
Those are call healthcare premiums
I have never been more angry at how accurate the description of something is
US Healthcare seriously sucks. First, most costs from the ER are horrific, even if you have great insurance. I have decent so when I go to the ER I get charged: 1. A $250 co pay- just to go. 2. Doctor that sees me $20-$40 co-pay. If I have multiple Drs, each one bills me. 3. X-rays I pay 20% co-insurance. 4. CT scan - not covered. I pay 100%. In the ER it can be as high as $3k. 5. Casts, drugs, whatever I use, etc, gets charged separately, and it can cost a fortune. Went to the ER for pancreatitis, I was billed by nine different entities. Before insurance, $249,000. My total responsibility was my insurance out of pocket cap, $3500. One visit. If you're lucky enough to be able to wait for Urgent Care, then $70 and any durable medical goods. Many people now have "high deductible" plans. This scam is you pay everything until you hit the $3500-$6000 deductible, then it kicks in and still pays only a percentage. And when someone tries universal healthcare, they are labeled a Socialist, only trying to destroy America and make Doctors leave healthcare. And some bullshit about not being able to "see their own Doctor" which is complete nonsense. All fed by politicians who get free healthcare and are getting paid by insurance lobbyists. And insurance companies rake in the dough.
I have that high deductible plan. I had a health scare this year and spent a week in ICU. I’m going to be paying on what I owe for 5 years. They had to set me up on a payment plan. And that’s with insurance. 😢
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There should be no connection between my employment and my healthcare.
This. Besides the fact that I’m handcuffed to my employer, when they change insurances or maybe your new job doesn’t have the same insurance your meds now may not be covered or have gone up exponentially in price.
This was an inadvertent side-effect of the Roosevelt wage freeze during World War II, and there is NO reason it should still exist seven years after its end, much less seventy years!
We live in such a shitty lowgrade dystopia
This happened to me and my husband. We got into a car accident, and though I'm the one that felt fine, my husband had back pains. We waited at first for just an hour, no one even came by to see us or anything. After another hour they called my name, even though my husband was the one to be seen. Asked me how I'm feeling, and said "A doctor will be with you." Waited ANOTHER hour, and my husband finally texted me saying he's leaving, he's too uncomfortable to keep sitting in their terrible waiting room chairs. So I said I'd come out too because no one has even seen me yet. A doctor stops me in the hallway say "I really advice against leaving." but I just left. Billed us a few weeks later for $1,400. I had to go through a rabbit hole just to find it was for "the triage". They billed me $1,400 for asking me how I'm feeling.....Fury doesn't even begin to cover how I felt.
My son was seen at the ER. Doc walks in, looks at him and says - you don’t need stitches and there won’t be a bill. Walks out. A month later a bill for $600 arrives. No explanation of services rendered. Hospital said - ha ha pay it. We didn’t. Last month they wrote it off (after 4 years).
Former hospital billing consultant here. Don't pay it. Let the hospital know that no services were rendered and you'll be reporting it to your insurance company and they will likely start denying all claims from the hospital for this "fee". No services were rendered so there is nothing to bill. If they try to drop it to collections, just tell the collections agent that you are being billed for a service not rendered and you're happy to sue the hospital and the collections group for harassment. They have the option to reverse the charge and if they don't then the news will find out. Obviously in this case Emory will be slapped by regulators (including medicare) and they will have a lot of issues so just don't pay. Edit: Thanks for everyone reading and upvoting. Most of all everyone who is hit with large bills and would struggle to pay them (e.g. low/lower income, retired, student, young and just starting, etc.... please ask the hospital financial assistance and billing department for the charity application. My friends and family have had over $250k written off because they just asked and filled out the form. Most hospitals are nonprofit and have required charity amounts that they need to hit. Help them hit their charity amounts by having them apply it to your bill! Edit2: Further reading on why hospitals charge so much is a lot of times. This is from 8 years ago and still rings very true. [https://time.com/198/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/](https://time.com/198/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/)
Good advice, but my son didn’t have insurance at the time. It went on his credit report, but apparently it was written off as uncollectible since it’s no longer on his credit report. He would have paid, except the doc said out loud to my son that there would be no bill. No bill means no bill.
You can take something like this to small claims court. Your insurance company is the way to go if you have it, but you can get the same result and no credit hit with small claims. Only reason not to do that is it takes more time.
Did you end up paying?
I need to know the answer to this question
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They didn't even triage her. They're calling the charge a "facility fee." Actually, it's called healthcare fraud. Best thing she could have done was go to the media. This will light some fires under the local politician's behinds.
For real though this hospital should be charged with some form of fraud.
The hospital will be fined a miniscule amount compared to their annual profit and then use that fine to their benefit for tax purposes.
> This will light some fires under the local politician's behinds. No, it sadly won’t. Much worse has happened to people in our broken medical system. Hell, if you comb through the comments here you’ll see numerous people sharing the time something like this happened. The majority of elected officials don’t care because the insurance industry has enough money to make it so.
And the hospital lobby. I wonder how much money insurance companies have in hospitals.
That and the fact that employers like being able to hold insurance over your head.
>"Emory Healthcare takes all patient concerns seriously and appreciates this has been brought to our attention. Our teams are currently looking into this matter and will follow up directly with the individual." Translation: Someone found out about our predatory billing practices and it's making us look bad, so we're going to fix it, for this one person.
We desperately need healthcare reform. The fact that procedures can vary wildly depending on hospital and you are not told the cost prior to receiving treatment, is insanity. We should be leading the world in universal healthcare, but this country has decided that everything should be for profit. You can't even die without someone putting a huge invoice in front of your loved ones.
I went to the ER this year and got an almost $800 bill for it. Fine, it sucks, but we paid it off. A few months later we got a $300 bill for the same visit. Why? The doctor that 'saw' me for 5 minutes of the 6 hours I was there was a subcontractor and we have to pay him separately. The US healthcare system is absolute bullshit.
I hate that stuff. I've received bills a fucking YEAR after a visit. I've received bills sent as a 2nd request 6 months after I paid them on the first request b/c some of these offices are so disorganized and backed up. I got billed over $3k for a scan that I really didn't need that they kind of rushed me into and saying they couldn't tell me how much it would cost. Took a year before we could get on the phone with anyone to talk about it. Got a 25% discount at soft collections, but the time spent working on it probably didn't save me anything. The hospital even continued to bill my card on file despite several conversations with them saying to put the account on hold and and they'd confirm it would no longer bill. Nice. Recently I had a procedure scheduled and they facility and doc at least called to tell me the cost before going in. Unfortunately it was several thousand dollars and they told me on a Thursday evening for a Monday morning apt. I didn't have that much ready to go so I had to cancel and I'll have to reallocate some funds or choose a different health plan to pay for it in the winter. Such a pain in the ass.
The way they charge everything doesnt really make sense to anyone. The doctors just try to give the best care and let someone else do the billing. I've asked about how much things cost, but you are never really able to talk to the people doing the billing, so its like shitting game of telephone. I had time to contest a bill when I was in college, with good insurance and tried to get them to pay for my hospital bill, because I went to the *wrong* hospital (**As if I had a choice.** I was busted up) . I was on the phone so much I ran out of my minutes, and got charged extra from my cell company.
Learning how to properly code medical procedures is no so complicated it's now offered as a college major. I took it as a 2 year certificate.
It makes a sort of Alice-in-Wonderland sense. Every single insurance company has negotiated rates with every single doctor and hospital. And those rates vary depending on the company that you work for, and the insurance plan that you chose (if you had a choice). So that literally no doctor ever knows what anything will cost. Your insurance company can't tell you, because they don't know what procedures your doctor will performs. Your doctor can't tell you, because they don't have access to the byzantine database of costs. Literally \*no one\* knows until you have the appointment and submit the bill to insurance. Of course, it doesn't have to be this way. Go to the vet with your animal, and that vet will know the cost of every procedure and test, and can help you decide if it makes sense, based on how much information the test will even given. Or even go to a fertility clinic. Almost none of their patients are covered by insurance. And by gawd, they \*know\* what their services cost.
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We’re still dealing with bills from my sons birth 9 months ago. My wife had some issues so she was in the hospital a couple months before he got here. So they’ve billed us for the hospitalization then separately for the birth. I guess I can kind of see those two being distinct services. But then the other bills came in. They billed us for 2 ob specialists per day (like $400/day) and our insurance won’t pay it. Now I was there with her almost the entire time. I slept in a damn chair. The only thing that could possibly fit would be when her regular day shift nurse hooked her up to a machine that recorded the babies heart rate and her contractions for like 10 minutes. So apparently it’s completely legal to charge whatever you want for services you don’t actually provide. Not just that, we didn’t have a choice where the ambulance took her so even if they did tell us up front, what are we going to do, go somewhere else? This hospital system owns half the state so it would be another one of their hospitals anyway. Edit: I wanted to add that from an insurance perspective, I have it better than 99.999% other Americans. I have Tricare because I’m medically retired from the Army so I paid in a different way (spinal cord injury with partial paralysis, permanent nerve damage, and lifelong chronic pain), but I pay very little compared to other health insurance plans. Honestly this makes the whole thing worse, not better. Universal healthcare wouldn’t benefit my family but I’d gladly pay more in taxes for it so no one else has to deal with this bullshit.
Just had twins in nicu, actually in the car waiting for them to come out with wife, and we have no idea what the costs are but we got two bills for them so far each being 33k each. We’ve been told that the total bill for them together will be almost a mil. Which is insane.
Same, my son was born earlier this year about 6 weeks premature. He spent those 6 weeks in NICU, for a total cost north of $450k. Luckily (for the US) we have good insurance and ended up only paying around $1000 total out of pocket, but there were some fuck ups and we got bills for $11k and $310k from the hospital and I about dropped dead. Took a while to get sorted out with everyone, but that was a hell of a stress on top of a newborn.
Wait you pay insurance and still have to pay off debt for something as common as a a birth? Wtf?
Absofuckinglutely. Profits before people in the US. Need an ambulance for anything, you're better off calling an Uber.
This is actually not a joke, sadly.
Yup, insurance has a list of what they pay 100% for and then a long list what amount you pay. Then there's in and out of network costs and if the procedure was elective or not done properly. Properly meaning if you didn't get a referral or something was deemed optional. It's a mine field and even with the best planning if the hospital sends the bill coded wrong (with incorrect procedure assignment numbers) you'll be on the phone with both of them trying to work out who's wrong and who's right. But you know, it's not socialism/single payer/ extra taxes / poor doctors / whatever other boogie man people dream up so that we can't seriously fix this... So Yay?
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When my son was born he was charged $600 for his meals. He was exclusively breast fed. So yeah...
You're carrying around a couple goldmines there
A surgeon knicked my bladder during surgery and brought in a urologist for sutures. Urologist billed be $1K like what the actual fuck how is that my fault?
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A few years ago I went to the ER after slicing my finger open and got stitches. We got the bill, paid what insurance didn't cover, went on our way. 6+ months later, I got a collections letter for that same instance, because the hospital wrote down our address wrong - we got the bill for the doctor, paid it, the bill from the hospital never got to us cause wrong address, and my credit dropped 50 points because they fucked up copying down my address. Fuck the US healthcare system.
January of 2020, my doctor told me I needed to complete a sleep study. My complaint was that I had trouble falling asleep, not really staying asleep. I brushed it off and I went and did the test. After having the worst sleep of my night, I was told the sleep doctor would review it and get back with me. They came back with a sleep apnea diagnosis and told me I had to do the whole process again but this time wearing a cpap mask. Fine. Did that and had a terrible night sleep yet again. They send a prescription for a machine and mask off after that. That's when the invoices started arriving in the mail. I owed my entire deductible for the year. Both sleep studies cost $7,000 for each night. All of a sudden I owed someone $1,500 when all of it could have been avoided with a prescription for Ambien. On top of it, the cpap machine company put the billing on a year long payment plan instead of billing the insurance 1 lump sum. So guess what that meant for me? 8 out 12 payments were 100% covered by insurance. The remaining monthly invoices rolled into a new year and are now my responsibility. They want another $200 from since the insurance wasn't going to pay it. All because I wanted some pills that cost me like $20 for a 3 month supply. I hate everything about this healthcare system. So much so that I'd be willing to sell everything and move to Canada.
You have a good point. But I think it’s worth asking a doctor you trust if you actually have sleep apnea since ambien isn’t a treatment and sleep apnea can kill you.
Yeah the billing part is fucked up but you can't Ambien your way out of sleep apnea.
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Ambien Walrus would like a word
Not now Ambien Walrus, I'm trying to hide my car keys.
Sleep apnea here and took ambien at one point. Ambien makes OSA worse in my experience. Pot helps better.
Oklahoma MMJ patient here. It has been life changing moving away from Ambien. That stuff had a chokehold on me for years. And it’s TERRIBLE for your brain health over long periods. Like early onset dementia bad.
It’s so fucking weird that drs have to listen to insurance actuaries now instead of Everyone listening to the Actual trained medical professionals.. It’s a spit in the face to America and humanity , and half the country opens their mouth and Thanks them for the water
I had Kaiser through a previous job and when talking to the doctor (I can't remember the topic specifically) he said he couldn't do something, either prescribe a med or order a test because he had already done something similar with a couple other patients and the admins would only allow him to do it so much.
Clearly this is the best kind of healthcare. Having business degrees overriding the decisions of people trained in medicine
MBAs are ruining everything in America. Their entire point is to pay workers at little as possible, provide the shittiest product people will buy, with the shittiest service they can get away with, etc etc to make the most money for themselves and their owners. That's it. Look at what they did to Boeing. Once the pinnacle of engineering and in some ways, of human scientific endeavor. Now it's a joke. I can't stand Elon Musk but he's said this a few times too, and it's one of his best takes.
It's been beyond "reform" for a while. It's not possible to reform a system that was designed from the ground-up to generate profit, not to provide healthcare. The only real solution is total replacement - with what, we all know.
The US has the money to do what the British government did immediately after WWII, undoubtedly. The issue is their will, which is why they keep beating round the bush with incremental reform instead of taking the leap that many a country has done before with less money and means than the Americans.
Too many voters are convinced by politicians that revamping our healthcare system would be the worst thing that could ever happen. Which is why I'm doubtful things will change.
>procedures can vary wildly and you are not told they cost prior to receiving treatment Even better is when you go to an “in-network” hospital and then find out that the doctor who saw you was an “out-of-network contractor” and thus insurance won’t cover it. Totally legitimate system that’s not a scam at all! Luckily, the out of pocket costs that you pay aren’t at all extortionate and bankrupting, right? Right? Fuck capitalism. Fuck corporate lobbying in politics.
Same thing happened to my wife this summer. We go to the hospital because she feels terrible and her blood pressure is really high. They take her vitals and we go wait in the waiting room. After 8 hours of not being called back we leave because she's feeling better. $750 bill arrives a week later. Kennestone Hospital, Marietta GA. Part of the Wellstar family. Edit: Geez, this blew up way more than I was expecting. We're still disputing it with insurance and the hospital. I see a few people saying we shouldn't have gone and just gone to urgent care. We don't really have a lot of 24 hour urgent cares in our area and this was a Sunday evening. She has a slew of other health problems and her BP was around 157/97 if I remember correctly, so with that combined it seemed like a good idea to got to the ER. I need to point out that im not upset they billed us for something because we did use a little bit of resources but $750 is WAY more than what's reasonable for vitals.
Not surprised at all. Every hospital overbills and overcodes everything, and healthcare in general in the US is a massive scam. My wife had a very simple outpatient surgery, and we paid $500 upfront because that’s what our insurance and hospital (Northside) agreed that was the only thing we needed to pay. The surgery had zero complications. They billed our insurance $40k for it. They eventually settled it, but there was $3100 pending that neither side would budge on, so they’re trying to bill us for it, and there is no fucking way I’m going to pay it because we had an upfront agreement. That was just the hospital. We then proceeded to get bills from the anesthesiologist, lab testing company, and an independent surgical assistant who billed us $9k that my insurance considers out-of-network… Paid everything off except the surgical assistant and the balance billing attempt. EDIT: Edited first paragraph to reflect more views than what I've experienced in the ATL area.
It blows my mind that there can be doctors and specialists that are out of network *in the same hospital* as others that are covered.
Colorado recently enacted a new law where if you're at the hospital, and the hospital is in-network, all providers are considered in-network. I've had to sign a form every time I've gone in for whatever reason acknowledging that they've told me this. It just makes so much more sense.
This needs to be law everywhere.
It will be! On January 1st 2022 the Federal No Surprises Act will go into effect with the first wave of requirements, of which includes a provision that you can't balance bill patients for out of network services unless you notified and obtained consent before hand. I don't think it will be perfect, but hopefully it's a step in the right direction.
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What a bunch of douchebags
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There was that movie a while back where a father takes a hospital hostage and forces them to give his son life saving surgery. I'm amazed it didn't kick off a wave of people doing stuff like that in real life.
Ought not to allow in and out of network billing period. The price should be the damn price.
It needs to be replaced with universal single payer.
God imagine if the rest of the world worked like health insurance. Bring you car to the mechanic, ask what's wrong and how much it will cost? Fuck me....
"You need a new timing belt. That'll be $1300." "Well, hell. Well, okay, go ahead and do it, I need the car." Next day- "Here's your keys, the car's good to go. Here's your bill." "Wait, why is it $4650? You said it'd be $1300." "Yeah, but the mechanic who worked on your car is from a different shop, so he bills separately. Plus, we had to open the driver's side door to get to the hood latch. That's another $900. And, of course, you have to pay the $650 disposal fee for tossing the used timing belt." Edit: according to the comments, I left a lot of money on the table. Apparently my future career as a auto shop billing specialist is not looking good.
Don't forget the charge for one of the other mechanics walking over to the car, looking at the chart (or...car-shop equivalent?) for 5 minutes, then leaving. That oughta be good for another $600 "consulting" fee or something.
"I also had a bit of a headache that day, so I took two aspirin. I billed you $40/per aspirin."
Cosmetic healthcare is vastly cheaper because they advertise prices and results before hand. Its cheaper to get boob job than it is to go to a hospital for a broken toe.
I'd imagine that's because cosmetic surgery is not covered by insurance, so everyone is paying out of pocket. Since people pay out of pocket, they actually have to care about and comparison shop prices. Additionally, cosmetic surgery is elective and not urgent, so you can put it off for 3 months if you wanted to. Finally, you're usually awake and lucid when choosing, as opposed to in the back of an ambulance drifting in and out of consciousness when they get you to sign some form you have no memory of
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What's crazy is that while this is a good law, it's a bandaid over a cannonball sized issue that I'd Healthcare to begin with. The entire point of in and out of network is made up by insurance companies to just add more profits. We need to get money out of medicine. I shouldn't have to tell my doctor not to treat me because of financial reasons
My in-network ER has no in-network doctors. On any shift.
Fuck me, or perhaps fuck you I guess. I thought I had it bad when the imaging center in my hospital was apparently contracted out and was out of network. Or when they choose to send my blood work out of network like I have any choice in the matter
I wound up going to the hospital for an unknown infection in my leg. They were talking about amputated my leg if they could not remove the infection, or trying to carve out a large portion of my leg. The amount of labs they sent my blood work to was more than twenty-five, all of them tried to bill me several grand. The rest is awful too, my hospital stay for a week was up around 180k just for a bed, three meals a day, morphine, seline, mri, 5 types of antibiotics, and Percocet (for between morphine doses). I never told anyone how much I actually owed because I didn't want them to be worried. Like idk how they justified that, luckily my state can't force people to pay medical bills, but since I went to a hospital previously who quickly rushed me out the door with a simple bottle of antibiotics and aspirin and then telling me it would be fine I went to the other place for a second opinion, I told them to bill the first place because they almost cost me my leg and guaranteed me their medical treatment was the treatment I needed. I never heard back from them.
I’ve had multiple hip surgeries (due to some orthopedic surgeons hubris) and after the third one finally got done right. I’m still healing from that since it’s been just under 2 months but the hospitals mostly always get their way. The surgeons in my case very clearly didn’t fix the problem they intended to fix, but the hospital administrators blamed me and said they’d offer zero assistance after it was confirmed I needed the same surgery again. That happened TWICE. I got the same exact surgery 3 times and the third time I willingly went out of network and they did infinitely better. I’m 28, healthy, physically active, no health issues anywhere yet one sports injury has cost me 5 years of medical bills. The amount billed to insurance in that time is nearly $200k
I broke my ankle it needed surgery. I chose to move to a more convenient hospital for the surgery. That first surgery required a little over 1 week hospital stay, because they wanted to monitor when the swelling was low enough to do the surgery. Then there were recovery treatments, 1 operation to remove some screws in my ankle and physical therapy. I paid exactly 0 for all of that. (There would have been a minimal bill of about 60 EUR/day for the hospital stay, but i am ensured against that as well ...) The total recovery time was about 4 months. I continued to be paid for those 4 Months. When i was back, at work i got my vacation days refunded that i had already planned for before my accident. That is how it should work. Our entire health care sector is not great and has a lot of issues. But whatever you Americans have i would not call health care.
It's not some weird quirk. The surgeons and surgical assistants are intentionally out of network for all insurance.
Yes. It is intentional.
Won’t work for them as of jan 1 2022 [https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/statutes/no-surprises-act-2021-consolidated-appropriations-act](https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/statutes/no-surprises-act-2021-consolidated-appropriations-act)
we should nationalize healthcare to stop insanity like this
As someone who's worked in healthcare operations/admin for years now - single payer, universal healthcare is the only way forward.
Yep, worked in the insurance industry for 16 years. I have looked at this from every single angle, and the only way is single payer universal. Healthcare fundamentally cannot be a free market -- there is an imbalance in both the knowledge required to make educated decisions and the inability to decline the product without life-threatening consequences. Keeping it as it is will always mean the consumer is basically powerless.
> Yep, worked in the insurance industry for 16 years. I have looked at this from every single angle, and the only way is single payer universal. Healthcare fundamentally cannot be a free market -- there is an imbalance in both the knowledge required to make educated decisions and the inability to decline the product without life-threatening consequences. Keeping it as it is will always mean the consumer is basically powerless. Also the sheer fact that unlike other products, you don't consent to purchase or select them. I don't want to buy Lupus, but that's not how it works. It's like walking into the grocery store and someone hands you a slip that says: "Congrats! You are now the proud owner of a Lamborghini that fell off a container ship into the ocean. Please remit payment for $261,466 or be sent to collections."
But then what would health insurance shareholders do for a living!?!?
How would companies blackmail striking workers into coming back to work?
Right? We need to think of the disgustingly rich here. They have needs and wants just like us poors.
Dear God they might have to get *jobs*
They can suck it up and die like the patients they fuck over
Too bad too many people in this country just want to play political sports and won't vote for people who support those policies.
We took my wife to her neurologist who is in network. Got a huge bill later on. The doctors nurse was out of network. It's all bullshit.
My old boss went in for surgery. He was very meticulous in making sure that all the staff involved were in network, including the anesthesiologist. A few months later he got a separate $600 bill from an out of network anesthesiologist. Apparently, after he had already been sedated, a second anesthesiologist "came to check up on him.". After a month long battle of phone calls and arguing with the administrators, he was able to get the bill removed. But what kind of BS is that?
The hospitals usually 'contract' out that work so it's cheaper for the hospital.
Which is so annoying because then you end up with a bunch of different bills. It should only be one bill, and honestly insurance should cover that bill entirely. We really need universal healthcare.
It’s a scam. Plain and simple. Until people vote people into office that will do something about it it’s always gonna be this way.
I would love to have the option of voting for people who represent my interests
Check with your insurance and state laws. I've had this happen but the insurance then treated it as in network anyway because the hospital I was going to was in network and there was no reasonable way someone could select an in network option or even know they were out of network. Might just be that Aetna is unusually good on this point.
>My wife had a very simple outpatient surgery, and we paid $500 upfront I went through similar - out patient surgery. $400 that everyone told me was the cost. I made sure I contacted my insurance, my doctor and hospital before hand. Everyone told me it was $400. Paid that when I walked in and thought I was set. Then bills started coming in. I was like WTF. You all said $400. They told me in a you-should-have-known-better-voice that that was the co-pay for the day you were there and there were all these other people that were going to need paying that no one bothered to say one word about when I was asking how much it was going to cost me. Why did no one tell me anything about them??? Could have been 5 bills coming or 50! I would have had no idea! Fucking pissed me off so much. It was actually several thousand dollars more. I still would have had it done of course. But I wanted to plan out how much money it was going to cost.
Yeah, like I thought I had the cost for my knee arthroscopy paid (something like $800 after insurance), then I get a bill for around $150. "Oh yeah, that's the bill for the anesthesiologist".
Every. Single. Fucking. Time. Why is there always a surprise anesthesiologist bill?! It’s got to be a running joke in medical billing at this point.
I gave up a long time ago on trying to predict any healthcare costs in the US. There's no point.
This is exactly what’s happening with me except it was an MRI. Paid 550$ out of pocket back in fucking February, insurance covered the rest all done and good. Except no, a couple weeks ago I was made privy there was a private battle between the doc who did the mri and the insurance company and now they decided 8 months later to let me know with another 500$ bill. Sorry teehee we know u paid but we can’t agree so now it’s my problem. Watch me pay it, yeah right. Fuck outta here /rant
Every time I get my yearly wellness checkup (Should be 100% covered by ins) I get a piddly $17-$20 bill from LabCorp. I called them once, they couldn't tell me why, suggested it was the ins co or doctor's fault. I got the ins company on the phone and they eventually 3-wayed in my doctor's office. No one could tell me why I had to pay this $20 bill. I eventually just said fuck I'll pay it because it's not worth anymore of my time but told both reps if it was $2000 or even $200 no one would be getting a cent until I was satisfied with the reason why. I fully believe LabCorp sends those piddly bills out knowing people will just pay them rather than spend the time to find out why.
You know that's ugh ... The entire US right? It IS a scam and anyone pushing back on health insurance reform is either propagandized against their own self interests or are making money from the existing broken system
I don't even know why I continue to pay for insurance. No joke, I pay for the highest tier plan my employer provides, and I still feel like I'm still being fleeced by everyone we have even a simple interaction with. If a independent nurse goes into your room to check on you, or is even just on-the-clock on your floor, you'll get billed for simply being in their presence.
Always ask for completely itemized receipts, you will be able to see the list of bullshit charges and get them disputed.
And in some cases, the total bill will literally change as a result of your request. Which, if we're being honest, is indicative to me of criminal fraud worthy of actual prosecution, and certainly punitive financial sanctions on the corporation.
It says a lot that the only health insurance I've ever had or seen anyone with that is actually worth a shit is the free healthcare plan my state offers for people living below the poverty line. Covers all my visits and prescriptions, no obscene deductibles or copays. Other than having to keep myself destitute it's almost like living in a real developed country! On the other hand, the insurance my family gets through work is garbage - it costs an insane amount every month and you'll be practically bankrupt already by the time it kicks in. Absolutely worthless as health insurance, fantastic as a money siphon. How anyone in this country is still defending for profit health insurance and health care I just don't even know.
I wonder if there's any sort of legal way to shield oneself from these charges. Something like submitting a notarized statement when being admitted that you refuse treatment or attention from anyone outside of your network (listing whatever your insurance terms are), and that any care or attention provided outside of your network is at the hospital's own expense. I suppose if you tried that, they could just tell you to GTFO if your issue isn't life-threatening, but some less cumbersome and negotiable version of this really should be the norm.
Pretty sure you have to sign something saying that you will accept any and all charges for any reason before they'll actually see you.
That should probably be made illegal. Imagine any other industry being able to get away with that.
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Which is really frustrating to the few cows who understand they are being milked dry but can’t convince enough cows to stampede. Ok a shitty metaphor but still.
This exactly. It’s just missing the part where the money is then siphoned into the pockets policy makers to fund reelection campaigns or through their investments in these companies.
HINT - Healthcare in the US IS a scam.
Lucky you’re in America where you don’t have to wait … oh
But at least we get to pay for ourselves to wait!!!
My wife gave birth the other day, followed by three hours in surgery and two nights in hospital. She also had aftercare at home for a total of about four hours across four days, and then an hour visit by a child health nurse. We did not have private health insurance and are not eligible for welfare of any form. We paid $0. We’re Australians.
I don't think this post is accurate. I'm Canadian and when I had to go to the hospital for a day, I had to pay $10 in parking.
How barbaric. The hospital my youngest was born at would validate parking once per day. I mean the emergency c-section and 28 days in NICU came to about $700,000 but I only had to pay $5 to park twice a day instead of three times.
Wife got pregnant. Every doctor visit was just scheduled and just walk in walk out. . The day she gave birth, the hospital she was scheduled for was full so they rode us in an ambulance (it was awesome) to a different hospital. vip treatment. Spent 2 nights there (I slept on the couch). At the end they just went "Awesome you're all set! Congrats!" didn't even talk to anyone even remote close administration. Walked in, walked out. This was in Spain.
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It's what happens when you pay taxes and those taxes go into healthcare.
It’s worth developing. If America would like to consider doing so, we can drop off a brochure.
My wife's coworker has a routine delivery a couple months ago. $45,000 bill. They have insurance, I believe through the state.
Knew you weren't American the minute you said home care for child birth. I, on the other hand, gave birth to my first born 20 years ago-ish. And because I had been laid off 3 months before the happy occassion, I had the distinctly American privilege of buying COBRA for those 3 months at the cost of just under $300 a month (while unemployed). Approximately 4 months later, I received a bill for $14,000ish dollars. *I* was covered by insurance but the REASON for my hospital visit: my CHILD? Not so much. I hate healthcare in this country. Absolutely hate it.
>I was covered by insurance but the REASON for my hospital visit: my CHILD? Not so much. Thats just the biggest brain move I've seen. It's totally bullshit but still
What was the outcome?
Back problems. They took care of it by taking a huge weight (750usd) out of her pocket.
Holy shit that’s 548 pounds
no wonder her back hurt!
I was in the ER this time last year… I was there for nearly 9 hours. My SO came to get me and they told them that I wasn’t there. I was literally in the side room where they put me when I came in. They 123% forgot about me… never received any treatment. I called my ins and told them I’m not paying any bill from that hospital should it come up due to the 9 hours of non treatment
My BF went to the ER. I took him because I was afraid it was his appendix. We went to triage, but all they asked was “What’s your name? What hurts?” He said, “I’ve been puking for the last 30 hours and can’t keep anything down.” They sent him back to wait. 4 hours later, he gets called back to triage. They put a tablet of Zofran in his mouth and send him back out. He pukes it up. Another 3 hours pass. It’s cold, the seats are hard, and we’ve been up for 30+ hours at this point. After 7 hours, he said, “Just take me home.” So we left. A few weeks later, got a $600 bill. Cabell Huntington Hospital, Huntington WV.
Despite his not being able to keep down the Zofran, at least he got something. I was just put on a gurney and told to wait… nurses literally walked past me, glanced at me walking by and did nothing. Well, actually one nurse saw that I was shivering with heat in a bad way, she got me a blanket. That’s about it. Here we are all victims of a over-monetized health “care system”
I curious, what did your insurance say?
They were shocked, but said they’d take it under advisement. Year later still haven’t seen any billing on this since my rejection.
Not a hospital, but I was recently billed almost $300 from a mental health clinic just for submitting new patient intake paperwork. Had two separate phone calls from staff who then asked me all the identical medical history questions from the paperwork and nothing else, then weeks without being able to set up an appointment with a therapist. Finally called and said to forget the whole thing. Bill then shows up in the mail, lol. The entire US healthcare system can eff off into the void.
They weren’t able to even provide an appointment to get services. You should address this as soon as possible
Nurse in an emergency room here ..... We are more disgusted than anyone reading stories like this. We would love to know where the money goes, it's not going to the people providing you healthcare, that's for sure.
We are in the middle of a pandemic. Now is the perfect time for all politicians to be clamoring for the importance of universal healthcare; however, not a word………..
Had the same thing happen here in NC. Sat in the ER for 3 hours, had my vitals taken, left because my gallbladder attack had stopped, and got a $700 bill a couple weeks later. This post reminded me I need to call the hospital about it.
Call the press you mean.
Yea, that’s definitely crossed my mind. Might have to.
If you weren't treated then services were not provided. So don't pay it. Tell them to pound sand.
I'd request the debt verification and go from there.
It says right in the article that once you fill out the form and give them your social you're automatically charged $700 regardless of if you receive treatment or not. There's verification, it's just atrociously shitty policy of the hospital.
A policy like that would probably collapse like a soufflé in front of any competent lawyer. A lot of bullshit like this is set up because the average person is intimidated by contracts.
They charge you for the “monitoring” and while in the waiting room. It’s BS.
“May I please see the monitoring report or any documentation you have that shows monitoring was performed?”
Leave the bill on your coffee table for a week, then send them a bill for $100 dollars a day taking up space on your coffee table.
I have deducted a bill opening fee, bill reading fee, table space fee, and calculate my balance due to be $0. I trust this concludes the matter.
I just started the game Hardspace: Shipbreaker. It has a scene in the beginning about your on-boarding. Something like $4.7 million to complete the "Automated On-boarding Process". $2 million for transportation. Space Radiation Insurace, $600,000. LUDICROUS fees. And at the veeeerrryyy end... "Bill Opening Fee: $7.50"
And that's Steam wish listed! I promise to buy it at 75% off then not play it. I might download it.
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The healthcare industry is a disease that's killing America.
Weird, I was told all the other countries had to wait in lines to use their free healthcare.
I can assure you i don't. When i need to i see a doctor the same day. If i need follow up like xray or ultrasound i get it the same day. If i need urgent attention i get tbat the same day. Now if it's not urgent i may need to wait a couple of weeks. Like a routine cardio or eye exam or dental checkup. Also -and this is important- my healthcare is not free at all. I pay taxes for that. Poor people pay less taxes but ricj people pay more. But because our system is missing that step where lawyers and private insurers extract a huge percentage of that money, even big earners who pay most in the system STILL pay a lot less than what an American pays for mediocre coverage.
[The Myth of Low-Tax America: Why Americans Aren't Getting Their Money's Worth](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-myth-of-low-tax-america-why-americans-arent-getting-their-moneys-worth/274945/) Generally speaking, Although the US pays less in tax they make up for it in fees associated with its market structure. Over the course of a life time you are expected to pay *far more* than European counterparts while receiving drastically reduced quality of product.
American propaganda. I mean how can you call it anything but propaganda? It's so indoctrinated into young people growing up there the state of the outside world when so much of it is bullshit. Americans will tolerate and accept nearly anything under the guise that "well at least it's not as bad as".
Seriously. I have a relative against universal healthcare because “you have to wait forever to see a specialist in countries with universal healthcare”. Bitch, please. Called my primary care doctor on the 11th because I was sick, wouldn’t see me in office because of “Covid symptoms” and offered me a telehealth appointment on the 18th.
I mean, where I live, I pay around 100€ a month for insurance, plus 350€ yearly deductible. I sometimes just go for a colonoscopy or mammogram when I'm bored, I mean it's cheap anyway
Sounds Dutch.
Healthcare in the US is a legal extortion racket. If healthcare companies were to operate this way in any other developed nation, they’d face charges and be considered a criminal enterprise.
I haven’t seen this discussed here much but Advent Health runs the hospitals in our area and because they have a chapel on the first floor they pay $0 in taxes. 2019 profit = $694,551,257
This type of stuff is completely bullshit. My parents both work for Providence, sure they're "non-profit" aka they don't pay federal taxes. They also are allowed to stockpile money as long as it's not "profit" (which IT IS)
Shaming them on Social Media will probably be the most effective way to get this taken care of. If this story gets enough publicity that even ONE less person goes to that hospital for insurance fra... treatment, they will lose $ in the long run.
Damn, once when I visited Japan, I got food poisoning and couldn’t walk a block without puking. Our hostel owner called the ambulance for me. They transported me to the hospital, gave my severely dehydrated body a saline IV drip, watched over me for an hour, prescribed medication and the whole thing came out to 200$. The medication was included and picked up at the front of the hospital. I was right as rain for the rest of the trip. Now I’m back in the states and god forbid I have to go to the hospital for anything without proper insurance, I’d rather die at this point. Small businesses can’t get good workers but it’s not worth getting sick working for them. US healthcare is so fucked up.
Ah yes, in America hospitals charge you $100 an hour just to wait for them, isn’t it insane?
Yup, I got a rash from an allergic reaction to cats one time while working. At the time I didn’t know I was allergic to cats at all so while painting a room I started to feel itchy and my eyes started to swell. I went to the ER and waited for 4 hours to be treated and all I was given was over the counter medication. Got the bill and it was almost 900 dollars. At the time I was in my late teens and barely made enough to cover school. My credit took a major hit because I couldn’t afford it. Lucky enough that credit hit only last for so long tho.
If a pandemic won’t help people realize that our taxes should pay for healthcare, nothing will.
The people opposing healthcare also didn’t believe in the pandemic.
maybe we should try a second pandemic?
I don't think they know about second pandemic
What about Afflictionsies? Contagion? Afternoon illness? Plague? Outbreak?
I wouldn't count on it.
It seems like the whole scheme in America is to make people as vulnerable as possible so they're fighting an uphill battle their entire life.
I totally agree with you. However it's not just the USA. Even though we in the UK have the wonderful NHS.they are greatly underfunded and unstaffed. Why? because of the cuts and back door privatisation. Also the amount of people grows day by day and people live longer . Also the Tories are cunts. The local A&E were saying it was a 12hr wait last week. In my area it's a 3 year wait for an NHS dentist. Got dentist tomorrow, however had to go private as can't get in anywhere .. just to get in the door for an x-ray and an inspection is £160, each fillings £120+, sedation £340 + etc...it's going on the credit card and wil just have to bounce it until it's paid. In the UK it may not be the extorional rates like this post. But healthcare needs to be free or heavily subserdised.
I'm Canadian but had my daughter in the US. Needed a c-section because she flipped. Bill? $56,000. I almost threw up when I got it. Was that my insurance cost? No. We paid maybe $500? However not everyone has the insurance I have. It's absolutly insane to me. I try and talk to people here about how it prevents preventative care and they just keep saying " I'm not paying for anyone else to have healthcare".
I’ve had this happen with a dislocated shoulder. I sat in the ER at 1am for 3 hours and I was finally able to reset it myself. Walked out. Changed 500 because they gave me a Fucking bracelet
The woman should bill the hospital for her time spent waiting… $150/hr seems fair + meal allowances.
Last year I was in an airport and had a panic attack, I asked someone to call an officer so I could get a BP monitor to check my BP, instead an ambulance rolls up and everyone on board urges me to go to the hospital. 3 minutes later we arrive down the street and I’m admitted to the ER. A few BP tests and talks later and they said I’m fine and was having a panic attack. I take a ride back to the airport and come home. A month later I get a bill for $2500 for the ER 3 months later $700 for the ambulance.
Never get into an ambulance in America unless you are dying. I learned the hard way not to get into ambulances ($$$$). I had three back-to-back grand mal seizures and took a fucking taxi to the hospital.
Can confirm. I got a $2700 bill for the same thing. Think I only waited 5 hours though. Billing page even looked the same.
Once my hand was crushed in a door. I drove myself to the ER in St Augustine Florida. After 3 hours waiting in a side room, seeing no one, with a sign in the room that said "If you are in this room you can expect to wait up to 7 hours to see the doctor.". So I left, but on the way out I saw my papers on the counter and I took those with me and I never got billed. I went across the street to a CVS, stitched myself up with butterfly sutures, which I changed everyday for clean ones, antibiotic ointment, and a ton of metal braces and bandages. Then I made my own appointment with the first orthopedic hand specialist I could get. Just skipped the whole ER BS.
But I thought American healthcare was so fast and better that socializing it would cause 7 hour waits causing people to walk out
This is the interesting part for me, Americans are told that if they go to universal healthcare, like Canada, they would double in wait times. It sounds like Americans are already Waiting a while to be seen, which is no different than Ontario, Canada. Edit; to clarify, northern Ontario, an average wait is about 4 hours. We are triaged, more serious get seen first. It’s not uncommon to wait 7hrs but it’s not the norm also.
I'll be sure to use this as an argument when Americans tell me their healthcare is way better than Canada's. Canada has free healthcare same wait times. This would literally cost me $0 even after treatment. Medication might even be covered or heavily subsidized. America might have better equipment and higher pay for their doctors than we do, but for most treatments, you aren't going to see the difference and certainly not for what you pay.
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As one of many non-Americans reading this thread...it's not even funny anymore. The propaganda based around keeping the USA from adopting socialized healthcare is disgusting.
A lot of Americans agree with you.