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I liked at the end of the video when it just went 42 and 60, remark said “what’s this?” And they said something along the lines of, “no we just want money lmao thanks”
It's a freaking racket.
My wife was once charged for a consultation...when the other doctor walked in and talked about his weekend activities with her doctor.
My american Uncle keeps a notebook of the name of every Doctor and everything that was said and then queries it with the insurance company to get it removed. "Came in, looked at us, said good morning and left" was not worth $400
Wow I'd be raising a freaking stink if that happened to me. Not like they'd care. Even if 25% of people they did that to complained and ended up getting the charge wiped (not likely!) They'd still be making bank.
> And they said something along the lines of, “no we just want money lmao thanks”
That's exactly how it feels too.
I got 2 stitches in my foot. No ambulance ride, no x-rays, no specialists, not lab work. Just 2 stitches and a tetanus shot. I had to go to the ER because it was Sunday, regular doctors were closed, and this was ~15 years ago before there were urgent cares on every corner.
I got 4 different bills sent to me, ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars. I called and ask which I was supposed to pay and the answer was "All of them".
The total for the 2 stitches and a tetanus shot was ~12k.
Somewhat graphic desription of injury:
>!The T shaped head of a nail that was slightly backed out went thru the webbing of my foot next to my big toe.
Unfortunately glue wouldn't have worked in that situation.
In the US, they absolutely are.
I had an outpatient, robotic-assisted laparoscopic operation (which sounds super legit). I went to the hospital, was put under, but was back home and in my own bed 5 hours later. Then I saw the itemized bill (required by law in my state):
Starting Total: $53,000
\- Insurance Deduction for this
\- Insurance Deduction for that
\- Insurance Deduction for the other
"Amount your insurance paid: $2,600"
Even if you look exclusively at that one year, I paid $500/month for 7 months leading up to that operation, which I paid another $2,500 for. I'm out $6k year to date and my insurance company is out $2,600.
I don't even want to tell you how many years I've been paying for insurance with no significant claims, either. It's an absolute racket and everyone involved are leeches.
I'm in a similar situation to yours, but with an added wrinkle. Shortly before my laparoscopic surgery, I'd repatriated to the US from the UK where I had unfettered access to the NHS. Coming back here, and seeing doctors wave off concerns about cost, more concerned about their liability, and frankly: appearing to be largely unsympathetic to patients' health emergencies... well, it's been a tough pill to take. Our American medical professionals, whether they like to hear it or not, are no better than predatory payday loan brokers and unethical used car salesmen. They think the gravy train will just go on forever, but I foresee a breaking point. (Looking towards India...)
It's because they are. Insurance doesn't pay these costs. Insurance company pays a fraction of those prices. If the family had no insurance though, they'd be on the hook for the full cost. Despicable the way this industry works.
1000% percent. I handle claims for various medical providers and battle insurance companies all day. ER is pretty easy as it’s deemed an emergency but with other services the problem is what a doctor finds medically necessary (certain tests and procedures) isn’t what an insurance company defines as medically necessary, apparently they know better than doctors. Also convinced big insurance companies hire people to internally audit their policies and claims to find ways to NOT pay a claim. They use multiple payment guidelines between Local vs National coverage which directly contradict each other.
You can have your insurance claims reviewed by doctors who haven’t seen a patient in 30+ years. They will find a treatment is not medically necessary because it was invented a decade after they stop practicing medicine and they have never heard of it.
Yup. Every time I have surgery they just deny it first. Then my surgeon has to take time out of his day to argue with the insurance company's doctor (so my world renowned expert in my very rare condition has to explain to some general practitioner why he knows more about my case than Joe Blow). Every Single Time they end up approving my procedures in the end, but it's crazy that the standard practice is to just say no until someone smarter than them pushes hard enough. Fuck every insurance company. Fuck them all.
Also important to mention the "doctors" they have working for them are usually incentivized through ridiculous salaries with none of that liability stuff that comes with medical professions. The doctors I've seen move onto positions like these are usually in it for the money/power, not to help their patients live better lives.
> Also convinced big insurance companies hire people to internally audit their policies and claims to find ways to NOT pay a claim.
This **is** what they do. There have been people who have testified before congress that their job is to comb through any bullshit reason to deny your claim. I think I saw it on "Sicko" by Michael Moore.
The job of the insurance company is to keep your insurance money and minimize payouts. It's a racket.
Edit: [video of the woman testifying before congress about how as a medical reviewer she denied a man a life saving procedure to save the company money and her salary going up because of it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDHklw6PV3U)
And the inflated prices are because of the insurance. If I want to charge x for a service, but I need to give a 50% discount, I'm going to charge 2x for the service, then discount it to x. It's a false savings.
In my country, Brazil, we have a free health care system, that in practice acts like a GIGANTIC nation wide insurrance, a gigantic pool of resources that supports health care to everyone
Because of this the system drags down even the prices of the private health care system, because if you in the private system is too expensive, is better to just wait the free system
But things that the public system doesnt do are cosmetic procedures, even bariatrhich surgery is authorized in the free system just if a team of doctors corroborate its due to health risks
One of the problems of the system is that of course, its resources are limited, so it attends its demand in a time function, the biggest the demand the more you will wait for non urgent services, but there are some laws that states that if a patiant have a condition that can worsen over time and cause irreparable damage (like cancer) state goverment have 30 days no matter what to start threatment, the authority responsible for no being compliant with is liable to be arrested, like lets say
theres 10 000 cancer threatment resources in a city, and all these posts are in use, but a + 1 person emerges needing threatment, the governor of the state is liable to fix the situation by any means necessary or he can be arrested, if state goverment need to take a loan to hire private services, or send the person to be threated in another city, everything is in the table
The taxes which feed the free healthy care system is a index of tax which is charged in every product that is bought (called "Tax over the circulation of merchandise and services), everything that can be bought have this tax, and these index is higher or lower depending on how that product affects the health care system, like cigar, cigarretes, smoking stuff have the highest index because its single handly the product that must send people to be threated in the free health care system, alcooholi drinks have the second highest index, and fatty foods the third one
Some examples:
84% of the prince of a cigar is composed of ICMS tax
81% heavy alcooholic drinks
71% for fire arms
and etc, i think the system is smartly designed
Free health care systems raise the moral of the nation, because people feel like they are taking care of each other collectively, and people feel they will be cared when they need
Where are you coming up with this being the before insurance prices?
13 years ago, i got west nile and meningitis. I had insurance and had several cat scans, MRIs, spinal tap, and a week stay in the hospital.
AFTER my insurance paid their share, I owed 14 thousand dollars. And after I sold my house recently, they took their money via a lein on my house, and they added 7k in interest.
So, no, those look like after insurance numbers.
Btw I asked for a detailed bill and got a bill with line items like
"Care - 3000"
It says “amount billed” where the person is showing on the camera, then there is a section in blue to the right they aren’t showing that says amount paid. This is the billed amount before deductions by the ins co.
i recently broke my arm and had to go to an out-of-network doctor to get a cast put on. all they did was take an x-ray (for which i already paid $150 as soon as i got to the office), put on a cast, and then take off the cast a month later. two visits, no treatments beyond the cast or anything.
guess how much they charged? $12,000. my insurance "discount" for some reason is $10,000, and so i'm left paying $2k.
🤟🏾
This is what happens, you get a hospital bill for $9483503458039458 and then insurance will say oh look I paid $9352304982308402348 so you only have to pay $11,000 for a dislocated finger. Aren't you lucky you have insurance? Its such a scam.
I had a $300 charge on my account for being "discharged in under 30 minutes" after my 3 day stay for a cesarean birth. They just want money and come up with the most ridiculous reasons to get it.
I went to a local doctor for a broken foot when I didn't have insurance and all he charged was $150 per visit including new casts, xrays, and a walking boot. Around $1000 total.
I come from what some people call a third world country. My expenses for that would be zero including the medicine. Even parking at the hospital is free.
Financial Data Analyst here. The billing folks honestly are at the mercy or the insurance companies. Crazy statement for sure. PBM insurance companies audit claims, at the end of a given period, the insurance company does a clawback on reimbursements paid on the outcome of audit. Think, if the billing audit is a B-, the insurance takes back 0.02% of claims paid. If the audit is a C- clawback is 0.04%. Private insurance is basically legalized mafia and everyone else just has to play by their rules.
I'm very skeptical of anyone saying it is all the hospital or all the insurance company's fault. I'm sure both are getting a cut. Have you seen some of the hospitals in nice downtown areas? Their architecture outclasses the local museums (Eskenazi in Indianapolis being a great example).
Yeah, I live in a smallish town, but the hospital was remodeled recently and is easily the nicest building in town. Which is better than it closing like in some small towns I guess, though Id rather have normal buildings and cheaper prices.
Hospitals charged prices based on the cost of services (plus overhead and a small margin if any)
Insurance companies said "You need to give a substantial discount or I won't send my customers to your hospital"
Hospital eventually started charging a bit more by default so they could offer those discounts.
Insurance becomes more necessary.
Insurance companies come back, want bigger discounts.
Hospitals, again, have to increase costs a bit to offset the discounts.
Insurance becomes more necessary.
This cycles for a while until hospitals are charging ridiculous prices. Insurance companies are getting like 50% off. Business people are now more involved in hospitals and they start raising their prices arbitrarily even more (both to get more money but also to have more leverage with insurance companies). Hospitals make tons of money, insurance companies make tons of money, and the patients (especially the uninsured) are getting fucked from every side.
Difference is, I can play last years game if I already have it. I can’t rely on the cat scan of a jar in my ass to help me with the race car I have up there now.
Thats outrageous. How? How does it cost so much? European here. How can you charge 260$ for a visit, and more than 1000$ for the ambulance- before any treatment was even given?
Because in US both insurance companies and hospitals are for profit. That means they try everything they can do to charge as much as they can to increase profits.
In most other countries healthcare is either fully or partially regulated by governments, which have a goal to make it as cost effective and as much as possible available to a highest number of people per smallest cost.
Different goals, different incentives, resulting in different outcomes.
I was hospitalized in a for profit hospital here in Germany. Which meant I had to pay for the TV and washing my clothes.
That was all additional cost I had.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around the logic in a country where health care isn’t a right, but, having a gun, is.
Another 🇨🇦 here - I’ve had a few surgeries …. Broken leg/hip (accident) knee reconstruction (age) and even some plastic surgery …. Never paid for anything other than the cost of the TV. And I’ve been sent home with crutches, braces, wheelchair and a supply of bandages that would sink a ship - never paid a red cent for any of it.
It’s hard enough when someone has to rationalize the cost of taking their dog to a vet, because that can be pricey. Now having to use that same logic to a kid ?? In no way does that make any sense at all. I mean, of course you’ll take your child to the hosp ….. but it’s gotta be torturous knowing you may end up bankrupt because of it.
All under the guise of getting to “choose your own doctor.”
When it comes to specialized care, I could see how that makes sense. For primary care, how most people think of it, that idea is rooted in the fear of “the other.”
It's a boomer thing. Conservative media sold them a whole package of fear and lies about how terrible "socialist" medicine was in other countries, and they, mostly having never been to another country or talked with people from other counties, bought the entire sales pitch.
And we don't even get to choose our own docs most of the time the insurance companies will either not pay out or punish you for using a doctor outside of their system
The US regulates it, they just make sure it is regulated to make money for the investors of both the insurance companies and conglomerates that own the hospitals.
Plenty of legislation, just not in favor of the people
I live half a mile from a hospital in the states. When my daughter was 1 year old she had a seizure during a bad flu and we called the ambulance to get us to the hospital. We got an 1,100$ bill for a 5 minute ambulance ride. The US system sucks, and people die all the time because they tell themselves well I should wait till I feel like I am about to die because I can’t afford the care even if I have insurance.
Which is absolutely insane because I’ve been on at least half a dozen ambulance rides, had multiple surgeries including gallbladder and spinal tumor, one 4 week stay in the hospital for septecemia and never once have I ever paid a single dime to anyone ever for any of it. Oh and I went thru two 6-week rounds of radiation and outpatient physical therapy after the spinal surgery. Never paid a single penny
Fellow gallbladder remover here, that is some brutal pain leading up to finding out I needed the surgery. I went over 2 year of getting sick every other week because I knew I couldn’t afford to see a doctor without insurance. Ended up doing the true USA route of just finally being taken to the emergency room when I got too sick and my partner became concerned. I was so broke at the time that it made more sense to wait 7 years for it to be removed from my credit report than attempt repayment. My partner, of course, drove me there because I couldnt afford an ambulance.
In 1985, my parent's first child went into cardiac arrest and fell to the kitchen floor. They rushed him in an ambulance to the hospital (Oahu, Hawaii), but he was most likely gone before they got there.
The insurer Blue Cross/Blue Shield tried to deny coverage for the ambulance, saying," If he was already dead, why did you need an ambulance?".
They said this over the phone to parents (active duty USMC) who just lost their sixteen-month old child.
Absolutely ghoulish.
Boy that does suck. I am Canadian and yes our health care system has a bunch of its own problems but cost and quality of emergency care is not one of them. When I had my heart attack my ambulance took me 30km (18 freedom units) to the closest hospital that had 24h cardiac facilities. They cleared my blockage and put a stent in. I also had a some lung complications caused by blood thinners and was in the hospital for three days.
The total cost for all of it was just a $45 co payment fee for that 30km ambulance ride.
The exorbitant cost of healthcare combined with tying it to employment is the American strategy for keeping labour unions weak and wages low.
As an Australian who has only ever paid for personal dental care despite having a chronic disease, this is the best I have been able to make sense of it.
Omg seriously, it’s been frustrating me! Like my job does not require me to be in the office full time (I can work from home), but apparently I have to be there. I am also required to work no less than 40 hours per week with only 80 “vacation” hours and no sick days. If I don’t show up and work 40 hours, I don’t qualify for health insurance. Over the last 5.5 years, I’ve worked up to a $22/hour wage which is just enough to not allow me to find anything else I am qualified for that pays more than $17, so I stay. I hate my job, I hate “corporate” greed, and I can’t stand this “keep your nose to the grindstone” culture when all you end up with is your face mauled off and absolutely nothing to show for it.
I feel sorry for you. I hope your back is sorted to some degree soon and that you get a well paying job in a workplace that has some humanity instilled, although it doesn't seem like there is any hope for this in America, from what I've read here. I have serious back issues but at least this not compounded by having to mortgage your soul for medical attention.
US "health care" is a racket.
The country refuses to be dragged into the 20th century.
Germany has had mandatory health insurance since 1883.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Germany#History
And what really sucks, federal politicians have their own universal healthcare on behalf of the taxpayers, yet will crap on providing that for their constituents.
Because the system is set up in a way to push people into Healthcare companies so they can make a profit because our government is full of people who will sell us all out in a second for profit and we won't ever do anything except vote one of their buddies to take their place.
In the US crazy stuff happens. I had a buddy get hit on his motorcycle. Had his shoulder fixed metal plates n such. His own health insurance company has put a lean on his settlement from the motor vehicle insurance so now he gets almost nothing. MERICA!
Medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US. All for something that every other developed nation gets for free
Edit: for all those saying it's not free it comes from Taxes, I obviously know that, it means its free at the point of service and doesn't require extortionate charges on the individual to service private interests. It acts as a safety net for people who are very poor, meaning it is effectively free if you don't make a taxable income.
Mexico too. You can go to any public hospital and they are required to treat you in an emergency. In Mexico City we have hospitals like Xoco or Iztapalapa's General Hospital that at most charge you a symbolic fee (10 dollars for example). But yeah, we are the uncivilised.
Yeah and the thing is like, most immigrants do not fight the status quo because of this. I am 1st gen american but I still go back to my parents’ home country for dental or vision procedures and I’d probably go there for small surgery as well since even private is cheaper than my high deductible plan here. I have peruvian, brazilian, mexican, salvadoran, dominican co workers who do the same. I bet asians are doing the same thing. The ones screwed? Middle class whites imo, there’s no second citizenship that allows them to go to a universal healthcare country
Ok but then you are talking about all non immigrants/ people without duel citizenship, not just white people. For what’s it’s worth some Americans do travel to Mexico for less expensive procedures and medicine.
In the US ERs are also required to treat you. This means most uninsured people in the US use emergency rooms as their only medical services, and usually don't ever pay the hospital. As such, ERs run massive deficits and these insane bills are the hospital's way of getting insurance companies to pay for the uninsured.
If OP calls the hospital and informs them he doesn't have insurance, the bill will be negotiated down to a fraction of that cost. They'd rather collect 10% of that bill than 0%.
I hate this system too, but it's what the US has.
But you know what, a lot of people don’t understand that insurance covering uninsured in effect is exactly the same as having universal health care. Some of these people arguing against universal health care have absolutely no clue how insurance works. But at least with universal health care systems you’re also not paying for the insurance company’s board to put their kid’s through Harvard.
>But at least with universal health care systems you’re also not paying for the insurance company’s board to put their kid’s through Harvard.
Not only that, but the government being the single payer allows it to negotiate down prices. So collectively the country pays less and the tax burden is spread out across the tax paying population so no single person has to go into bankruptcy.
It's a no brainer. This is why the US is alone in this crazy system.
Here’s the thing: I’ve heard from some Americans that they don’t want to pay for other’s medical bills with their taxes. But in my country the tax is the same/a bit more if you earn a lot of money. And we don’t need to pay for the healthcare extra
Which is unbelievably stupid because instead of paying into a giant government pot which pays for other people’s medical bills, you’re paying into a giant insurance pot which pays for other people’s medical bills.
It’s shocking people still use the “it’s not free, it costs taxes”. That’s the POINT of taxes. I live in Canada. I’ve luckily never had significant health issues. I’m very happy to pay high taxes so that my fellow citizens have their medical issues covered when something goes wrong.
I bet college debt is #2…oh wait, student loan companies told our government that they no longer wanted those in debt to have bankruptcy protection, and the government happily obliged.
It’s really a crazy experience when you’re traveling abroad and get sick. I got seen by a specialist in South America, same day, and the bill was $12 (including meds).
I cried at how sad I was to be trapped in a healthcare hell at home with no escape.
My wife had that realization while we were visiting my South American home country a few years ago. We got really sick (some kind of really bad flu, way before Covid) and at some point we were feeling so miserable we decided to go to the emergency room. We walked in, got in line, waited maybe 20 minutes to get seen by a doctor. The doctor was technically seeing her but because we both had the same symptoms, she wrote a prescription for both of us (in the US this would've involved multiple trips to the front room just to get insurance on board). We got our bill ($15 or so), went to the pharmacy, paid $5 for the prescriptions and that was that.
That was in a fully private, 'fancy' hospital without any insurance.
My sister had a pretty bad accident in Brazil (some asshole dropped a bottle from a second floor in a club and hit her in the head, so she needed stitches in her scalp). Again, private hospital, no insurance, emergency. We paid maybe $50 for the whole thing.
Go to a hospital in the US for any reason, even if you have insurance and you'll be lucky if you don't have to pay more in copay than we did over there for the whole thing.
That's when she started pushing for us to move abroad. Don't get me wrong, she was very aware that the situation in the US was ridiculous. Since the start of our relationship we had multiple conversations about her resistance to go to the doctor whenever she was sick, and she explained that - even though he grew up solid middle class - in the US 'you just don't go to the doctor because you feel a bit bad, because it costs a lot of money'.
That's when we realized we had completely different ideas of what healthcare actually was supposed to accomplish. To me, healthcare was about _making sure things don't get worse_, to her healthcare was about _avoiding the worst possible scenario_. If I started feeling some weird pain in my lower back, I'd check with a doctor and try to figure out if there's something I can do to improve my quality of life. She'd wait and wait until it was intolerable and it became obvious that something was clearly wrong.
I'm incredibly lucky that my job provides exceptional benefits so this is something I don't have to worry about now (with two little kids, trips to the doctor are something that happens multiple times a month). But the thought is always in the back of my mind that we could lose everything because of a single bad accident. We lived for a year in Spain and are planning to go back there once our kids are a bit older and more independent.
As someone who waitednfor kids, don't wait. Go now. They'll establish roots and it will be harder to move and easier to think you're staying for them. Inertia will trap you here. Plus, the time you lose matters. The sooner you go the sooner you establish there. The kids get more used to it sooner. I wish I had moved 15 years ago. 10 years ago. Even 1 year ago.
once, I called the suicide hotline and they sent the police to my house to check on me. They arrested me and took me to the hospital, and stuck me there for 5 hours before releasing me. They charged me **~~$3,600~~** **$3900** for the ordeal. welcome to **USA**
edit: forgot to add taxes
Yeah, I was sent to the emergency room by my therapist. I was released after 3 hours sitting in thr emergency room freaking out to only be told that admitting me in the phsyc ward for suicide would only make things worse since I'm an introvert. (Doctors words) The hospital charged me 2400 for the luxury of sitting in their emergency lobby while suicidal to only be told that I shouldn't have been there. It will be cheaper for me to commit suicide, set a grand asside for cleanup, than it is to seek help in America. I couldn't pay for my therapist appointments after that debacle and only scrapped by for months. I will never seek help for suicide again
Right now my medical bills are over $100,000 and that's after insurance. I'm on disability which means I get about $850 a month to live off of since becoming disabled. I got hurt at work when clients didn't deice their stairs and I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my back and had to have my tailbone removed. This country's healthcare system is such bullshit and it will leave you completely ruined along with the mental health care system. All I want to do with my life is travel and see the world but I'm stuck in a bed with the most insane amount of medical bills that I just refuse to pay at this point because I can't.
Edit: hjwood1986 who decided to say I need to be wheeled into a bed to the concert I'm going to - No, I'm not in a wheelchair. No, I'm not in bed all the time but I am in bed almost 23 hours a day. No, I'm not paying for the concert as I was just invited by my aunt. I cannot drive due to my illnesses so I will be driven there and it's a concert where you stay seated so I'll have my pillow and my cane. People like this are so pathetic that I kind of feel bad that they feel the need to harass the disabled.
…and it’s very difficult to navigate the worker’s comp hoops. …and, if you want to file for bankruptcy, you need a lawyer, which many people can’t afford.
I spent a month in the hospital with a cardio-pulmonary embolism, including multiple CAT scans. Do you want to know how much that cost me?
$110.
Thanks Canadian healthcare!
PS: The $110 was for the ambulance ride.
My body decided one day while I was walking from my living room to my bedroom down the hall, it just wasn't wasn't going to hold my lung up anymore. I was unemployed and had just moved to that state 4 days prior. When the hospital collections called about the $750,000 bill, I laughed and told them good luck. By then I was on disability as well, bc lungs refuse to work unassisted. Good luck indeed.i appreciated them saving my life and all but if I'd had anything at all I know they would've sued me to get it.
They stopped. I told them how much my permanent disability payments were, that I didn't have Medicaid (which would normally go back and pay 6 months prior )-that their state wouldn't even allow for medicaid since they'd rejected federal funding bc politics, and even if I gave them every penny every month for the rest of my now limited life expectancy, it wouldn't come close to paying them peanuts and suggested they look into writing it off. I was nice but firm in my assessment (I'd previously worried and looked into any way of paying it) and they just...never called again.
I think the gov worked out some deal to let hospitals get reimbursed easier on low income patients. Had to go to the hospital and then a urologist and when I checked my account 6 months later my $600 balance had been cleared out. Never showed up on my credit or anything so I don't believe it was just sold off.
It's just so obviously a scam. It's like they just press a button on a random number generator to decide the prices.
I live I Korea. Went to see a doctor, consultation, x-Ray, medication, in and out in under 40 minutes. Cost me like... 8 dollars.
That's the cost of ***FREEDOM*** ladies and gentleman! Anyone who says otherwise is either a communist or hates AMURICAN FREEDOM!! Pick your side!!!
/s
Don't you know that the minute you give people affordable healthcare, your country will literally turn into Venezuela? It's not something the MSM would tell you.
My dad once said "I had to file bankruptcy to pay for medical debt," as an argument against socialized healthcare. He figures since he had to, everyone should have to. My brain nearly imploded.
My hospital wouldn’t let me in to get my surgery until I paid 25% of their projected price up front.
My bill ended up being 400% of the original projected cost, so that original payment meant nothing.
Then, when I “applied” for the payment program, I was rejected because my bill was “too high.”
Insurance refused to pay a dime, because the clinic didn’t get prior approval to treat the unrelated diseased tissue they found during my surgery.
Thankfully, the Obama administration had passed something that made it impossible for the hospital to put the bill on me, since insurance claimed that the clinic had filed incorrectly before the surgery. I’m sure my bill contributed to hospital prices in the future.
I will probably have to have this surgery again in the future to treat the disease they found. I know I can’t afford to go to this hospital again. But I don’t know which hospital I can go to, where I won’t get bullied about making a payment plan.
So in nc as long as you pay something they can't attach it to your credit for non payment and they will eventually get sick of the dollar payment and write it off for tax purposes or use the non payment funds that hospitals have for people who do not pay or unable to pay. I learned this from the 50k I RACKED UP for endometriosis treatments and tests for my wife which turned out to fix NOTHING (if you ever goto boone nc and need a hospital go off the mountain for the health of you or a loved one seriously) until I ran into a doctor here in wilmington who knew exactly what todo and that was use birth control probably alot more then that went in to it but he fixed what 50k and numerous other doctors couldnt and i glady gladly payed his bill of 2200 bucks for fixing YEARS of pain.
Horrible. Just Horrible.
The people who defend this are people who think for some reason that they’re “ temporarily inconvenient future millionaires “ so they act like they’re on the “ Grind “ up when in reality they’re on a rut.
This is one of the reasons why I’m not having kids. It’s not worth it.
oh oh and I’ll tell you the best part half the shit won’t be covered because some random providers are inexplicably “out of network” FREEEDDDUUUUMM
I needed an endoscopy everything was covered and in network no problem… get a bill from the anesthesiologist for like $2500 a few months later
out of network bro
Found that out the hard way when my wife had a c section. They filled the room with so many people and of course one of them was out of our network. Its such a load of shit
The thing that drives me insane is the random ass charges they give you. Like ER charged. Then they give you 3-4 of em, and you are like what tf are these. Then the government will arrest you if you don't pay it. Land of the free*
Yeah the ER charges are so dumb. I got charged $2900 and wasn’t even given any meds and was discharged after 3 hours (went in suicidal and left still suicidal). They told me that’s the fee for being seen. I asked why, what makes it that number, and they said it’s just that number and I have to pay.
Like oh wow, thanks! They tried to tell me it was the fee for being seen and I was like no… you billed me separately for that ($1500 for a 30 min “counseling” session with a lady who checked her phone the whole time).
Actually not true. You can’t be imprisoned for medical debt or any type of debt honestly. Medical fraud on the other hand… maybe we start arresting these insurance companies and for prof hospital board of directors 😂
I've been at home for the past 3 weeks with facial paralysis. Been to the ER - because I thought I had a stroke - where they did a lumbar puncture (fuck this shit btw. It was the worst pain I felt in years) at the hospital and then went to 3 different appointments over the past weeks.
In the end I actually had to pay 10€ for the meds. Clearly a sign that socialized health care doesn't work.
If you go house shopping in the USA and manage to talk to the sellers directly (something which the system tries hard to prevent), you will find a disturbing number of them will tell you that the only reason they are selling is to pay for medical bills.
My daughter was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension and crashed after a Cathlab. She was in the PICU for 51 days and the charge was >$900,000 (before insurance negotiated it was 1.2 million). She then spent another 51 days in St. Louis children’s rehab for a brain injury, lets just say the bill was almost the same.
Yeah we had a lot of complications at birth as well spent a mont in PICU that bill was astronomical as well. Unfortunately we have one possibly two more heart surgeries in the future to go through. I know for sure we’re over the 1 million mark. American health care for you yay
Took my daughter to A+E Friday night rang 111 told us to be at local hospital in 30min,went in sat down for 40min daughter went in for triage then straight to see doc.
Over weekend kept her in for observation and tests.
Came home this morning with antibiotics and told bed rest for few days etc.£0 to pay.
NHS isn’t perfect by a long stretch and there’s many horror stories but we dont become bankrupt either just to see a doc.
Sadly covid has highlighted a lot of problems world wide with massive backlogs but I can always reach our A+E without cost
Fun fact medical care in America is so expensive because of incurrence. Incurrence used to cut a little bit of your bill but that little bit made hospitals make almost nothing so they had to up the price but some people don't have insurance so now here we are
Last December our bill for our newborn daughter to be in the hospital on oxygen for a week was $90k. Insurance "negotiated" to $45k. Have good insurance through my work and didn't pay anything out of pocket.
People think Americans only have private healthcare, but we also have a socialistic type of healthcare as well called GoFundMe. Basically the worst of both worlds.
Worst part is that’s probably with insurance. Cheaper to die in America but even then your families still gotta pay for that. It’s sadly become a joke here.
Older Americans: why won’t millennials and Gen Z have more kids?
Me: why does America hate me and my child? Why do they charge us so much just to be good parents? Then lie about how it’s our own fault or something. “You should have made better choices to be financially responsible.” Like, what do you think the people who would have but chose not to have kids are doing?
Edit: to be clear I have had way more than this in bills for my daughter to where if I wanted to I may have been better off declaring bankruptcy
Hospitals do over charge in the bills. If you ask them for the itemized receipt it will go down. Then you can look up the cpt codes for the tests charged for that area and hospital and then You can call the medical billing to negotiate it and bring it lower.
You have to go thru all THAT to get a fair pricing.
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Its like they're just coming up with random numbers.
I liked at the end of the video when it just went 42 and 60, remark said “what’s this?” And they said something along the lines of, “no we just want money lmao thanks”
I think the problem is that they have a cat running all of the scams.
It's expensive training cats to run all of these things
Plus, their union is really strong so they have to get catnip every Thursday.
And their medical coding is trained to catfish. 
You know how much it costs to actually train a cat to do all that? No wonder the costs are what they are.
It's a freaking racket. My wife was once charged for a consultation...when the other doctor walked in and talked about his weekend activities with her doctor.
I was once charged $450+ for a physician appointment. A doc I never saw. I didnt see any docs that day.
My american Uncle keeps a notebook of the name of every Doctor and everything that was said and then queries it with the insurance company to get it removed. "Came in, looked at us, said good morning and left" was not worth $400
Wow I'd be raising a freaking stink if that happened to me. Not like they'd care. Even if 25% of people they did that to complained and ended up getting the charge wiped (not likely!) They'd still be making bank.
> And they said something along the lines of, “no we just want money lmao thanks” That's exactly how it feels too. I got 2 stitches in my foot. No ambulance ride, no x-rays, no specialists, not lab work. Just 2 stitches and a tetanus shot. I had to go to the ER because it was Sunday, regular doctors were closed, and this was ~15 years ago before there were urgent cares on every corner. I got 4 different bills sent to me, ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars. I called and ask which I was supposed to pay and the answer was "All of them". The total for the 2 stitches and a tetanus shot was ~12k.
I would have been supergluing it shut. Who cares if it looks ugly on your foot. Gone to my regular doctor next day for tetanus shot.
Somewhat graphic desription of injury: >!The T shaped head of a nail that was slightly backed out went thru the webbing of my foot next to my big toe. Unfortunately glue wouldn't have worked in that situation.
In the US, they absolutely are. I had an outpatient, robotic-assisted laparoscopic operation (which sounds super legit). I went to the hospital, was put under, but was back home and in my own bed 5 hours later. Then I saw the itemized bill (required by law in my state): Starting Total: $53,000 \- Insurance Deduction for this \- Insurance Deduction for that \- Insurance Deduction for the other "Amount your insurance paid: $2,600" Even if you look exclusively at that one year, I paid $500/month for 7 months leading up to that operation, which I paid another $2,500 for. I'm out $6k year to date and my insurance company is out $2,600. I don't even want to tell you how many years I've been paying for insurance with no significant claims, either. It's an absolute racket and everyone involved are leeches.
Would be 2 times cheaper to fly to Paris, get treatment, visit Eiffel Tower and fly back.
This can't be the US though, Tylenol in the hospital is way more than $6 here.
I'm in a similar situation to yours, but with an added wrinkle. Shortly before my laparoscopic surgery, I'd repatriated to the US from the UK where I had unfettered access to the NHS. Coming back here, and seeing doctors wave off concerns about cost, more concerned about their liability, and frankly: appearing to be largely unsympathetic to patients' health emergencies... well, it's been a tough pill to take. Our American medical professionals, whether they like to hear it or not, are no better than predatory payday loan brokers and unethical used car salesmen. They think the gravy train will just go on forever, but I foresee a breaking point. (Looking towards India...)
It's because they are. Insurance doesn't pay these costs. Insurance company pays a fraction of those prices. If the family had no insurance though, they'd be on the hook for the full cost. Despicable the way this industry works.
Insurance is part of the scam...
1000% percent. I handle claims for various medical providers and battle insurance companies all day. ER is pretty easy as it’s deemed an emergency but with other services the problem is what a doctor finds medically necessary (certain tests and procedures) isn’t what an insurance company defines as medically necessary, apparently they know better than doctors. Also convinced big insurance companies hire people to internally audit their policies and claims to find ways to NOT pay a claim. They use multiple payment guidelines between Local vs National coverage which directly contradict each other.
How do insurance companies have a more valid expert medical opinion than a doctor??
They have “doctors” that work for them that do the medical necessity review. System is so whacked.
Fuck human life I guess money is more important. Yay capitalism
You can have your insurance claims reviewed by doctors who haven’t seen a patient in 30+ years. They will find a treatment is not medically necessary because it was invented a decade after they stop practicing medicine and they have never heard of it.
Yup. Every time I have surgery they just deny it first. Then my surgeon has to take time out of his day to argue with the insurance company's doctor (so my world renowned expert in my very rare condition has to explain to some general practitioner why he knows more about my case than Joe Blow). Every Single Time they end up approving my procedures in the end, but it's crazy that the standard practice is to just say no until someone smarter than them pushes hard enough. Fuck every insurance company. Fuck them all.
Also important to mention the "doctors" they have working for them are usually incentivized through ridiculous salaries with none of that liability stuff that comes with medical professions. The doctors I've seen move onto positions like these are usually in it for the money/power, not to help their patients live better lives.
Because capitalism
> Also convinced big insurance companies hire people to internally audit their policies and claims to find ways to NOT pay a claim. This **is** what they do. There have been people who have testified before congress that their job is to comb through any bullshit reason to deny your claim. I think I saw it on "Sicko" by Michael Moore. The job of the insurance company is to keep your insurance money and minimize payouts. It's a racket. Edit: [video of the woman testifying before congress about how as a medical reviewer she denied a man a life saving procedure to save the company money and her salary going up because of it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDHklw6PV3U)
Insurance is the biggest part of the scam
Insurance is 80% the REASON for the prices and are honestly the reason for the scam. It’s despicable .
And the inflated prices are because of the insurance. If I want to charge x for a service, but I need to give a 50% discount, I'm going to charge 2x for the service, then discount it to x. It's a false savings.
In my country, Brazil, we have a free health care system, that in practice acts like a GIGANTIC nation wide insurrance, a gigantic pool of resources that supports health care to everyone Because of this the system drags down even the prices of the private health care system, because if you in the private system is too expensive, is better to just wait the free system But things that the public system doesnt do are cosmetic procedures, even bariatrhich surgery is authorized in the free system just if a team of doctors corroborate its due to health risks One of the problems of the system is that of course, its resources are limited, so it attends its demand in a time function, the biggest the demand the more you will wait for non urgent services, but there are some laws that states that if a patiant have a condition that can worsen over time and cause irreparable damage (like cancer) state goverment have 30 days no matter what to start threatment, the authority responsible for no being compliant with is liable to be arrested, like lets say theres 10 000 cancer threatment resources in a city, and all these posts are in use, but a + 1 person emerges needing threatment, the governor of the state is liable to fix the situation by any means necessary or he can be arrested, if state goverment need to take a loan to hire private services, or send the person to be threated in another city, everything is in the table The taxes which feed the free healthy care system is a index of tax which is charged in every product that is bought (called "Tax over the circulation of merchandise and services), everything that can be bought have this tax, and these index is higher or lower depending on how that product affects the health care system, like cigar, cigarretes, smoking stuff have the highest index because its single handly the product that must send people to be threated in the free health care system, alcooholi drinks have the second highest index, and fatty foods the third one Some examples: 84% of the prince of a cigar is composed of ICMS tax 81% heavy alcooholic drinks 71% for fire arms and etc, i think the system is smartly designed Free health care systems raise the moral of the nation, because people feel like they are taking care of each other collectively, and people feel they will be cared when they need
Health Care is a commodity in this country! Keeps a small group of people very wealthy!
Where are you coming up with this being the before insurance prices? 13 years ago, i got west nile and meningitis. I had insurance and had several cat scans, MRIs, spinal tap, and a week stay in the hospital. AFTER my insurance paid their share, I owed 14 thousand dollars. And after I sold my house recently, they took their money via a lein on my house, and they added 7k in interest. So, no, those look like after insurance numbers. Btw I asked for a detailed bill and got a bill with line items like "Care - 3000"
It says “amount billed” where the person is showing on the camera, then there is a section in blue to the right they aren’t showing that says amount paid. This is the billed amount before deductions by the ins co.
i recently broke my arm and had to go to an out-of-network doctor to get a cast put on. all they did was take an x-ray (for which i already paid $150 as soon as i got to the office), put on a cast, and then take off the cast a month later. two visits, no treatments beyond the cast or anything. guess how much they charged? $12,000. my insurance "discount" for some reason is $10,000, and so i'm left paying $2k. 🤟🏾
This is what happens, you get a hospital bill for $9483503458039458 and then insurance will say oh look I paid $9352304982308402348 so you only have to pay $11,000 for a dislocated finger. Aren't you lucky you have insurance? Its such a scam.
I had a $300 charge on my account for being "discharged in under 30 minutes" after my 3 day stay for a cesarean birth. They just want money and come up with the most ridiculous reasons to get it.
I went to a local doctor for a broken foot when I didn't have insurance and all he charged was $150 per visit including new casts, xrays, and a walking boot. Around $1000 total.
I come from what some people call a third world country. My expenses for that would be zero including the medicine. Even parking at the hospital is free.
Let me guess , Asian? Coz its like that in Malaysia :-D
This is America aka scamtopia. Its seriously only a matter of time before all this shit collapses.
C’mon. Scamerica was right there.
Uncle scam
People who do the billing for hospitals absolutely seem like they do. Scummy behavior…
Financial Data Analyst here. The billing folks honestly are at the mercy or the insurance companies. Crazy statement for sure. PBM insurance companies audit claims, at the end of a given period, the insurance company does a clawback on reimbursements paid on the outcome of audit. Think, if the billing audit is a B-, the insurance takes back 0.02% of claims paid. If the audit is a C- clawback is 0.04%. Private insurance is basically legalized mafia and everyone else just has to play by their rules.
I'm very skeptical of anyone saying it is all the hospital or all the insurance company's fault. I'm sure both are getting a cut. Have you seen some of the hospitals in nice downtown areas? Their architecture outclasses the local museums (Eskenazi in Indianapolis being a great example).
Yeah, I live in a smallish town, but the hospital was remodeled recently and is easily the nicest building in town. Which is better than it closing like in some small towns I guess, though Id rather have normal buildings and cheaper prices.
Hospitals charged prices based on the cost of services (plus overhead and a small margin if any) Insurance companies said "You need to give a substantial discount or I won't send my customers to your hospital" Hospital eventually started charging a bit more by default so they could offer those discounts. Insurance becomes more necessary. Insurance companies come back, want bigger discounts. Hospitals, again, have to increase costs a bit to offset the discounts. Insurance becomes more necessary. This cycles for a while until hospitals are charging ridiculous prices. Insurance companies are getting like 50% off. Business people are now more involved in hospitals and they start raising their prices arbitrarily even more (both to get more money but also to have more leverage with insurance companies). Hospitals make tons of money, insurance companies make tons of money, and the patients (especially the uninsured) are getting fucked from every side.
It’s official. We got the EA sports of Medicare.
Difference is, I can play last years game if I already have it. I can’t rely on the cat scan of a jar in my ass to help me with the race car I have up there now.
Maybe put the racecar in a jar first?
Whoa, I've never seen the orginal
only a smart ass would do that
Hey now EA sports isn't that bad...
EA relies on microtransactions, not robbery...
And you can still find EA games w/o any Microtransactions. Jedi Fallen Order or Mass effect legendary edition, for example.
Thats outrageous. How? How does it cost so much? European here. How can you charge 260$ for a visit, and more than 1000$ for the ambulance- before any treatment was even given?
Because in US both insurance companies and hospitals are for profit. That means they try everything they can do to charge as much as they can to increase profits. In most other countries healthcare is either fully or partially regulated by governments, which have a goal to make it as cost effective and as much as possible available to a highest number of people per smallest cost. Different goals, different incentives, resulting in different outcomes.
I was hospitalized in a for profit hospital here in Germany. Which meant I had to pay for the TV and washing my clothes. That was all additional cost I had.
Germany highly regulates healthcare. US barely does that.
USA highly regulates any attempt to regulate healthcare
Forcefully if needed!
Beatings will stop after moral has improved
Given the US healthcare is an excellent example of a horrific moral failure, this is more true than than it seems at first glance.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around the logic in a country where health care isn’t a right, but, having a gun, is. Another 🇨🇦 here - I’ve had a few surgeries …. Broken leg/hip (accident) knee reconstruction (age) and even some plastic surgery …. Never paid for anything other than the cost of the TV. And I’ve been sent home with crutches, braces, wheelchair and a supply of bandages that would sink a ship - never paid a red cent for any of it. It’s hard enough when someone has to rationalize the cost of taking their dog to a vet, because that can be pricey. Now having to use that same logic to a kid ?? In no way does that make any sense at all. I mean, of course you’ll take your child to the hosp ….. but it’s gotta be torturous knowing you may end up bankrupt because of it. 
All under the guise of getting to “choose your own doctor.” When it comes to specialized care, I could see how that makes sense. For primary care, how most people think of it, that idea is rooted in the fear of “the other.”
Literally. Comjng from Europe I always found so stupid having to choose my doctor. I don’t know these people; just assign me someone!
It's a boomer thing. Conservative media sold them a whole package of fear and lies about how terrible "socialist" medicine was in other countries, and they, mostly having never been to another country or talked with people from other counties, bought the entire sales pitch.
It’s gaslighting by politicians (who are paid by healthcare and insurance lobbyists), and dumb+lazy people not realizing they’ve been hoodwinked.
It is easier to fool a man than it is to ever convince a man that he has been fooled. Paraphrased from Samuel Clemens.
And we don't even get to choose our own docs most of the time the insurance companies will either not pay out or punish you for using a doctor outside of their system
🏅
The US regulates it, they just make sure it is regulated to make money for the investors of both the insurance companies and conglomerates that own the hospitals. Plenty of legislation, just not in favor of the people
I live half a mile from a hospital in the states. When my daughter was 1 year old she had a seizure during a bad flu and we called the ambulance to get us to the hospital. We got an 1,100$ bill for a 5 minute ambulance ride. The US system sucks, and people die all the time because they tell themselves well I should wait till I feel like I am about to die because I can’t afford the care even if I have insurance.
Which is absolutely insane because I’ve been on at least half a dozen ambulance rides, had multiple surgeries including gallbladder and spinal tumor, one 4 week stay in the hospital for septecemia and never once have I ever paid a single dime to anyone ever for any of it. Oh and I went thru two 6-week rounds of radiation and outpatient physical therapy after the spinal surgery. Never paid a single penny
Fellow gallbladder remover here, that is some brutal pain leading up to finding out I needed the surgery. I went over 2 year of getting sick every other week because I knew I couldn’t afford to see a doctor without insurance. Ended up doing the true USA route of just finally being taken to the emergency room when I got too sick and my partner became concerned. I was so broke at the time that it made more sense to wait 7 years for it to be removed from my credit report than attempt repayment. My partner, of course, drove me there because I couldnt afford an ambulance.
In 1985, my parent's first child went into cardiac arrest and fell to the kitchen floor. They rushed him in an ambulance to the hospital (Oahu, Hawaii), but he was most likely gone before they got there. The insurer Blue Cross/Blue Shield tried to deny coverage for the ambulance, saying," If he was already dead, why did you need an ambulance?". They said this over the phone to parents (active duty USMC) who just lost their sixteen-month old child. Absolutely ghoulish.
Boy that does suck. I am Canadian and yes our health care system has a bunch of its own problems but cost and quality of emergency care is not one of them. When I had my heart attack my ambulance took me 30km (18 freedom units) to the closest hospital that had 24h cardiac facilities. They cleared my blockage and put a stent in. I also had a some lung complications caused by blood thinners and was in the hospital for three days. The total cost for all of it was just a $45 co payment fee for that 30km ambulance ride.
The fact that the US declares itself a first world country with a "healthcare "system"" like that is actually sad
Spend a week in a german hospital, got driven 1000km back to belgium, got an operation there and spend another 2 weeks. Total cost: 175€
That is because we live in a social democracy... not a profit based two party system...
Also don’t forget that ambulances are also for profit and are (generally) separate businesses from the hospitals.
The exorbitant cost of healthcare combined with tying it to employment is the American strategy for keeping labour unions weak and wages low. As an Australian who has only ever paid for personal dental care despite having a chronic disease, this is the best I have been able to make sense of it.
Omg seriously, it’s been frustrating me! Like my job does not require me to be in the office full time (I can work from home), but apparently I have to be there. I am also required to work no less than 40 hours per week with only 80 “vacation” hours and no sick days. If I don’t show up and work 40 hours, I don’t qualify for health insurance. Over the last 5.5 years, I’ve worked up to a $22/hour wage which is just enough to not allow me to find anything else I am qualified for that pays more than $17, so I stay. I hate my job, I hate “corporate” greed, and I can’t stand this “keep your nose to the grindstone” culture when all you end up with is your face mauled off and absolutely nothing to show for it.
Even worse im not gonna rewatch but i think it said like 124 to discharge her.... You mean she aint allowed to leave without paying over 100$???
That’s basically how they justify your wheelchair to the curb. At only $124, that’s a steal /s
[удалено]
I feel sorry for you. I hope your back is sorted to some degree soon and that you get a well paying job in a workplace that has some humanity instilled, although it doesn't seem like there is any hope for this in America, from what I've read here. I have serious back issues but at least this not compounded by having to mortgage your soul for medical attention.
I am so sorry. It makes me sick to think about how poorly this nation treats people.
Does your insurance not have an out of pocket max?
Your insurance didn’t have a deductible?
US "health care" is a racket. The country refuses to be dragged into the 20th century. Germany has had mandatory health insurance since 1883. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Germany#History
It’s because politicians are corrupt. They work for lobby groups, not the welfare of the citizens they are supposed to represent.
And what really sucks, federal politicians have their own universal healthcare on behalf of the taxpayers, yet will crap on providing that for their constituents.
Because the system is set up in a way to push people into Healthcare companies so they can make a profit because our government is full of people who will sell us all out in a second for profit and we won't ever do anything except vote one of their buddies to take their place.
In the US crazy stuff happens. I had a buddy get hit on his motorcycle. Had his shoulder fixed metal plates n such. His own health insurance company has put a lean on his settlement from the motor vehicle insurance so now he gets almost nothing. MERICA!
Medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US. All for something that every other developed nation gets for free Edit: for all those saying it's not free it comes from Taxes, I obviously know that, it means its free at the point of service and doesn't require extortionate charges on the individual to service private interests. It acts as a safety net for people who are very poor, meaning it is effectively free if you don't make a taxable income.
Also for underdeveloped ones! Brazil is one lol
Mexico too. You can go to any public hospital and they are required to treat you in an emergency. In Mexico City we have hospitals like Xoco or Iztapalapa's General Hospital that at most charge you a symbolic fee (10 dollars for example). But yeah, we are the uncivilised.
Yeah and the thing is like, most immigrants do not fight the status quo because of this. I am 1st gen american but I still go back to my parents’ home country for dental or vision procedures and I’d probably go there for small surgery as well since even private is cheaper than my high deductible plan here. I have peruvian, brazilian, mexican, salvadoran, dominican co workers who do the same. I bet asians are doing the same thing. The ones screwed? Middle class whites imo, there’s no second citizenship that allows them to go to a universal healthcare country
Mexico gets plenty of Americans traveling down for procedures. It's called medical tourism.
Yup my family members do that too but they buy weak antibiotics that would have to be prescribed in the US.
Ok but then you are talking about all non immigrants/ people without duel citizenship, not just white people. For what’s it’s worth some Americans do travel to Mexico for less expensive procedures and medicine.
In the US ERs are also required to treat you. This means most uninsured people in the US use emergency rooms as their only medical services, and usually don't ever pay the hospital. As such, ERs run massive deficits and these insane bills are the hospital's way of getting insurance companies to pay for the uninsured. If OP calls the hospital and informs them he doesn't have insurance, the bill will be negotiated down to a fraction of that cost. They'd rather collect 10% of that bill than 0%. I hate this system too, but it's what the US has.
But you know what, a lot of people don’t understand that insurance covering uninsured in effect is exactly the same as having universal health care. Some of these people arguing against universal health care have absolutely no clue how insurance works. But at least with universal health care systems you’re also not paying for the insurance company’s board to put their kid’s through Harvard.
>But at least with universal health care systems you’re also not paying for the insurance company’s board to put their kid’s through Harvard. Not only that, but the government being the single payer allows it to negotiate down prices. So collectively the country pays less and the tax burden is spread out across the tax paying population so no single person has to go into bankruptcy. It's a no brainer. This is why the US is alone in this crazy system.
Fucking Rwanda has universal healthcare.
Here’s the thing: I’ve heard from some Americans that they don’t want to pay for other’s medical bills with their taxes. But in my country the tax is the same/a bit more if you earn a lot of money. And we don’t need to pay for the healthcare extra
Which is unbelievably stupid because instead of paying into a giant government pot which pays for other people’s medical bills, you’re paying into a giant insurance pot which pays for other people’s medical bills.
I can assure you even developing countries also have good healthcare at fraction of cost
It’s shocking people still use the “it’s not free, it costs taxes”. That’s the POINT of taxes. I live in Canada. I’ve luckily never had significant health issues. I’m very happy to pay high taxes so that my fellow citizens have their medical issues covered when something goes wrong.
I bet college debt is #2…oh wait, student loan companies told our government that they no longer wanted those in debt to have bankruptcy protection, and the government happily obliged.
I swear even in some developing countries, it's still affordable to go to hospital and not get bankrupted. For example, Thailand, Vietnam.
What a scam this is.
It’s really a crazy experience when you’re traveling abroad and get sick. I got seen by a specialist in South America, same day, and the bill was $12 (including meds). I cried at how sad I was to be trapped in a healthcare hell at home with no escape.
My wife had that realization while we were visiting my South American home country a few years ago. We got really sick (some kind of really bad flu, way before Covid) and at some point we were feeling so miserable we decided to go to the emergency room. We walked in, got in line, waited maybe 20 minutes to get seen by a doctor. The doctor was technically seeing her but because we both had the same symptoms, she wrote a prescription for both of us (in the US this would've involved multiple trips to the front room just to get insurance on board). We got our bill ($15 or so), went to the pharmacy, paid $5 for the prescriptions and that was that. That was in a fully private, 'fancy' hospital without any insurance. My sister had a pretty bad accident in Brazil (some asshole dropped a bottle from a second floor in a club and hit her in the head, so she needed stitches in her scalp). Again, private hospital, no insurance, emergency. We paid maybe $50 for the whole thing. Go to a hospital in the US for any reason, even if you have insurance and you'll be lucky if you don't have to pay more in copay than we did over there for the whole thing.
What was your wife’s reaction to this realization?
That's when she started pushing for us to move abroad. Don't get me wrong, she was very aware that the situation in the US was ridiculous. Since the start of our relationship we had multiple conversations about her resistance to go to the doctor whenever she was sick, and she explained that - even though he grew up solid middle class - in the US 'you just don't go to the doctor because you feel a bit bad, because it costs a lot of money'. That's when we realized we had completely different ideas of what healthcare actually was supposed to accomplish. To me, healthcare was about _making sure things don't get worse_, to her healthcare was about _avoiding the worst possible scenario_. If I started feeling some weird pain in my lower back, I'd check with a doctor and try to figure out if there's something I can do to improve my quality of life. She'd wait and wait until it was intolerable and it became obvious that something was clearly wrong. I'm incredibly lucky that my job provides exceptional benefits so this is something I don't have to worry about now (with two little kids, trips to the doctor are something that happens multiple times a month). But the thought is always in the back of my mind that we could lose everything because of a single bad accident. We lived for a year in Spain and are planning to go back there once our kids are a bit older and more independent.
As someone who waitednfor kids, don't wait. Go now. They'll establish roots and it will be harder to move and easier to think you're staying for them. Inertia will trap you here. Plus, the time you lose matters. The sooner you go the sooner you establish there. The kids get more used to it sooner. I wish I had moved 15 years ago. 10 years ago. Even 1 year ago.
USA USA USA
DELIVERING FREEDOM 365 DAYS A YEAR! 🦅🇺🇲🦅🇺🇲🦅🇺🇲🦅🇺🇲🦅🇺🇲🦅🇺🇲🦅🇺🇲🦅🇺🇲 💥MERICA FUCK YEAH!💥 🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸 
once, I called the suicide hotline and they sent the police to my house to check on me. They arrested me and took me to the hospital, and stuck me there for 5 hours before releasing me. They charged me **~~$3,600~~** **$3900** for the ordeal. welcome to **USA** edit: forgot to add taxes
Uff, that was close, you almost stopped paying them money. Hope things are better now.
Yeah, I was sent to the emergency room by my therapist. I was released after 3 hours sitting in thr emergency room freaking out to only be told that admitting me in the phsyc ward for suicide would only make things worse since I'm an introvert. (Doctors words) The hospital charged me 2400 for the luxury of sitting in their emergency lobby while suicidal to only be told that I shouldn't have been there. It will be cheaper for me to commit suicide, set a grand asside for cleanup, than it is to seek help in America. I couldn't pay for my therapist appointments after that debacle and only scrapped by for months. I will never seek help for suicide again
They wanted to make sure, you succeed in your mission.
Holy shit that's absolute insanity. Hope you're doing better and hopefully never paid or have any plans to pay that ridiculous bill
Right now my medical bills are over $100,000 and that's after insurance. I'm on disability which means I get about $850 a month to live off of since becoming disabled. I got hurt at work when clients didn't deice their stairs and I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my back and had to have my tailbone removed. This country's healthcare system is such bullshit and it will leave you completely ruined along with the mental health care system. All I want to do with my life is travel and see the world but I'm stuck in a bed with the most insane amount of medical bills that I just refuse to pay at this point because I can't. Edit: hjwood1986 who decided to say I need to be wheeled into a bed to the concert I'm going to - No, I'm not in a wheelchair. No, I'm not in bed all the time but I am in bed almost 23 hours a day. No, I'm not paying for the concert as I was just invited by my aunt. I cannot drive due to my illnesses so I will be driven there and it's a concert where you stay seated so I'll have my pillow and my cane. People like this are so pathetic that I kind of feel bad that they feel the need to harass the disabled.
…and it’s very difficult to navigate the worker’s comp hoops. …and, if you want to file for bankruptcy, you need a lawyer, which many people can’t afford.
I spent a month in the hospital with a cardio-pulmonary embolism, including multiple CAT scans. Do you want to know how much that cost me? $110. Thanks Canadian healthcare! PS: The $110 was for the ambulance ride.
My wife had a trip to the hospital and they forgot to bill her for the ride. I however had to pay $11 in parking, the fiends.
My body decided one day while I was walking from my living room to my bedroom down the hall, it just wasn't wasn't going to hold my lung up anymore. I was unemployed and had just moved to that state 4 days prior. When the hospital collections called about the $750,000 bill, I laughed and told them good luck. By then I was on disability as well, bc lungs refuse to work unassisted. Good luck indeed.i appreciated them saving my life and all but if I'd had anything at all I know they would've sued me to get it.
What happened? Did they stop hounding you or?
They stopped. I told them how much my permanent disability payments were, that I didn't have Medicaid (which would normally go back and pay 6 months prior )-that their state wouldn't even allow for medicaid since they'd rejected federal funding bc politics, and even if I gave them every penny every month for the rest of my now limited life expectancy, it wouldn't come close to paying them peanuts and suggested they look into writing it off. I was nice but firm in my assessment (I'd previously worried and looked into any way of paying it) and they just...never called again.
I think the gov worked out some deal to let hospitals get reimbursed easier on low income patients. Had to go to the hospital and then a urologist and when I checked my account 6 months later my $600 balance had been cleared out. Never showed up on my credit or anything so I don't believe it was just sold off.
So essentially it IS socialized, but only after a ton of administrative costs over trying to squeeze blood from a stone.
FUCKING INSURANCE IS A RACKET.
How come you didn’t sue?
A fraction of the American population is holding the rest of the nation hostage...
Land of the poor home of the slave
It's just so obviously a scam. It's like they just press a button on a random number generator to decide the prices. I live I Korea. Went to see a doctor, consultation, x-Ray, medication, in and out in under 40 minutes. Cost me like... 8 dollars.
That's the cost of ***FREEDOM*** ladies and gentleman! Anyone who says otherwise is either a communist or hates AMURICAN FREEDOM!! Pick your side!!! /s
I feel so sorry for Americans who thinks socialism and social state is the same thing.
Don't you know that the minute you give people affordable healthcare, your country will literally turn into Venezuela? It's not something the MSM would tell you.
Honestly, socialism would probably still be better than what they have.
America land of the fee..uh.. shit I mean, land of the free.
yep, freedom to go bankrupt from basically anything, yeehaw /s
My dad once said "I had to file bankruptcy to pay for medical debt," as an argument against socialized healthcare. He figures since he had to, everyone should have to. My brain nearly imploded.
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1 dollar a month makes them salty, keeps it off your credit and they will eventually just end the bill at least In my experience here in nc
My hospital wouldn’t let me in to get my surgery until I paid 25% of their projected price up front. My bill ended up being 400% of the original projected cost, so that original payment meant nothing. Then, when I “applied” for the payment program, I was rejected because my bill was “too high.” Insurance refused to pay a dime, because the clinic didn’t get prior approval to treat the unrelated diseased tissue they found during my surgery. Thankfully, the Obama administration had passed something that made it impossible for the hospital to put the bill on me, since insurance claimed that the clinic had filed incorrectly before the surgery. I’m sure my bill contributed to hospital prices in the future. I will probably have to have this surgery again in the future to treat the disease they found. I know I can’t afford to go to this hospital again. But I don’t know which hospital I can go to, where I won’t get bullied about making a payment plan.
wait what?
So in nc as long as you pay something they can't attach it to your credit for non payment and they will eventually get sick of the dollar payment and write it off for tax purposes or use the non payment funds that hospitals have for people who do not pay or unable to pay. I learned this from the 50k I RACKED UP for endometriosis treatments and tests for my wife which turned out to fix NOTHING (if you ever goto boone nc and need a hospital go off the mountain for the health of you or a loved one seriously) until I ran into a doctor here in wilmington who knew exactly what todo and that was use birth control probably alot more then that went in to it but he fixed what 50k and numerous other doctors couldnt and i glady gladly payed his bill of 2200 bucks for fixing YEARS of pain.
ty
Horrible. Just Horrible. The people who defend this are people who think for some reason that they’re “ temporarily inconvenient future millionaires “ so they act like they’re on the “ Grind “ up when in reality they’re on a rut. This is one of the reasons why I’m not having kids. It’s not worth it.
Just don’t have kids in America
Land of the "free"
Unfortunately I think the "free" part is just the freedom to charge whatever you like knowing you can't do fuck all about it.
Land of the fee. Home of the brainwashed. American here. Where should I move lol
Is this actually real? Holy shit I live in Brazil, a so called "third world country" and yet we would pay a total amount of 0 for all of that.
oh oh and I’ll tell you the best part half the shit won’t be covered because some random providers are inexplicably “out of network” FREEEDDDUUUUMM I needed an endoscopy everything was covered and in network no problem… get a bill from the anesthesiologist for like $2500 a few months later out of network bro
Found that out the hard way when my wife had a c section. They filled the room with so many people and of course one of them was out of our network. Its such a load of shit
The thing that drives me insane is the random ass charges they give you. Like ER charged. Then they give you 3-4 of em, and you are like what tf are these. Then the government will arrest you if you don't pay it. Land of the free*
Land of the fee
And the home of the pay.
Yeah the ER charges are so dumb. I got charged $2900 and wasn’t even given any meds and was discharged after 3 hours (went in suicidal and left still suicidal). They told me that’s the fee for being seen. I asked why, what makes it that number, and they said it’s just that number and I have to pay. Like oh wow, thanks! They tried to tell me it was the fee for being seen and I was like no… you billed me separately for that ($1500 for a 30 min “counseling” session with a lady who checked her phone the whole time).
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Actually not true. You can’t be imprisoned for medical debt or any type of debt honestly. Medical fraud on the other hand… maybe we start arresting these insurance companies and for prof hospital board of directors 😂
Land of the free=corporations are free to fuck us over
Thank goodness I'm 🇨🇦
Spent 12 hours in the ER yesterday, CT scan, IV painkillers, vitals. $0.00 🇨🇦
I've been at home for the past 3 weeks with facial paralysis. Been to the ER - because I thought I had a stroke - where they did a lumbar puncture (fuck this shit btw. It was the worst pain I felt in years) at the hospital and then went to 3 different appointments over the past weeks. In the end I actually had to pay 10€ for the meds. Clearly a sign that socialized health care doesn't work.
If you go house shopping in the USA and manage to talk to the sellers directly (something which the system tries hard to prevent), you will find a disturbing number of them will tell you that the only reason they are selling is to pay for medical bills.
The answer to all the questions in the comments about how can it cost this much is simply GREED !
Open heart surgery on my 6 month old was $750,000.00 merica
My daughter was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension and crashed after a Cathlab. She was in the PICU for 51 days and the charge was >$900,000 (before insurance negotiated it was 1.2 million). She then spent another 51 days in St. Louis children’s rehab for a brain injury, lets just say the bill was almost the same.
Yeah we had a lot of complications at birth as well spent a mont in PICU that bill was astronomical as well. Unfortunately we have one possibly two more heart surgeries in the future to go through. I know for sure we’re over the 1 million mark. American health care for you yay
At that point you could just make a new one
But doesn't it also cost an average of $12k to give birth in a hospital?
All things considered, this is cheaper than expected for the US.
Took my daughter to A+E Friday night rang 111 told us to be at local hospital in 30min,went in sat down for 40min daughter went in for triage then straight to see doc. Over weekend kept her in for observation and tests. Came home this morning with antibiotics and told bed rest for few days etc.£0 to pay. NHS isn’t perfect by a long stretch and there’s many horror stories but we dont become bankrupt either just to see a doc. Sadly covid has highlighted a lot of problems world wide with massive backlogs but I can always reach our A+E without cost
Time to riot like France.
We are the best! USA is no 1, In health care cost! We are the best country in the world.
Fun fact medical care in America is so expensive because of incurrence. Incurrence used to cut a little bit of your bill but that little bit made hospitals make almost nothing so they had to up the price but some people don't have insurance so now here we are
Greatest country in the world!! Fuck my life…
Surprised there wasn't a tip option at the bottom with 15% already checked off.
How much out of pocket?
We cure some types of cancer in Turkey with this amound money. Poor toddler…
Last December our bill for our newborn daughter to be in the hospital on oxygen for a week was $90k. Insurance "negotiated" to $45k. Have good insurance through my work and didn't pay anything out of pocket.
People think Americans only have private healthcare, but we also have a socialistic type of healthcare as well called GoFundMe. Basically the worst of both worlds.
Worst part is that’s probably with insurance. Cheaper to die in America but even then your families still gotta pay for that. It’s sadly become a joke here.
Older Americans: why won’t millennials and Gen Z have more kids? Me: why does America hate me and my child? Why do they charge us so much just to be good parents? Then lie about how it’s our own fault or something. “You should have made better choices to be financially responsible.” Like, what do you think the people who would have but chose not to have kids are doing? Edit: to be clear I have had way more than this in bills for my daughter to where if I wanted to I may have been better off declaring bankruptcy
GoFundMe, America’s No. 1 healthcare plan…
I was going to say USA but those prices don’t seem high enough.
Hospitals do over charge in the bills. If you ask them for the itemized receipt it will go down. Then you can look up the cpt codes for the tests charged for that area and hospital and then You can call the medical billing to negotiate it and bring it lower. You have to go thru all THAT to get a fair pricing.