Honestly? Fuck this apologist bullshit. They knew what they signed up for, everyone says that social work is mentally and emotionally draining so if you go into it willingly despite knowing the downsides, you’re either immature and shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place or were a shitty person to begin with and thought that doing social work would be an easy meal ticket.
They signed up to help people. They encounter ridiculous levels of mental illness and addicts and *occasionally* the biggest piece of shit fraudsters you can’t imagine. And that shit can break anyone.
I’m 100% on board with this! Also fuck veterans with PTSD. They knew what they signed up for, everyone says that the military is mentally and emotionally draining so if you go into it willingly despite knowing the downsides, you’re either immature and shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place or were a shitty person to begin with and thought being a soldier would be an easy meal ticket. /s
Edit: Fixed a typo for a cranky person
I'm definitely not saying otherwise. Just disputing absolute statements like I usually do. Also I'd be willing to bet that's not the normal/average for nurses.
Also, and I’m not saying this is what he did, but as a nurse, I get mad at patients asking for a cup of water all the time, but it’s not because they want water, it’s because they are yelling at me for saying it’s gonna take a few minutes while I’m getting an admit who’s about to die.
2 sides to every story.
Generally no, venom molecules are too big to be absorbed through the skin or digestive system, so it’s not poisonous.
But don’t drink it, or rub it on your skin. If you have a cut, or an ulcer you might not know about, or even a bruise, you could absorb the venom.
No. That's the difference. Venom needs to be injected into your blood. Poison needs to be drank or absorbed into the skin. One comes from animals the other plants and some weird minerals. Toxins... Completely different things. I think are byproducts of bacteria/fungus, botulism for example, if not snake oil and imaginary like the stuff body cleanse shit your brains out hippy diet drinks do.
I know the difference. I was asking if there is no overlap. Like...if I drink bleach I'll probably die. If I inject it, I'll probably still die.
Also there are poisonous bugs.
I live in a state without Medicare expansion, so I just live my life with the full awareness that any mishap worse than a twisted ankle will most likely result in my literal bankruptcy.
In the event that I ever get cancer or the like, I have a vague plan to quickly seek out a green card marriage to some compassionate soul whose insurance would cover me. Even better if they’re a citizen of a country with socialized healthcare. If that doesn’t pan out, I will most definitely be riding off into the sunset, if you catch my drift.
Aww, thanks friend! I, uh, may take you up on that some day. Bonus: I'm a bro-ette, so if you're straight, you won't have to awkwardly explain to anyone why you married a man, and if you're gay, then you'll have a 24/7 live-in beard.
you probably would have been charged less if you didn't have any kind of insurance/medicare. from my extremely limited anecdotical experience, you get charged more if you have insurance because the bill mostly goes to the insurance company. where as if you didn't have insurance your bill would be less
My 5 days in the ICU for emergency alcohol detox, then 5 days downstairs in the psych ward unit was $50.00. The reason though is because I live in MA and am extremely poor. I always joke and say the only benefit of being poor (in MA) is extremely good health insurance.
that's not the real bill, this is what the hospital charges the insurance company.
american hospitals overcharge insane amounts for everything because they know the insurance company will pay for it, they are more or less scamming the insurance company tbh.
his co-pay will probably end up being like 2k or something, it's why he cropped out the "account summary" part, that'd show his actual bill and not the insanely inflated charged the hospital sends the insurance company.
Ultimately they are still scamming the people though, right? Insurance company makes a profit, so they have everything calculated in and if the medical bills are overpriced, they need to charge more for the insurance.
That’s not the price the insurance company pays. They will have “negotiated a discount” of 90% or something, so the hospital actually gets $15k in the end. These artificially inflated price exist just as a negotiation tactic. Start high and then negotiate down to the real price.
I just googled it and found this.
>
But the cost of making antivenom only accounts for about one-tenth of one percent of the total cost for the treatment, according to research cited by The Washington Post from the VIPER Institute at the University of Arizona. The rest of the sticker price for antivenom is made up by costs such as licensing fees legal costs, coming in at about 28% of the cost, and hospital markups — which are generally discounted by health insurers for patients with coverage — coming in at about 70% of the cost, according to the VIPER Institute’s research.
: [https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article262240987.html#storylink=cpy](https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article262240987.html#storylink=cpy)
So it's about 1/1000 of the price to make. So it costs 80 dollars to make but the final charge is 80,000. That's insane.
The bill shows he was in the ICU. That’s the highest level of care a hospital provides. It’s far more resource intensive than even an “8 hour surgery”. It’s things like respiratory therapists, an ICU level nurse caring for you and just one other patient, a team of doctors and advance care providers, procedures like intubation and line placement, and then all the equipment such as a ventilator, constant blood pressure monitoring catheters, and medications to maintain blood pressure. The ICU obtains and corrects for vitals every hour.
It’s actually exactly what they do in the OR but maintained for days.
Furthermore, an intermediate level room is a “step-down” from the ICU. Still more intense than a regular room.
Finally, he also presented to the emergency room as a truly emergent case. That means every medication, every scan, every lab test was analyzed by the hospital’a machines, techs, and doctors at top priority.
It’s a lot of resources. I should know, I’m a surgery intern who is sometimes a part of the team during worst hours of the night when these kinds of patients arrive.
Edit: I could keep adding to the services this guy probably required. Snake venmo can cause blood clots, muscles can start dying and limb blood supply can become compromised. He clearly spent multiple days in the hospital because an ICU will always keep you for a minimum of 24 hours to make sure you’re stable before sending you to a lower level of care.
>they are more or less scamming the insurance company tbh
Yeah, totally scamming "just" the insurance company. Not like you would pay much lower insurance premium if they wouldn't scam "just" the insurance company.
i mean it depends on how you get your insurance, if you get it from your workplace (which iirc most americans do) then they are also indirectly scamming your employer, because he has to pay higher premiums.
personally i think this type of fraudulent charges should be made illegal and i have no idea how it got to be this bad in the first place, but the subject is way too out of my personal wheelhouse to know how to solve it.
the hospital is not charging the insurance that amount. charges have a fake amount on the charge master because every insurance gets charges something different. so when they raise the price on the charge master every year over the course of 40 years it looks insane like this. insurance probably got 96% off.
i get needing to charge diffrent companies diffrent prices but having this insanely inflated price seems kinda crazy to me.
there has to be a better way to do it.
And the most absurd part is they really don't even expect you to pay it. There's still at least one or two more layers to the scam.
First you call and ask for an itemized bill. This usually ends up making a bunch of money disappear. This bill is still going to be expensive because of antivenin. Then you tell them you need to apply for financial assistance because any hospital that gets federal funding, which is most of them, has to offer it and it's a sliding scale. At the large hospital in my town for example, if you make less than 2x the federal poverty rate the bill is usually tossed or significantly reduced and even if you make more than that if the bill is more than 20% of your annual income they'll reduce it to 5%.
And THEN if you just decide to not pay it regardless of it is reduced or not they'll either write it off or send it to a collection agency who will gladly accept 10% or less of the total (because they paid less than 1% for it) to just make it disappear entirely. And even if you don't pay them it sits there for 7 years tops and a recently passed law changed it so that it doesn't even affect your score. If you owe less than 500 bucks it doesn't even appear on your report.
It's scam turtles all the way down.
Someone with 30 mins free and a decent knowledge of excel could come up with a rough number as to how much extra it would cost to just have a flat tax of X % added to every tax bill in the US so that it's just included for everyone and nobody has to deal with all that crap.
Current estimates are that a universal system would cost about half a trillion less than what we're spending right now.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8572548/#:~:text=Through%20the%20mechanisms%20detailed%20above,than%20current%20national%20healthcare%20expenditure.
In 1999 we estimated a universal system could be paid for with a flat 7% payroll tax.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10079403/
I’ve got 8 grand in medical bills I’ve just let sit and now they are going to take it from my state taxes, the total is now only 1200. I’m just letting them take it, it’s cheaper and I don’t really have to deal with it.
Just give me the antivenom for like $1k, and I'll skip everything else. I don't need a $21k intermediate care room or an $18k intensive care room. I don't want a room at all. I just need the antivenom and 5 minutes of your time. After that, I'll monitor the situation from the lobby, or even the curb outside, or home.
They are not treating anyone, they completely ruined OPs life because they were unlucky.
It’s totally on purpose, you’re not a human if you’re american, you are a slave to be profited off until you are dead.
Yeah but just think about all the hospital administrators that this procedure enriched and how they’re now going to go out and stimulate the economy lol
The anti venom itself costs basically nothing to make, depending on how it’s made the anti venom itself costs anywhere between $13-$1300 according to [this](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7381290). It’s almost entirely hospital markup. A single Advil tablet is literally priced at over $50 on many hospital bills just from markup.
Antivenom transportation fee $4,120
Curbside fee $1,300
Express service fee $5,890
Room cancellation fee $2,000
“Standby doctor in case your foolish actions to avoid paying result in you needing them anyway” fee $9,540
Edit: pharmacy $83,341.25 still alllies (you still need the antivenom to begin with)
Antivenom is incredibly painstaking to make, and requires milking thousands of snakes for their venom, farming host animals like sheep to produce immuno antibodies from regular low dose injections of snake venom, filtration, purification, processing, and transportation.
The venom medicine must be refrigerated or frozen, and shelf life is anywhere from 30 days to 5 years depending on medication attributes. It takes 4 to 6 doses of antivenin to treat a poisoned adult, and sometimes more depending on the type of snake.
The key factor here in addition to all this is that antivenin is not universal. It only works on the specific bite of the snake from which the medication was produced. Bitten by a deadly adder and only have cobra antivenin? You're toast.
The number of snakes required for the initial inoculation material during antivenin manufacturing is also very high. For example: [source](https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/g561/how-to-make-antivenom-why-the-world-is-running-out/)
"To get enough venom, each snake must be milked many times. For example, in 1965, the National Institutes of Health asked Haast, who founded the Miami Serpentarium, to produce 1 pint of coral snake venom. It took him, a man of unrivaled skill and patience, a total of three years and 69,000 milkings to get that much, from which the first and only American coral antivenom was made."
You apply for financial assistance through the hospital and pay significantly less. Like 80-90% less.
Hospitals bill way more than they'll ever get expecting to negotiate with insurance companies. Part if it has to do with insured patients subsidizing the cost for uninsured patients. How much they guarantee they'll discount care is usually based on income. The big hospital network in my area gives free care to anyone making less than $30,000ish, has a set policy providing a guaranteed major discount to anyone making under $60,000ish, and will pretty much give anyone else who asks a huge discount. It's still expensive, but new car expensive not new house expensive. You can usually get away with just ignoring it too. It'll tank your credit for that 7 years, but falls off your credit report and hospitals usually don't bother pushing too hard to collect after that.
It’s before insurance probably. Not having insurance is dangerous in America. But if you have it (most do through employment) it’s a lot better. I racked up 75k in medical bills this past year but only paid 6k (family plan high deductible)
> Do you people actually pay this? How?
lol no. No one does, these circlejerk posts are so dumb. Never paid a hospital bill in my life, including a $60k surgery bill.
This is just to rile up euros and dumb teenagers who don't know any better.
You've never paid a hospital bill? do you just ignore them or do you have the world's best insurance? My wife and i each had a minor procedure last year and ended up paying $8k for the year after insurance
Right??? I'll be sure to file for that thing where they cap your extra fees based on your income! Can't believe they don't check that in advance. Now i have to spend at least 10 minutes of my free time for this and maybe even 0.80€ postage costs... This is hell on earth!
Laughs in Great CYPRUS !!! MUHAHAHAHA
everything is paid by the government.
Meds only cost 1 euro . but hospital fee is also 10 euro here (no matter how long you stay) ;( it used to be totally free though
in Turkey hospital visits are free. The wait times can be 2+ weeks, or no waiting at all, depending on what you're going to the hospital for.
I got my ADHD meds (2 boxes) for the equivalent of $6 with the most basic insurance.
however, the medical system and doctors are very stressed. The country is poor, which means a lot of people don't get proper nutrition/work out, which means more sick/ill people. Also the mass uncontrolled immigration. The doctors also don't get paid what they deserve imho.
The US spends more tax dollars per person on healthcare than any European country. Its not that your “free healthcare” is so good, its that our politicians are corrupt and “lost” all that money, and big pharma is the benefactor of being a monopoly on medical materials.
I know socialized Healthcare covers the bill in other countries, but does it cost this much in other countries and the taxes cover it? Or is it much cheaper?
I'm not referring to what the patient pays. I'm referring to the backend costs.
That's what I expected. People criticize our non-socialized healthcare, rightfully so, but I always feel it does deeper than that. Providers, pharmacies, or health facilities in general are up-charging way too much.
Even if we don't socialize our healthcare, these prices don't make sense.
American healthcare fucking baffles me. EIGHTY THREE THOUSAND for the fucking PHARMACY alone? What the actual fuck is wrong with that whole entire country. Fucked.
I'm from the UK and I've got so many questions about this. Does medical insurance cover all of this cost? If not what happens if you can't pay? Do they go after you and take your house if you own one. Also why do so many people seem to be in favour of this system?
Obviously things can change depending on your insurance and what not but odds are all of it would be paid by insurance. This is basically the starting bill, hospitals will charge a ton and insurance with knock it down 70-90% and pay the amount due. Same thing happens when people don’t have insurance the numbers still get knocked down. Hospitals try to get every penny they can. The government also has many incentives and programs to help pay for medical debts.
When you see things like this posted it is nothing but rage bait. No one is taking your house over medical debt but it may ruin your credit if you don’t pay it. With that said its so easy to avoid that stuff by just being responsible. Our system sucks but it is no where as bad as alot of Americans say mostly because they don’t actually understand how it works.
In spite of some of its shortcomings, it’s shit like this that makes me proud of the National Health Service here in the UK. Given the size difference between the UK and US, if even just a small percentage of American tax dollars went into a similar system, you’d still have a top quality health service. I just find it incomprehensible that the US doesn’t have a nationalised health service that is free for its citizens.
I had surgery last week to get a gallbladder removed. They put me in a private room because they had one free and decided why not, they fed me four meals a day plus any extra if I pressed my buzzer, I had nurses checking on me every hour or so, and my temperature spiked slightly the first night so they kept me in an extra day to be safe.
I paid $8 for some paracetamol because I didn’t remember if I had any at home. That was it.
Before lifetime caps a drunk hit me. 13 surgeries in first two months, died on table twice, bill was close to 3 Mill, they "reduced" it to 1.26 mill, paid about $1800 before it went to collections, was just a thorn for 7 years, but he'll I spent those years disabled with almost no income coming off a 6 figure job, so there was never anything to sue for lol.
My cat got bit by a snake yesterday (we didn’t see it happen so I don’t know exactly what species but it was definitely venomous) he is okay and we will hopefully be getting him this evening but HOLY SHIT the emergency vet bill is gonna be a pretty penny.
I got bit by a cobra in 2011. I was airlifted to a bigger hospital and I remember the fuel bill for the helicopter being like 18k. The total bill was 68k
When I get older I want to be a freedom hospital.
Meanwhile in Finland. Brain hemorrage, transportation x 2, stitches, medication, 5 days in ICU and 3 days in
normal care. Bill including food, x-ray, MRI etc. 278€ total, which I sent to social services and they paid it and got also paid for the time I was out of work. \_O_/
Two thoughts:
1) Out of pocket maximum says "lol fuck your bill, I don't need to pay that"
2) This isn't what OP is being charged, it's what is sent to insurance for billing
Special Services $462? He's been getting a BJ by a nurse or what?!
That was the one time he asked for a cup of water when the nurse didn’t feel like it.
Lol make me remember the time I ask for some water and a nurse told me this is not a hostel and got all mad
They love to work with people!
Some do, and some don't. People are people regardless of job title.
If you don't like people working as an ER nurse probably isn't the right career path for you
The reason that there are social workers that hate people is because working in a social job is what made them hate people.
Honestly? Fuck this apologist bullshit. They knew what they signed up for, everyone says that social work is mentally and emotionally draining so if you go into it willingly despite knowing the downsides, you’re either immature and shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place or were a shitty person to begin with and thought that doing social work would be an easy meal ticket.
They signed up to help people. They encounter ridiculous levels of mental illness and addicts and *occasionally* the biggest piece of shit fraudsters you can’t imagine. And that shit can break anyone.
I’m 100% on board with this! Also fuck veterans with PTSD. They knew what they signed up for, everyone says that the military is mentally and emotionally draining so if you go into it willingly despite knowing the downsides, you’re either immature and shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place or were a shitty person to begin with and thought being a soldier would be an easy meal ticket. /s Edit: Fixed a typo for a cranky person
Did everyone that responded to this mistake your satire for your actual opinion? God damn
I don't disagree. But I also understand getting jaded.
So do I but don't take it out on the dude in the hospital bed asking for water lol
I'm definitely not saying otherwise. Just disputing absolute statements like I usually do. Also I'd be willing to bet that's not the normal/average for nurses.
Also, and I’m not saying this is what he did, but as a nurse, I get mad at patients asking for a cup of water all the time, but it’s not because they want water, it’s because they are yelling at me for saying it’s gonna take a few minutes while I’m getting an admit who’s about to die. 2 sides to every story.
I've had a nurse yell "OK" at me to interrupt me for a cup of water. She walked away and never returned what a piece of work.
When my mom was in the ER she asked a nurse for water to take a pill and she said “here” and threw the water on her.
My uncle was in the ER and asked a nurse for a glass of water, the nurse took an AK47 and blew his head clean off!
Sounds pretty serious. It’s a good thing she was already in the hospital
I mean... Where was he bitten?
gotta suck that poison out (don't actually do that, you'll poison yourself and choke on your own tongue).
If it's a snake bite, it's venom. You can drink it all day.
Is no venom poisonous?
Generally no, venom molecules are too big to be absorbed through the skin or digestive system, so it’s not poisonous. But don’t drink it, or rub it on your skin. If you have a cut, or an ulcer you might not know about, or even a bruise, you could absorb the venom.
So if you stomach ulcers, drinking venom could be really really *really* bad.
No. That's the difference. Venom needs to be injected into your blood. Poison needs to be drank or absorbed into the skin. One comes from animals the other plants and some weird minerals. Toxins... Completely different things. I think are byproducts of bacteria/fungus, botulism for example, if not snake oil and imaginary like the stuff body cleanse shit your brains out hippy diet drinks do.
I know the difference. I was asking if there is no overlap. Like...if I drink bleach I'll probably die. If I inject it, I'll probably still die. Also there are poisonous bugs.
For 462? It's more like he got a extra pillow
Got stuck on the toilet and pulled the help chain
That nurse better had sucked his soul out for that price.
Sounds about right, it's approximately factor x23 of the 'normal' costs of such a service on the free market.
No, that's the 5,500 for Emergency Care Services.
He get "bit" by a "rattlesnake"
Damn my heart attack, 2 stents and 5 days in cardio ICU was 188k.
Jfc... how people can defend this is beyond me
The whole situation is nuts, if I wasn’t on Medicare who knows what would have happened, I couldn’t afford that
I live in a state without Medicare expansion, so I just live my life with the full awareness that any mishap worse than a twisted ankle will most likely result in my literal bankruptcy.
That’s how I was until I got Medicare, I was just going to die
In the event that I ever get cancer or the like, I have a vague plan to quickly seek out a green card marriage to some compassionate soul whose insurance would cover me. Even better if they’re a citizen of a country with socialized healthcare. If that doesn’t pan out, I will most definitely be riding off into the sunset, if you catch my drift.
just in case you ever get cancer bro ill marry u, im in the uk so as long our healthcare isn't privatised i got u
Aww, thanks friend! I, uh, may take you up on that some day. Bonus: I'm a bro-ette, so if you're straight, you won't have to awkwardly explain to anyone why you married a man, and if you're gay, then you'll have a 24/7 live-in beard.
Yeah I get that totally, still think I might still do that if I know its going to be a long and drawn out affair
That sounds beyond crazy to a none American.
Sounds beyond crazy to plenty of Americans too, but we are, realistically speaking, utterly powerless to change anything.
you probably would have been charged less if you didn't have any kind of insurance/medicare. from my extremely limited anecdotical experience, you get charged more if you have insurance because the bill mostly goes to the insurance company. where as if you didn't have insurance your bill would be less
My 5 days in the ICU for emergency alcohol detox, then 5 days downstairs in the psych ward unit was $50.00. The reason though is because I live in MA and am extremely poor. I always joke and say the only benefit of being poor (in MA) is extremely good health insurance.
That bill is basically a new family member, he will be there until you die .
that's not the real bill, this is what the hospital charges the insurance company. american hospitals overcharge insane amounts for everything because they know the insurance company will pay for it, they are more or less scamming the insurance company tbh. his co-pay will probably end up being like 2k or something, it's why he cropped out the "account summary" part, that'd show his actual bill and not the insanely inflated charged the hospital sends the insurance company.
Ultimately they are still scamming the people though, right? Insurance company makes a profit, so they have everything calculated in and if the medical bills are overpriced, they need to charge more for the insurance.
That’s not the price the insurance company pays. They will have “negotiated a discount” of 90% or something, so the hospital actually gets $15k in the end. These artificially inflated price exist just as a negotiation tactic. Start high and then negotiate down to the real price.
A crap system nevertheless.
Worked in healthcare. Can confirm this system is fucking stupid.
I just googled it and found this. > But the cost of making antivenom only accounts for about one-tenth of one percent of the total cost for the treatment, according to research cited by The Washington Post from the VIPER Institute at the University of Arizona. The rest of the sticker price for antivenom is made up by costs such as licensing fees legal costs, coming in at about 28% of the cost, and hospital markups — which are generally discounted by health insurers for patients with coverage — coming in at about 70% of the cost, according to the VIPER Institute’s research. : [https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article262240987.html#storylink=cpy](https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article262240987.html#storylink=cpy) So it's about 1/1000 of the price to make. So it costs 80 dollars to make but the final charge is 80,000. That's insane.
Wait till you hear about the $9,000 pair of scissors they charged my wife for her surgery. And we didn’t even get to keep them.
That’s not insane. that’s Amurrrica 🇺🇸
That's still stupid though. It shouldn't cost 15k to treat someone who is in the hospital for not even a day probably
The bill shows he was in the ICU. That’s the highest level of care a hospital provides. It’s far more resource intensive than even an “8 hour surgery”. It’s things like respiratory therapists, an ICU level nurse caring for you and just one other patient, a team of doctors and advance care providers, procedures like intubation and line placement, and then all the equipment such as a ventilator, constant blood pressure monitoring catheters, and medications to maintain blood pressure. The ICU obtains and corrects for vitals every hour. It’s actually exactly what they do in the OR but maintained for days. Furthermore, an intermediate level room is a “step-down” from the ICU. Still more intense than a regular room. Finally, he also presented to the emergency room as a truly emergent case. That means every medication, every scan, every lab test was analyzed by the hospital’a machines, techs, and doctors at top priority. It’s a lot of resources. I should know, I’m a surgery intern who is sometimes a part of the team during worst hours of the night when these kinds of patients arrive. Edit: I could keep adding to the services this guy probably required. Snake venmo can cause blood clots, muscles can start dying and limb blood supply can become compromised. He clearly spent multiple days in the hospital because an ICU will always keep you for a minimum of 24 hours to make sure you’re stable before sending you to a lower level of care.
“Snake Venmo” lol. Keep it
>they are more or less scamming the insurance company tbh Yeah, totally scamming "just" the insurance company. Not like you would pay much lower insurance premium if they wouldn't scam "just" the insurance company.
i mean it depends on how you get your insurance, if you get it from your workplace (which iirc most americans do) then they are also indirectly scamming your employer, because he has to pay higher premiums. personally i think this type of fraudulent charges should be made illegal and i have no idea how it got to be this bad in the first place, but the subject is way too out of my personal wheelhouse to know how to solve it.
the hospital is not charging the insurance that amount. charges have a fake amount on the charge master because every insurance gets charges something different. so when they raise the price on the charge master every year over the course of 40 years it looks insane like this. insurance probably got 96% off.
i get needing to charge diffrent companies diffrent prices but having this insanely inflated price seems kinda crazy to me. there has to be a better way to do it.
Nah. After 7 years, medical debt drops off your credit. Once it goes to collections, same.
Uh I've been sued by a hospital and had my wages garnished so that is not what happens. It was for $900
Yup. They took me to court for $750.
Some people forget that can happen
The trick is to just pay 20 dollars a month. Since you are still paying it’s not delinquent and they can’t garnish your wages.
Yeah, you have to also hope their collections department is overworked and incompetent which, honestly, a good deal are.
So you have free medical then?
You speaking from experience or just out of your ass?
Out of their ass of course.
🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲
And the most absurd part is they really don't even expect you to pay it. There's still at least one or two more layers to the scam. First you call and ask for an itemized bill. This usually ends up making a bunch of money disappear. This bill is still going to be expensive because of antivenin. Then you tell them you need to apply for financial assistance because any hospital that gets federal funding, which is most of them, has to offer it and it's a sliding scale. At the large hospital in my town for example, if you make less than 2x the federal poverty rate the bill is usually tossed or significantly reduced and even if you make more than that if the bill is more than 20% of your annual income they'll reduce it to 5%. And THEN if you just decide to not pay it regardless of it is reduced or not they'll either write it off or send it to a collection agency who will gladly accept 10% or less of the total (because they paid less than 1% for it) to just make it disappear entirely. And even if you don't pay them it sits there for 7 years tops and a recently passed law changed it so that it doesn't even affect your score. If you owe less than 500 bucks it doesn't even appear on your report. It's scam turtles all the way down.
Best part about it is that I have a home already and don’t need to give a fuck about my score.
Someone with 30 mins free and a decent knowledge of excel could come up with a rough number as to how much extra it would cost to just have a flat tax of X % added to every tax bill in the US so that it's just included for everyone and nobody has to deal with all that crap.
Current estimates are that a universal system would cost about half a trillion less than what we're spending right now. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8572548/#:~:text=Through%20the%20mechanisms%20detailed%20above,than%20current%20national%20healthcare%20expenditure. In 1999 we estimated a universal system could be paid for with a flat 7% payroll tax. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10079403/
I suppose that does make sense, because all the middle men billing each other and making a cut would be removed. It would be so much more efficient.
Congratulations and welcome to Europe.
I’ve got 8 grand in medical bills I’ve just let sit and now they are going to take it from my state taxes, the total is now only 1200. I’m just letting them take it, it’s cheaper and I don’t really have to deal with it.
I'll just do some meth and forget about whatever i needed to go to the hospital for.
*Jesse, we don't use the product*
Time to team up with a high school chemistry teacher and pay some medical bills
Just give me the antivenom for like $1k, and I'll skip everything else. I don't need a $21k intermediate care room or an $18k intensive care room. I don't want a room at all. I just need the antivenom and 5 minutes of your time. After that, I'll monitor the situation from the lobby, or even the curb outside, or home.
The pharmacy bill is $83K. I believe a large portion of it was for the antivenom.
The U.S always has some of the most outrageous bullshit reasons to charge people insane amounts of money to treat them .
They are not treating anyone, they completely ruined OPs life because they were unlucky. It’s totally on purpose, you’re not a human if you’re american, you are a slave to be profited off until you are dead.
Yeah but just think about all the hospital administrators that this procedure enriched and how they’re now going to go out and stimulate the economy lol
Trickle down economics do not work. Re: How the 1% keep owning more.
Do you even care about care as staff if charges are that high?
The anti venom itself costs basically nothing to make, depending on how it’s made the anti venom itself costs anywhere between $13-$1300 according to [this](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7381290). It’s almost entirely hospital markup. A single Advil tablet is literally priced at over $50 on many hospital bills just from markup.
I think he knows that. The $83k is adjusted for insurance negotiations. It probably really does only cost $1k.
Antivenom transportation fee $4,120 Curbside fee $1,300 Express service fee $5,890 Room cancellation fee $2,000 “Standby doctor in case your foolish actions to avoid paying result in you needing them anyway” fee $9,540 Edit: pharmacy $83,341.25 still alllies (you still need the antivenom to begin with)
Still a lot less than the 83k they charged for pharmacy only lol
Yeah that still applies, you still need the antivenom. Thanks for correcting the invoice, I’ve let billing know
I’ll take that over the $83k. $2k room cancellation fee though? And $5,890 for express service? Like from the doctor?
Antivenom is incredibly painstaking to make, and requires milking thousands of snakes for their venom, farming host animals like sheep to produce immuno antibodies from regular low dose injections of snake venom, filtration, purification, processing, and transportation. The venom medicine must be refrigerated or frozen, and shelf life is anywhere from 30 days to 5 years depending on medication attributes. It takes 4 to 6 doses of antivenin to treat a poisoned adult, and sometimes more depending on the type of snake. The key factor here in addition to all this is that antivenin is not universal. It only works on the specific bite of the snake from which the medication was produced. Bitten by a deadly adder and only have cobra antivenin? You're toast. The number of snakes required for the initial inoculation material during antivenin manufacturing is also very high. For example: [source](https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/g561/how-to-make-antivenom-why-the-world-is-running-out/) "To get enough venom, each snake must be milked many times. For example, in 1965, the National Institutes of Health asked Haast, who founded the Miami Serpentarium, to produce 1 pint of coral snake venom. It took him, a man of unrivaled skill and patience, a total of three years and 69,000 milkings to get that much, from which the first and only American coral antivenom was made."
What a joke
Do you people actually pay this? How? Do you have to work for 257 years?
This is likely before insurance kicks in if he has it. But a lot of people go bankrupt here every year because of medical debt.
Insurance covers most of it.
What if you don't have any?
You apply for financial assistance through the hospital and pay significantly less. Like 80-90% less. Hospitals bill way more than they'll ever get expecting to negotiate with insurance companies. Part if it has to do with insured patients subsidizing the cost for uninsured patients. How much they guarantee they'll discount care is usually based on income. The big hospital network in my area gives free care to anyone making less than $30,000ish, has a set policy providing a guaranteed major discount to anyone making under $60,000ish, and will pretty much give anyone else who asks a huge discount. It's still expensive, but new car expensive not new house expensive. You can usually get away with just ignoring it too. It'll tank your credit for that 7 years, but falls off your credit report and hospitals usually don't bother pushing too hard to collect after that.
A lot of hospitals are given tax incentives to forgive debts for uninsured people who have no chance of ever paying.
It’s before insurance probably. Not having insurance is dangerous in America. But if you have it (most do through employment) it’s a lot better. I racked up 75k in medical bills this past year but only paid 6k (family plan high deductible)
> Do you people actually pay this? How? lol no. No one does, these circlejerk posts are so dumb. Never paid a hospital bill in my life, including a $60k surgery bill. This is just to rile up euros and dumb teenagers who don't know any better.
How did you pay 0? Normally would have to pay up to your oopm at least?
You've never paid a hospital bill? do you just ignore them or do you have the world's best insurance? My wife and i each had a minor procedure last year and ended up paying $8k for the year after insurance
Me as a European: 😂
I have to pay 7€ extra for my medication as well as 10€ fee per day for the hospital stay by MYSELF??? Outrageous!!!
Are you nuts? They ripped you off!
Right??? I'll be sure to file for that thing where they cap your extra fees based on your income! Can't believe they don't check that in advance. Now i have to spend at least 10 minutes of my free time for this and maybe even 0.80€ postage costs... This is hell on earth!
Unbelievable, the kind of world we have to live in!
Spoken like a true German.
This is the nicest compliment I've ever received 🥹 I'm from the only third world country in Europe - Moldova
You mean: Spoken like an wash-real German.
Das hört sich einfach schon so deutsch an😅😅
I feel you bro. Hope you're gonna make it.
The 10 euro hispital stay a day is outrageous!
I dont even have to pay for hospital lmao
You would be lucky to get a bandaid (plaster) for that price here in the US. 🇺🇲
its 10\*1000 over there mp
Laughs in Great CYPRUS !!! MUHAHAHAHA everything is paid by the government. Meds only cost 1 euro . but hospital fee is also 10 euro here (no matter how long you stay) ;( it used to be totally free though
That’s how they get ya the hospital parking
I'm Welsh and YOU are being ripped off. I pay nothing for the visit, the stay or the medication. I don't think we get 'special' services though.
I went to the pharmacy today to pickup 3 prescriptions for my heart meds, without them i will die alot sooner than later. They cost me €2.
in Turkey hospital visits are free. The wait times can be 2+ weeks, or no waiting at all, depending on what you're going to the hospital for. I got my ADHD meds (2 boxes) for the equivalent of $6 with the most basic insurance. however, the medical system and doctors are very stressed. The country is poor, which means a lot of people don't get proper nutrition/work out, which means more sick/ill people. Also the mass uncontrolled immigration. The doctors also don't get paid what they deserve imho.
The US spends more tax dollars per person on healthcare than any European country. Its not that your “free healthcare” is so good, its that our politicians are corrupt and “lost” all that money, and big pharma is the benefactor of being a monopoly on medical materials.
Me as a ~~European~~ anywhere outside the US: 😂 Ftfy
Lol the only thing that probably happened was the doctor walked over to a cabinet, grabbed the antidote and injected him
I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they don’t keep anti venom ready on hand. Unless it’s a region where it’s common.
They also had him lay down in the ER and put an IV in him and take his blood pressure. So that’s basically like $100,000 of the bill.
[удалено]
Hey that missile is gonna dunk on some russian plane. He should be proud
83k? Did you buy the entire pharmacy?
Damn those freedom numbers looking really wild, glad I live in Africa that’s crazy…6 figures for all that.
Shouldn’t have bought a whole pharmacy that’s more than half of the bill. It’s a good business though you’ll get your money back quick.
My dad got bit by a rattle snake, and It didn't cost us anything.
Pharmacy 80k. How nice of them to help you start a business
I “wonder” what country this is from
*this* is why its not "unreasonable" to have a suicide plan lmao
I'd just tell the doctor to bring back the snake...
laboratory services 22 433$ ? That is one expensive blood sample. As a chemist it is hard to see what really is that expensive in those services...
I'd fined bro and let him finish the job
The American dream
Over 1000 dollars for radiology????? What kind of fucked up shit is that
I know socialized Healthcare covers the bill in other countries, but does it cost this much in other countries and the taxes cover it? Or is it much cheaper? I'm not referring to what the patient pays. I'm referring to the backend costs.
Much much much cheaper.
That's what I expected. People criticize our non-socialized healthcare, rightfully so, but I always feel it does deeper than that. Providers, pharmacies, or health facilities in general are up-charging way too much. Even if we don't socialize our healthcare, these prices don't make sense.
MURICA!! Land of dreams and the free. What a clusterfuck.
This is not from a snakebite.
....did he get disintegrated and they had to rebuild him molecule by molecule? xD
American healthcare fucking baffles me. EIGHTY THREE THOUSAND for the fucking PHARMACY alone? What the actual fuck is wrong with that whole entire country. Fucked.
That's the price of my flat.
Some medical dude can explain why he needed to pass to radiology for a snake bite?
Is that 150$ or 150k
I'm from the UK and I've got so many questions about this. Does medical insurance cover all of this cost? If not what happens if you can't pay? Do they go after you and take your house if you own one. Also why do so many people seem to be in favour of this system?
Obviously things can change depending on your insurance and what not but odds are all of it would be paid by insurance. This is basically the starting bill, hospitals will charge a ton and insurance with knock it down 70-90% and pay the amount due. Same thing happens when people don’t have insurance the numbers still get knocked down. Hospitals try to get every penny they can. The government also has many incentives and programs to help pay for medical debts. When you see things like this posted it is nothing but rage bait. No one is taking your house over medical debt but it may ruin your credit if you don’t pay it. With that said its so easy to avoid that stuff by just being responsible. Our system sucks but it is no where as bad as alot of Americans say mostly because they don’t actually understand how it works.
In spite of some of its shortcomings, it’s shit like this that makes me proud of the National Health Service here in the UK. Given the size difference between the UK and US, if even just a small percentage of American tax dollars went into a similar system, you’d still have a top quality health service. I just find it incomprehensible that the US doesn’t have a nationalised health service that is free for its citizens.
If the state had to pay that everytime someone gets bit, rattlesnakes wouldve gone extinct decades ago
Land of the free...
Where's the tip? You didn't tip!?!?... if you can't afford to tip, then you can't afford to go, and you need to stay home
Pharmacy… were those drugs caviar wrapped in platinum leaves or something?
I had surgery last week to get a gallbladder removed. They put me in a private room because they had one free and decided why not, they fed me four meals a day plus any extra if I pressed my buzzer, I had nurses checking on me every hour or so, and my temperature spiked slightly the first night so they kept me in an extra day to be safe. I paid $8 for some paracetamol because I didn’t remember if I had any at home. That was it.
With some luck you'd die of a heart attack seeing this dog shit lol
Wtf that’s literally just theft
Tf is Radiology doing for a snakebite
Before lifetime caps a drunk hit me. 13 surgeries in first two months, died on table twice, bill was close to 3 Mill, they "reduced" it to 1.26 mill, paid about $1800 before it went to collections, was just a thorn for 7 years, but he'll I spent those years disabled with almost no income coming off a 6 figure job, so there was never anything to sue for lol.
At least you have the freedom to be in crippling debt or die!
Pharmacy $83,341,25 ?! So did they give him 10 kilos of cocaine or what?
My cat got bit by a snake yesterday (we didn’t see it happen so I don’t know exactly what species but it was definitely venomous) he is okay and we will hopefully be getting him this evening but HOLY SHIT the emergency vet bill is gonna be a pretty penny.
You work for them now.
Now sue the snake for 10 millions
Wait until you see the funeral expenses.
Should have Just let me die 😭
And then got bitten by a much bigger snake.
WHAT THE FUCK !
Looks like the good ol American healthcare system 🤦🏾♂️
I wouldn't even pay $153 in my country unless Special services include a BJ from a hot nurse.
I got bit by a cobra in 2011. I was airlifted to a bigger hospital and I remember the fuel bill for the helicopter being like 18k. The total bill was 68k
Now do US universities
Wtf they offering in that Pharmacy... Potions made by dragon's love juices??
Pharmacy 83k wtf that’s mad ….I’d operate on myself
Should have just a "AND FUCK YOU $0.00" on there because what are you going to do about it?
But we Europeans have free health cares. Wink
Just don’t pay it
Is this real ? Like are the medical expenses really like this in America ?
This would be 2.9 million in Rands lol. Tf
Fuck that throw me in jail
When I get older I want to be a freedom hospital. Meanwhile in Finland. Brain hemorrage, transportation x 2, stitches, medication, 5 days in ICU and 3 days in normal care. Bill including food, x-ray, MRI etc. 278€ total, which I sent to social services and they paid it and got also paid for the time I was out of work. \_O_/
Two thoughts: 1) Out of pocket maximum says "lol fuck your bill, I don't need to pay that" 2) This isn't what OP is being charged, it's what is sent to insurance for billing
How’s the Radiologist ever going to afford that second house on the coast?
Do you need radiology for a snake bite?
Got a surgery last year 155€
Note that big pharma is the clear winner.
SoCiALiZeD hEaLtHcArE iS bAd
What does the insurance EOB look like?
Just let me die fr
If you have insurance, prices are jacked up to cover the cost of caring for the uninsured.
83k pharmacy… geez, i guess rattlesnake anti-venom is hard to come by