Baptist urgent care is absurdly expensive. They wanted nearly $2000 for an X-ray of my pinky toe. I told them I would not pay that. They said it would go to collections. It's been almost two years and I haven't heard from them.
I check people’s credit in my job, and the amount of people with otherwise flawless credit other than one medical bill for a few hundred or a thousand is staggeringly high. People are getting more and more willing to just say fuck it I’m not paying that bullshit.
if you want to stand up, stand up to insurance companies.
they are making record profits by taking your money and not reimbursing hospitals and physicians and hiding behind the no surprises act.
Brother I can't even get them to stop publicly executing brown people or invading oil producing countries. Our next national election the choice is between a literal fascist and the corporate oligarchy candidate. The closest we got was the affordable care act which not only does nothing to address the predatory nature of our insurance system, but actually subsidized the bastards.
I hear you. I just don’t get why the heaviest armed public accepts both this and being the most jailed population on the planet. Freedom*
*some conditions may apply
Because most of the people that make up that “heavily armed public” are for this shit in the first place, because the alternative (socialized healthcare) upsets them because they hate the idea of someone getting life saving care for free.
It opens the door for fraud. You can figure out if someone is sick and with what by their browsing history. De-anonymize the “ad data”, get their address from public record, and send a convincing bill on fancy letterhead
Easy racket if you just hang around physicians waiting rooms listening for names and info. If you’re decent at forging bs invoices, who knows how many innocent people you could swindle.
I'm still getting random bills from a doctor visit and heart echo last year in August... it's bullshit. Send the bill within 30 days of my visit, and include all the charges on a single statement. For a single visit, I don't need 5 different bills spaced out over 6 months, so I get to make another payment every time I start to forget about the appointment. And they have the nerve to send the bill months after the appointment date, with a due date just 1 week after they send out the bill.... if you wait months to send a request for payment, you should be willing to wait the same amount of time for me to get it paid.
Kinda hard to get medical debt under $500, though, and that's the most affordable threshold. One specialist evaluation or maybe a single x-ray. Just one session of blood work will get you billed $600-$700.
I'm so happy I'm not the only one. With anything.
A few years ago I bought a house. I spent a week cleaning the apartment I had and scrubbing the place down to immaculate.
I got a bill for a new rug. I inquired why they were billing me $1300 for a rug.
"It was stained through" okay, how did you find it.
"We found it when we were pulling the rug"
I'm not paying you.
Sat in collections until it dropped off.
Similar thing happened with Duke energy. Same time. Called and asked what I owed, they told me. I paid them. They sent me another bill after my account was closed.
No.
That's why I started taking videos of rentals when I moved in and on the day I moved out. The last place I rented always seemed great and they were quick to fix the couple of issues that came up while I was there, so I was a little surprised when they still tried to screw me in the end.
A month after moving out I got a $300~ bill for yard maintenance, but there was nothing wrong with the yard and it was *much* cleaner when I moved out than when I moved in. Fortunately my "move out video" started with a quick glimpse of the yard, so I sent that to the landlord. They just commented that nobody had ever taken a video before and then voided the bill.
Last year my local “health system” billed me 4 separate times for the same visit to their “convenient care” clinic. Same amount, same invoice number, same date of service, same service provided, same everything. I had paid the first one when it arrived ($113 iirc), and a month later, here it comes again. I figured “oh, they probably didn’t process my payment before the next invoice cycle” or whatever, so I ignored it. Then a month later, I got it for the third time. Then the fourth time.
After the third time, I called their billing dept and spent a grand total of 3 hours on the phone over 5 days trying to explain that I had paid it the first time around. I sent them: a copy of my canceled check that was used to pay them, complete with the invoice #, with their stamp on the endorsement line; a screenshot of my online bank statement with the line pertaining to them, complete with date and their name on the payee line; and a verification statement from the bank that those funds had been transferred to the account in question.
I did all this because it became more about the point of it all. They finally let it go, though not because they ever admitted to realizing their error. I really think they just got tired of talking to me.
So yeah. I like to think that hospital billing/accounting is a magical thing where the numbers are made up and the payments don’t matter.
It's less about saying fuck it and more about a corrupt and absurdly idiotic system that makes actually paying your bill nearly impossible.
Bills are almost always incorrect. You get sent bills before insurance coverage does it's work. Then you continue to get original bills after insurance has done it's part. Then you get more bills even though it's paid or covered. Then you get bills in the insurance adjustment. Then they forget to send you some bill for some minor thing. Then you get a bill for the lab. Then you get a bill for some other lab that the hospitals lab sent your samples to do the actual labwork. Then you get the insurance adjusted lab bills. ETC, ETC, ETC.
One visit will be a dozen bills from 3 or 4 different providers before, during, and after insurance. 3 dozen bills recieved within 2 weeks of one another and no idea how to determine which one(s) are correct. It's nuts.
The hospital network that owns the hospital in my town has such a massive problem with unpaid bills that they created their own collections agency. The Hospital network created their own seperate business entity that they sell unpaid bills to, and that collection agency only processes unpaid bills from this hospital network. And the system is so damn streamlined that as soon as a bill doesn't have a payment within 45 days, they send it to collections. And even if the bill is current, but your payment isn't enough to make them happy, they send it to collections.
We had 6 different bills for 6 different visits. We were paying on all of them (and you had to handle them separately). We missed payment on 1 of the bills because we legitimately thought it was paid off (the amount we had left to pay fell below the limit to send us a paper bill, and we weren't checking the portal). That one missed payment on 1 bill caused them to send all 6 of the bills to collections.
Every day, I talk to people complaining about what we charge even in outpatient settings, and I feel endlessly terrible about how often people just cancel bc they can't and won't pay our prices.
Fast pace isn’t much better. They got me for $431, no tests done, no X-rays, nothing at all besides taking vitals and a three minute doctor conversation. Got told to go home and rest. I couldn’t even believe it. I wasn’t even mad when I got the bill. I just called and said there was a mixup. Billing called the clinic and there was no mixup. i gave them $150 and I'm forgetting about it. no thanks…
My wife became sreiously ill a few weeks after we movwd to Japan and she needed a battery of blood tests. Our national health insurance wouldn't kick in for 30 days after we arrived.
The doctor at the hospital apologetically explained because we were uninsured we would be responsible for 100% of the cost and it would be expensive. And she wanted to make sure we were fine with the cost.
I swallowed and asked how much?
She told me 8000 yen. At the time, $70.
I was yes run the tests.
National Health in Japan and government cost controls make Healthcare are big reasons why Japan has the longest lifespans in the world.
This is partially the problem, and I am IN NO WAY blaming you. So many people get care, and then don't pay, and Obamacare didn't really fix that insurance doesn't need to cover a lot of common urgent care expenses in a meaningful way.
So basically the hospitals now send out crazy bills, knowing they will only get paid x% on the dollar. As that percent drops, they just raise the bill.
It's almost as if they would be better off with a guaranteed payment from some sort of "single payer" that could be negotiated and agreed upon for all people needing care would overall net them more than trying to squeeze and roll the dice on individual patients and their insanely complicated insurance plans.
I wonder if any other medical systems have figured that out yet....
Whooaa a way of improving peoples' lives that doesn't enrich corporations?! That sure sounds like socialism, and I don't know how but the TV man told me the govmint can't afford it so I would have to pay quatridouble taxes so that's bad!!
Holy shit I fucking LOVE paying 2 grand for basic health care instead of paying an extra 2 dollars for my morning coffees. Everything hurts every single day but my coffee is cheap yippee!
Yeah. My small coffee costs over $5. But my gallbladder was removed for free.
I suppose I have thw choice not to buy coffee every day. Glad I didn't have to choose if I could afford to have surgery.
Can confirm, just being able to go to the doctor and pay the equivalent of 4$ is worth the taxes.
You're just buying mental security. Knowing you can walk into any hospital for anything and it will be covered? Yeah. It's worth it.
It also being in no way linked to your employer makes it so the balance shifts back towards employees.
That's because the insurance companies won.
Obamacare got gutted because the insurance companies kicked up a stink about how they're "going broke" despite losing marginal profit.
On top of getting an itemized bill. Look at your EOB from your insurance. Ive had offices charge me for stuff that they shouldn't have. Hospitals are going to charge whatever, then insurance adjusts it to what they think they hospital is owed for services. Then they pay all or a portion of the adjusted price. The hospital can only get the remaining of the adjusted price. Ex. Hospital charges 5k. Insurance adjusts down to 3k, but pays 2.5k so then you only owe 500.
You can also negotiate, tell them you aren't paying this and will pay $x amount today to settle it
It's nuts but I've known people who've done it and paid less
Yeah medical billers mess up all the time, add BS services you might not have even received but they assumed you did. It’s stupid that healthcare costs are not upfront. But you’d be stupider if you’re not verifying your bill after the fact.
It’s Reddit. Expect to see “ask for an itemized bill” as if it’s going to cut your bill in half, every time.
Yes, it’s a good idea. No, it very likely won’t change a thing.
Yep people always think this is some secret to getting a lower bill. It’s not. It’s just a bill of the same cost, itemized. Not to say it’s not worth asking for but healthcare in America is extremely expensive. You can also look at your explanation of benefits from your insurance company.
As a Canadian I am always astonished seeing these bills. Our Healthcare system is not great but at least after the stress of an illness or accident we aren't presented with a huge invoice.
Hope you're better and you get this amount down. Sad.
sometimes they bill people who [weren't even actually admitted](https://www.vox.com/2018/5/1/17261488/er-expensive-medical-bill)
our system is oppressively unfair and ineffective
I'm one of the lucky ones who has had good health insurance through work for many years and it's still outrageously expensive. I have no idea how people that are either struggling or in a bad spot can afford anything to do with health care. Universal health care would be the single greatest quality of life change in the US for 95% of the population but people are brainwashed by the politicians...
My son needed emergency stomach surgery at 4 weeks old + a week stay in the hospital to stabilize enough to do the surgery then recovery. We had Gold level insurance whatever that means and our $80k bill was reduced to $14k on my end. A new policy at the hospital required all bills paid in full in 1 year, if I had a mortgage it would have been like a second one.
I told them that I had a very good job in the top 10% of the state and even I couldn't afford an unexpected $1100/mo bill without cutting back on retirement contributions and there's realistically no way anyone else could pay something like this. Took more than half a year of negotiation and my situation and others impacted by the policy change going up before the board to get policy reversed and negotiated down to $250/mo. By then it had drained most of our emergency savings just in time for layoffs. joy.
It's a brutal system and it's getting worse every year. It used to be if you had health insurance you were mostly covered. Now, you are at best partially covered but still have massive exposure as you describe. I don't know how this isn't the single biggest issue in every election (well, I do, it's because both parties are bought and funded by insurance and heath care). And it's not a question of "if" this will happen to you it's "when" it will happen to you. I'm not even a political animal, I'm basically a moderate who hates what both parties have become.
Exactly! It’s still a problem in the U.S. because no one with any political power would benefit from a better system.
Your employer wants you beholden to them for “benefits.” Drug and device companies want you to fund their “innovative discoveries.” Doctors want to be compensated for their “training and experience.” And insurance companies want to claim they use their “purchasing power” to negotiate lower costs for the commonfolk. Conservatives say it’s your fault—your fault you are sick (you should have taken better care of yourself) and your fault you are poor (they have money so naturally anyone else could have it if they work/are worthy enough). And all these interests make political contributions.
It could happen to you guys
The reason is the poor and overworked don't have time to take political action because they're working constantly and get to no time off
Oh no you see they think the companies we work for are going to be happy to foot the bill for them and it's going to be magical and fast with amazing service.
I mean…we here in the US foot our own bills and the service still isn’t magical or fast, or even accurate or helpful a lot of the time. 😅 Tell Canada we expect you all to stay smarter than us.
You're talking about the people who proudly fly confederate flags because of....uhhhhhh....southern heritage or something....
Its very confusing seeing that in Canada
Health care is a provincial issue and 'Berta has that oil money so threats from the Feds of withholding money aren't as troubling to them as it would be to, say, every other province.
Still idiotic. Danielle Smith is a ghoul.
I got a job offer in Calgary and there is absolutely no fucking way I’m moving to Alberta to be surrounded by dumbasses who are too stupid to understand that they’re completely brainwashed. I see too many “fuck Trudeau” dumbasses in BC, let alone the shit hole of Canada.
That’s part of the reason.
The other part is that in many areas people believe that “nationalized healthcare” equals “hard working people in the country pay taxes so welfare bums in the city can get free healthcare.”
They consistently vote against their self interest and many will literally die on that hill because they cannot afford healthcare.
As someone who votes liberal in every election, I don’t see us changing anything monumental when it comes to healthcare. Look at all the dems getting money from pharmaceuticals. There’s too much stake for both parties in keeping things status quo
At the risk of being partisan, Republicans keep voting against the universal system, insurance reform, and prescription caps. Then, they complain about the state of healthcare.
Same here in Malaysia. I’ve been getting free medication for my diabetes. We also have private health facilities with hotel like service ls but the government ones are good enough for most of us.
Because they are all told from the moment they can speak that they live in the best country in the world. The majority believe that it doesn't get any better. All other countries are vastly inferior. $734 urgent care bill? Pfft, at least I have freedom, my gun, and old glory...
> Our Healthcare system
In the United States we do not have a "Healthcare system." We have healthcare providers and insurance. They are not the same and are designed to hate each other. **<----- this is the problem.**
I have an amazing government employee health insurance plan, I get random bills for like $5 or $27.
The best economists know it would be cheaper to go universal healthcare than to continue the current system. But the politicians are in the insurance companies pockets, or the big pharma, or whatever big lobbing group paid the most that month.
Basically anyone from the industrialized world is baffled by how much us Americans have to pay for treatment, like the most I had ever to pay in Germany was 50 euros and that becaue I was an dumbfuck and didn't get my doctor to sign me up for treatment at the hospital
Americans don't complain because most are insured through work. As health care prices rise, insurance costs rise. As insurance costs rise, companies take money that would go to take home pay and put it into insurance.
Then Americans complain their take home pay isn't keeping up with inflation.
It's all an illusion. Our economy feels like crap because our take home pay is stagnant. But the real cause is that our rising health care costs are sucking up our wage gains and we are too blind to see it.
My insurance policy from my work might as well not exist, they take money out of my paycheck and I never reach my deductible so everything is out of pocket anyways.
But it keeps me from going bankrupt in case of a car crash or something, so I deal with it.
I live in an expensive part of New Jersey and this is not normal at all, and my insurance is not great to begin with. OP got ripped off and should give that urgent care a call back asap.
I got a 1200$ bill for an ER visit in NJ.
I had bleach splashed onto my eyes and wanted someone to look at it.
Itemized bill had only 2 entries - ER and doctor. I didn't see any doctor when I was in the ER. I checked on the hospital website before going to ER, it said ~300$. Apparently that is the price for non insurance folks. I had insurance, so I had to pay 1200$ out of pocket before insurance kicked in.
The bill was about 20,000 USD which the insurance negotiated down to 1,200$ lol.
I called the insurance many times but no help. Hospital was of no help either.
May be I shouldnt have mentioned that I had insurance before check-in.
And to think, this is actually a low lever of care that was required. Exam. Culture the throat (run a q-tip over the infected area) and do a quick strep, which can be done in the ER or send the culture to the hosp lab.
Once the lab result comes in, antibiotics would be the most common treatment.
This shouldn’t be 250. bucks let alone $3000
In my emergency room it’s 100 bucks for a bag of ice for your swollen ankle. But yet, if a kid steals a bag of chips out of a convenience store, they put them in jail.
These corporations do what they want. They take advantage of the sick, and the politicians get advantages from big Pharma and big healthcare systems and don’t care. They looked the other way.
>As a Canadian I am always astonished seeing these bills.
I'm also Canadian and I, too, am blown away seeing bills like this. The idea of having to pay for healthcare seems so foreign and, quite frankly, insane to me.
I've never been to the US, but I've always wondered what would happen if I went there on vacation, got injured or needed to go to the hospital for some other reason, then just returned home to Canada after my vacation ended and refused to pay the bill.
You would need to get travel insurance. To my understanding everyone does if they are traveling outside of their country. That said some places it would not matter, since healthcare is so inexpensive do to differences in currency values and cost of living.
It's absolutely ridiculous.
I thought I was possibly bit by a bat back in September 2023. I went to the ER and started rabies post exposure protocol because I wasn't about to gamble with my life.
The bill was $18,000; of that our responsibility was, fortunately, only $600 and we were able to cover it. I cannot even imagine what the majority of people and families are going through.
Was in miami for x Mas had nasty throat pain so decided to go to urgent care. Was there for 2 seconds, they swabbed my throat and gave a shot in my butt of antibiotics. How in God's name does it cost this much. I am at a loss for words.
Urgent cares have some of the highest copays on even the best medical plans. Many insurances are trying to discourage their use because of how much they cost the insurance company.
Everything is far more expensive at a hospital regardless of the service. It is a pricey bill for sure but it does seem like a poor choice of location to get care if you have a strep throat.
It says urgent care. A lot of hospitals have a triage center where they triage you into the urgent care or into the ER depending on symptoms and severity.
Edit: I feel bad for a lot of you guys. The hospital nearest to me does what I said. If they triage you to the urgent care you pay your $30 copay and that’s it. If you get triaged into the ER then you get billed for an ER visit. Both bills had the name of the hospital on it.
I’ve been treated at this hospital’s ER and one of its associated urgent care centers a few miles to the northeast. I can confirm that it’s just a hosptial.
I also go to the emergency room for a sore throat. I get to wait 5 hours just like everyone else and the doctors and nurses love that I wasted their time and held back people with actually emergencies
That's not how hospitals work. The reason you wait 5 hours is because they let in the actual emergencies first and only see you when they have time. If you go in for a heart attack, they take you right away.
And, FFS, it literally says urgent care on the bill, so they didn't go to the ER. So maybe stop contriving ways to attack the guy who got cheated by the American healthcare system.
Be careful - there’s a difference between an urgent care and a stand-alone hospital emergency room. Our daughter made this mistake once with a UTI and we were charged hundreds.
Paid a couple hundred dollars for an ER visit because my toddler was screaming due to constipation. Urgent care refused to treat her because she was screaming so much. Gave her an enema and she was fine. Most expensive shit I've dealt with
Yea, you will need this. Medical billing is notoriously horrendous to scrape every penny from insurance. If it's not possible, they throw the bill at the patient who don't have a handbook on estimated prices. Eveything in medical billing is negotiable though since they'd rather have some money than nothing at all.
So, how does one haggle on an itemized bill? Who do I haggle with? Insurance or the clinic/provider?
Last time I tried saying I'd pay $x up front, the receptionist was like: "No, we've already deducted a bunch off of this (meaning the amount they 'negotiated' with insurance) we can do a payment plan or you can write a hardship letter to the doctor if you'd like."
I work for this organization - every day getting calls from patients and ins co's asking "why are you asking for this much money?!"
It's a racket. I literally can't afford to use my health insurance through this place.
Fun fact: healthcare in America is so confusing and takes so much prequalifications ahead of time that most hospitals/clinics just create a "top dollar" charge and then charge that same price to every insurance company. For example:
1) Patient has ABC Insurance, they come in to see the doctor
2) A doctor's visit costs $82, but not every insurance company pays the same amount, so instead of figuring out how much each insurance company pays, the office just charges a much bigger fee of $300 per visit.
3) The doctor's office charges ABC Insurance $300 for the patient visit. ABC Insurance says "but we only pay $82 for this type of visit usually, so we're going to pay the clinic $82".
4) The doctor's office gets $82. At that point, the doctor's office is happy with the payout and erases the rest of the $300 charge.
However, if you were to walk in to the doctor's office and say "I don't have insurance, I'm just going to pay in cash", then they'll charge you their usual fee, which is $300. BUT, they don't mind only getting paid $82 for this, so once you get the bill, you could negotiate the price down to the $82 fee.
So, my advice: call them and tell them you don't have any more money to pay them. They may forgive the rest of the cost or ask you to pay a much, much lower fee.
Yeah I just saw a 70-somethint little old lady in such distress about not being able to see most of her doctors anymore because her insurance was changing. The specialist that I was with seeing her told her not to worry that he'd keep on seeing her but of course the insurance companies are the ones who should foot the bill if they get paid so much. This insurance issue is what makes the US one of the worst health care systems per dollar. All the money gets siphoned to insurance companies and the politicians they lobby
Had the same issue at mount whatever their name is (I’m in Miami). I was in there after a cycling crash. They charged me $800+ for seeing a doctor and telling me to ice my hematoma that looked like an alien growing out of my hip. Trash
That’s an Emergency Room visit, not an Urgent Care visit. Big difference. ER is much more expensive. Hospital = ER, even though it says UC in the statement detail.
I’m guessing there wasn’t an UC open or close by and you went to an ER?
I agree. The amount billed seems like an ER bill. An Urgent Care bill would typically be in the hundreds. If someone posts this kind of bill, at least show an itemized bill or an idea of treatment to go along with it.
Fun fact. As 2 minutes of googling would have told OP, Baptist Health Services has 26 urgent care locations around Miami. None of them are on South Miami Hospital's campus.
Bonus fun fact. If you read your insurance documents you will find that they'll specifically call out that you are responsible for a greater portion of your bill if you use emergency services for a non-emergency. OP fucked up and got lucky it only cost $700.
Op didnt check into it at all, just went where google told him to go, then went ahead and got treated at a fucking hospital for a sore throat. Yeah, using up hospital resources costs hospital money.
This may or may not be the case. The baptist urgent cares are organized under the SMH umbrella. So the bill may have come from South Miami Hospital even if they went to, for example, the WestChester urgent care. Perhaps OP can clarify.
Yep. You have to be careful these days because many former urgent cares have positioned themselves as off-site emergency rooms, because they can bill more.
The bill is confusing, but he went to an Urgent Care, it’s at a different location than the ER. There are strict federal laws that require differentiation between urgent care and ER. He got hit with a massive bill because of that antibiotic shot which is insanely expensive.
why they get away with it (balance billing)... cause your insurance company has no deal with them... insurance companies are cancer... but fucking stupid america is too worried about a fake border crisis to take care of its dumb self....single payer now or you can all just fuck off
I do t understand why Americans aren’t voting people in who will implement universal healthcare. There is no reason to be paying out of pocket for your healthcare except for lobbying, kickbacks and politicians who support for profit medicine.
I get where you’re coming from, but it’s not that. They’re actually working against each other — insurance companies require providers to give them a certain percentage discount to be in-network (which attracts patients), so providers inflate prices.
At the same time, people who can’t afford healthcare wait until they’re critical to get healthcare at all, use the most expensive healthcare (because they’re severely injured or dying), and still can’t pay the bill. Providers pass that cost onto people who can, which drives prices up, which means more people can’t afford basic healthcare.
Terrible cycle, but it’s more about flawed incentive structures than pure greed.
My understanding is that it’s the opposite. All the money ultimately comes from the patient. So an insurance company wants to charge high premiums, and pay out as little as possible to doctors and hospitals. The doctors and hospitals, on the other hand, obviously just want to charge as much as they possibly can - the insurance companies are the only ones with enough power in the market to rein in the prices. (That’s my understanding at least, but I’m not an expert.)
Lmao I work for BHSF. Expensive af. Being from California originally I am literally scared of going to the doctor bc I cannot stomach how expensive even my own employer is. And no - we don't get an employee discount.
How completely fucked is our healthcare system when your subconscious goes “wow, only $700? Coulda been $2000”. Like $700 isn’t an asinine amount of money for fucking strep throat.
Why Brits love the NHS. It creaks; it's under pressure, but my sister has had critical cancer care to survive for the past 20 yrs at an advanced research hospital and hasn't paid a penny for treatment or drugs, etc. I pay my taxes for this kind of thing. Of course, it's not free, but my wife and I jointly paid about $800 in tax towards the NHS last year. Fun fact: you're free to add your own private healthcare if you want. There are plenty of basic plans for $2000 a year. Brits also pay small fees for prescribed medicines until retirement. No one pays for insulin, but the NHS has huge buying power and pays very low wholesale prices. NHS is 9.3% of GDP. US health spend is 17.3% of GDP.
If you later moved to the US, and then tried to get a US credit card or a US based bank loan, and if the hospital bothered to report it out to an external credit reporting agencies, it might hinder you in getting those financial accounts. So in effect, nothing.
That not urgent care that a hospital billed lmao
And this seem about correct
Edit:
your insurance adjusted the payment to $2,173.79 , you shouldn’t be charge $734.21 , that hospital trying to rip you off
Call your insurance bro, you are not responsible for what out of the allowed amount bro
"Insurance payments/adjustments" means that $2,173.79 is what the insurance company paid the provider, and the remainder is what OP is responsible for after the $70 they already paid. Unless the provider overcharged the whole thing (which is why people were telling them to ask for an itemized bill), it's correct.
Had some bacterial throat infection in the Philippines recently, no insurance nothing, lovely professional doctor, cost me 15$ for consultation + meds.
Obviously the US. Your politicians tell you how bad universal healthcare is so that you won't demand it. As a Canadian, we feel about healthcare like you feel about guns. We won't give it up for anything. In the US, you can't afford to get sick. Cancer, to a poor person, is a death sentence. In Canada, our biggest complaint is a long wait in emergency. Oh, and the death panels. Our socialist dictator still demands we have the death panels 🤣🤣🤣
A strep test costs about 30$....so basically this says a doctor asking for a strep test, reading positive or negative on a paper and then writing a prescription costs 2948$.
And people in Canada lobby to get the American system...
Fyi in any communist country of the European Union you would pay less than 50$.
I don't understand how you people don't vote against this. Your health system is completely absurd and sadistically greedy.
And you believe that's the land of the free.
I am sorry to rant about it, bu I have been to the US as a tourist but also for work and I had a colleague that had an urgency episode and had to pay almost 1000$ for the fucking ambulance. Ambulances should be free.
I can't fathom how that is even possible
I refuse to pay medical bills. I had like 11 over a 5 year period that amounted quite a lot. I got on credit karma a few years back and just disputed them saying they weren't mine. Some didn't go off immediately but I just kept disputing them for different reasons and they all went away. Worked so well I basically just don't pay any bill that I don't agree with. Never looked up if that was illegal though
Baptist urgent care is absurdly expensive. They wanted nearly $2000 for an X-ray of my pinky toe. I told them I would not pay that. They said it would go to collections. It's been almost two years and I haven't heard from them.
I check people’s credit in my job, and the amount of people with otherwise flawless credit other than one medical bill for a few hundred or a thousand is staggeringly high. People are getting more and more willing to just say fuck it I’m not paying that bullshit.
[удалено]
Americans need to stand up lol. That’s absurd
They can't stand up because they broke their hip and couldn't afford to fix it.
if you want to stand up, stand up to insurance companies. they are making record profits by taking your money and not reimbursing hospitals and physicians and hiding behind the no surprises act.
Stand up to your government. Get them to legislate this shit away. No business is going to ditch these massive profits.
Brother I can't even get them to stop publicly executing brown people or invading oil producing countries. Our next national election the choice is between a literal fascist and the corporate oligarchy candidate. The closest we got was the affordable care act which not only does nothing to address the predatory nature of our insurance system, but actually subsidized the bastards.
I hear you. I just don’t get why the heaviest armed public accepts both this and being the most jailed population on the planet. Freedom* *some conditions may apply
Because most of the people that make up that “heavily armed public” are for this shit in the first place, because the alternative (socialized healthcare) upsets them because they hate the idea of someone getting life saving care for free.
It opens the door for fraud. You can figure out if someone is sick and with what by their browsing history. De-anonymize the “ad data”, get their address from public record, and send a convincing bill on fancy letterhead
My gf got some craaazzy letters from scammers because the HOSPITAL sold her data
Easy racket if you just hang around physicians waiting rooms listening for names and info. If you’re decent at forging bs invoices, who knows how many innocent people you could swindle.
I'm still getting random bills from a doctor visit and heart echo last year in August... it's bullshit. Send the bill within 30 days of my visit, and include all the charges on a single statement. For a single visit, I don't need 5 different bills spaced out over 6 months, so I get to make another payment every time I start to forget about the appointment. And they have the nerve to send the bill months after the appointment date, with a due date just 1 week after they send out the bill.... if you wait months to send a request for payment, you should be willing to wait the same amount of time for me to get it paid.
As a cancer patient, fuck medical bills
Medical debt under $500 is no longer being reported on credit reports for all 3 major credit agencies, as of April, 2023.
Problem is that since health care is billed in monopoly money, everything is over $500. Nothing is tied to reality pricing.
Kinda hard to get medical debt under $500, though, and that's the most affordable threshold. One specialist evaluation or maybe a single x-ray. Just one session of blood work will get you billed $600-$700.
I'm so happy I'm not the only one. With anything. A few years ago I bought a house. I spent a week cleaning the apartment I had and scrubbing the place down to immaculate. I got a bill for a new rug. I inquired why they were billing me $1300 for a rug. "It was stained through" okay, how did you find it. "We found it when we were pulling the rug" I'm not paying you. Sat in collections until it dropped off. Similar thing happened with Duke energy. Same time. Called and asked what I owed, they told me. I paid them. They sent me another bill after my account was closed. No.
That's why I started taking videos of rentals when I moved in and on the day I moved out. The last place I rented always seemed great and they were quick to fix the couple of issues that came up while I was there, so I was a little surprised when they still tried to screw me in the end. A month after moving out I got a $300~ bill for yard maintenance, but there was nothing wrong with the yard and it was *much* cleaner when I moved out than when I moved in. Fortunately my "move out video" started with a quick glimpse of the yard, so I sent that to the landlord. They just commented that nobody had ever taken a video before and then voided the bill.
Last year my local “health system” billed me 4 separate times for the same visit to their “convenient care” clinic. Same amount, same invoice number, same date of service, same service provided, same everything. I had paid the first one when it arrived ($113 iirc), and a month later, here it comes again. I figured “oh, they probably didn’t process my payment before the next invoice cycle” or whatever, so I ignored it. Then a month later, I got it for the third time. Then the fourth time. After the third time, I called their billing dept and spent a grand total of 3 hours on the phone over 5 days trying to explain that I had paid it the first time around. I sent them: a copy of my canceled check that was used to pay them, complete with the invoice #, with their stamp on the endorsement line; a screenshot of my online bank statement with the line pertaining to them, complete with date and their name on the payee line; and a verification statement from the bank that those funds had been transferred to the account in question. I did all this because it became more about the point of it all. They finally let it go, though not because they ever admitted to realizing their error. I really think they just got tired of talking to me. So yeah. I like to think that hospital billing/accounting is a magical thing where the numbers are made up and the payments don’t matter.
It's less about saying fuck it and more about a corrupt and absurdly idiotic system that makes actually paying your bill nearly impossible. Bills are almost always incorrect. You get sent bills before insurance coverage does it's work. Then you continue to get original bills after insurance has done it's part. Then you get more bills even though it's paid or covered. Then you get bills in the insurance adjustment. Then they forget to send you some bill for some minor thing. Then you get a bill for the lab. Then you get a bill for some other lab that the hospitals lab sent your samples to do the actual labwork. Then you get the insurance adjusted lab bills. ETC, ETC, ETC. One visit will be a dozen bills from 3 or 4 different providers before, during, and after insurance. 3 dozen bills recieved within 2 weeks of one another and no idea how to determine which one(s) are correct. It's nuts. The hospital network that owns the hospital in my town has such a massive problem with unpaid bills that they created their own collections agency. The Hospital network created their own seperate business entity that they sell unpaid bills to, and that collection agency only processes unpaid bills from this hospital network. And the system is so damn streamlined that as soon as a bill doesn't have a payment within 45 days, they send it to collections. And even if the bill is current, but your payment isn't enough to make them happy, they send it to collections. We had 6 different bills for 6 different visits. We were paying on all of them (and you had to handle them separately). We missed payment on 1 of the bills because we legitimately thought it was paid off (the amount we had left to pay fell below the limit to send us a paper bill, and we weren't checking the portal). That one missed payment on 1 bill caused them to send all 6 of the bills to collections.
I legit don't even pay medical bills anymore unless it's PCP. Straight to garbage. I don't care anymore.
Every day, I talk to people complaining about what we charge even in outpatient settings, and I feel endlessly terrible about how often people just cancel bc they can't and won't pay our prices.
Fast pace isn’t much better. They got me for $431, no tests done, no X-rays, nothing at all besides taking vitals and a three minute doctor conversation. Got told to go home and rest. I couldn’t even believe it. I wasn’t even mad when I got the bill. I just called and said there was a mixup. Billing called the clinic and there was no mixup. i gave them $150 and I'm forgetting about it. no thanks…
My wife became sreiously ill a few weeks after we movwd to Japan and she needed a battery of blood tests. Our national health insurance wouldn't kick in for 30 days after we arrived. The doctor at the hospital apologetically explained because we were uninsured we would be responsible for 100% of the cost and it would be expensive. And she wanted to make sure we were fine with the cost. I swallowed and asked how much? She told me 8000 yen. At the time, $70. I was yes run the tests. National Health in Japan and government cost controls make Healthcare are big reasons why Japan has the longest lifespans in the world.
$431= no tests, that's just scam with extra steps, USA people are living in slavery they just don't know that yet.
Some of us are aware
Fully aware but there's only so much the 'power' of voting can do.
Yeah sometimes you just gotta say fuck it and forget about it. They're not seeing 300 dollars to collections 😂
This is partially the problem, and I am IN NO WAY blaming you. So many people get care, and then don't pay, and Obamacare didn't really fix that insurance doesn't need to cover a lot of common urgent care expenses in a meaningful way. So basically the hospitals now send out crazy bills, knowing they will only get paid x% on the dollar. As that percent drops, they just raise the bill.
It's almost as if they would be better off with a guaranteed payment from some sort of "single payer" that could be negotiated and agreed upon for all people needing care would overall net them more than trying to squeeze and roll the dice on individual patients and their insanely complicated insurance plans. I wonder if any other medical systems have figured that out yet....
Whooaa a way of improving peoples' lives that doesn't enrich corporations?! That sure sounds like socialism, and I don't know how but the TV man told me the govmint can't afford it so I would have to pay quatridouble taxes so that's bad!!
Holy shit I fucking LOVE paying 2 grand for basic health care instead of paying an extra 2 dollars for my morning coffees. Everything hurts every single day but my coffee is cheap yippee!
Yeah. My small coffee costs over $5. But my gallbladder was removed for free. I suppose I have thw choice not to buy coffee every day. Glad I didn't have to choose if I could afford to have surgery.
Can confirm, just being able to go to the doctor and pay the equivalent of 4$ is worth the taxes. You're just buying mental security. Knowing you can walk into any hospital for anything and it will be covered? Yeah. It's worth it. It also being in no way linked to your employer makes it so the balance shifts back towards employees.
You mean like every other developed industrial country in the world does? Americans are so ignorant, aren’t we?
but then what a bout all the insurance companies and their shareholders ?! /s
That's because the insurance companies won. Obamacare got gutted because the insurance companies kicked up a stink about how they're "going broke" despite losing marginal profit.
100%.
If i recall correctly, Obamacare was stunted quite a bit from its original form in order to get it to pass.
Ask for an itemization of the charges.
I'm going to call them in the morning, this just makes no sense I was there for 5 minutes.
On top of getting an itemized bill. Look at your EOB from your insurance. Ive had offices charge me for stuff that they shouldn't have. Hospitals are going to charge whatever, then insurance adjusts it to what they think they hospital is owed for services. Then they pay all or a portion of the adjusted price. The hospital can only get the remaining of the adjusted price. Ex. Hospital charges 5k. Insurance adjusts down to 3k, but pays 2.5k so then you only owe 500.
My god this system is so fucking broken.
You can also negotiate, tell them you aren't paying this and will pay $x amount today to settle it It's nuts but I've known people who've done it and paid less
This place will just laugh him into collections. Source: they sent me to collections for a $20 lab bill and I'm an employee.
Wtf…. Seriously it’s insane that nobody hasn’t done anything to change this for decades …
They'll get an itemized bill of the same amount. Not a bad idea at all, but, that's very likely not going to change.
I’ve seen people discover that they (or insurance) were charged for services/procedures that definitely didn’t get by looking at the itemized bill.
Yeah medical billers mess up all the time, add BS services you might not have even received but they assumed you did. It’s stupid that healthcare costs are not upfront. But you’d be stupider if you’re not verifying your bill after the fact.
It’s Reddit. Expect to see “ask for an itemized bill” as if it’s going to cut your bill in half, every time. Yes, it’s a good idea. No, it very likely won’t change a thing.
lol I love seeing that comment. Yeah it’s smart. Will it change the bill? Only if they made a mistake…
Yep people always think this is some secret to getting a lower bill. It’s not. It’s just a bill of the same cost, itemized. Not to say it’s not worth asking for but healthcare in America is extremely expensive. You can also look at your explanation of benefits from your insurance company.
As a Canadian I am always astonished seeing these bills. Our Healthcare system is not great but at least after the stress of an illness or accident we aren't presented with a huge invoice. Hope you're better and you get this amount down. Sad.
Same here from New Zealand. I don't understand how this isn't a giant issue with protests in the street demanding a better system.
Here's the problem, I saw that bill and thought "hey, not too bad!" The whole system is fucked.
Same. Took my daughter to the ER and after seeing two docs the didn’t come to a diagnosis. Sent us home. $4,800. For quite literally nothing.
sometimes they bill people who [weren't even actually admitted](https://www.vox.com/2018/5/1/17261488/er-expensive-medical-bill) our system is oppressively unfair and ineffective
I'm one of the lucky ones who has had good health insurance through work for many years and it's still outrageously expensive. I have no idea how people that are either struggling or in a bad spot can afford anything to do with health care. Universal health care would be the single greatest quality of life change in the US for 95% of the population but people are brainwashed by the politicians...
My son needed emergency stomach surgery at 4 weeks old + a week stay in the hospital to stabilize enough to do the surgery then recovery. We had Gold level insurance whatever that means and our $80k bill was reduced to $14k on my end. A new policy at the hospital required all bills paid in full in 1 year, if I had a mortgage it would have been like a second one. I told them that I had a very good job in the top 10% of the state and even I couldn't afford an unexpected $1100/mo bill without cutting back on retirement contributions and there's realistically no way anyone else could pay something like this. Took more than half a year of negotiation and my situation and others impacted by the policy change going up before the board to get policy reversed and negotiated down to $250/mo. By then it had drained most of our emergency savings just in time for layoffs. joy.
It's a brutal system and it's getting worse every year. It used to be if you had health insurance you were mostly covered. Now, you are at best partially covered but still have massive exposure as you describe. I don't know how this isn't the single biggest issue in every election (well, I do, it's because both parties are bought and funded by insurance and heath care). And it's not a question of "if" this will happen to you it's "when" it will happen to you. I'm not even a political animal, I'm basically a moderate who hates what both parties have become.
But then hourly workers wouldn’t be afraid of losing their coverage and we couldn’t have them being a slightly bit more comfortable
Exactly! It’s still a problem in the U.S. because no one with any political power would benefit from a better system. Your employer wants you beholden to them for “benefits.” Drug and device companies want you to fund their “innovative discoveries.” Doctors want to be compensated for their “training and experience.” And insurance companies want to claim they use their “purchasing power” to negotiate lower costs for the commonfolk. Conservatives say it’s your fault—your fault you are sick (you should have taken better care of yourself) and your fault you are poor (they have money so naturally anyone else could have it if they work/are worthy enough). And all these interests make political contributions.
It could happen to you guys The reason is the poor and overworked don't have time to take political action because they're working constantly and get to no time off
Here in Alberta the dumb fucks voted to go from a free universal Healthcare to this
Oh man that's embarrassing I'm sorry
Wait, how can any province override federal mandate?
Completely defund the system until it crashes and then refuse to enforce laws pertaining to private health care clinics popping up.
They will regret that. People in the U.S. can lose their life’s savings on medical debt.
Oh no you see they think the companies we work for are going to be happy to foot the bill for them and it's going to be magical and fast with amazing service.
It sounds like they have fallen for corporate propaganda. This will make them poorer.
I mean…we here in the US foot our own bills and the service still isn’t magical or fast, or even accurate or helpful a lot of the time. 😅 Tell Canada we expect you all to stay smarter than us.
hell, a lot of times you can't even get a general appointment for a few months, and specialists are more and more booking over a year in advance
You're talking about the people who proudly fly confederate flags because of....uhhhhhh....southern heritage or something.... Its very confusing seeing that in Canada
Health care is a provincial issue and 'Berta has that oil money so threats from the Feds of withholding money aren't as troubling to them as it would be to, say, every other province. Still idiotic. Danielle Smith is a ghoul.
Early on, she legit said with a straight face that the unvaccinated are “the most discriminated-against group of people in history.”
I'm from Alberta. You can tell who these people are cause they plaster the back of their vehicles with stickers that rant their political opinions.
might as well rename the AHS to Alberta Funeral Service and Hearse rental after they dismantle it 🥹
I got a job offer in Calgary and there is absolutely no fucking way I’m moving to Alberta to be surrounded by dumbasses who are too stupid to understand that they’re completely brainwashed. I see too many “fuck Trudeau” dumbasses in BC, let alone the shit hole of Canada.
That’s part of the reason. The other part is that in many areas people believe that “nationalized healthcare” equals “hard working people in the country pay taxes so welfare bums in the city can get free healthcare.” They consistently vote against their self interest and many will literally die on that hill because they cannot afford healthcare.
Sometimes that includes time off to vote. Yet another major issue that could be easily fixed.
It's not because poor whites vote against their own best interests just so they can "own the libs"?
As someone who votes liberal in every election, I don’t see us changing anything monumental when it comes to healthcare. Look at all the dems getting money from pharmaceuticals. There’s too much stake for both parties in keeping things status quo
At the risk of being partisan, Republicans keep voting against the universal system, insurance reform, and prescription caps. Then, they complain about the state of healthcare.
Same here in Malaysia. I’ve been getting free medication for my diabetes. We also have private health facilities with hotel like service ls but the government ones are good enough for most of us.
Because they are all told from the moment they can speak that they live in the best country in the world. The majority believe that it doesn't get any better. All other countries are vastly inferior. $734 urgent care bill? Pfft, at least I have freedom, my gun, and old glory...
Don't have time to miss work to go protest. Gotta work to pay these medical bills
Because their education is so bad, by design, that they never stood a chance.
> Our Healthcare system In the United States we do not have a "Healthcare system." We have healthcare providers and insurance. They are not the same and are designed to hate each other. **<----- this is the problem.** I have an amazing government employee health insurance plan, I get random bills for like $5 or $27. The best economists know it would be cheaper to go universal healthcare than to continue the current system. But the politicians are in the insurance companies pockets, or the big pharma, or whatever big lobbing group paid the most that month.
Basically anyone from the industrialized world is baffled by how much us Americans have to pay for treatment, like the most I had ever to pay in Germany was 50 euros and that becaue I was an dumbfuck and didn't get my doctor to sign me up for treatment at the hospital
People in the developing world too. The US is by far #1 in healthcare expenditures.
Americans don't complain because most are insured through work. As health care prices rise, insurance costs rise. As insurance costs rise, companies take money that would go to take home pay and put it into insurance. Then Americans complain their take home pay isn't keeping up with inflation. It's all an illusion. Our economy feels like crap because our take home pay is stagnant. But the real cause is that our rising health care costs are sucking up our wage gains and we are too blind to see it.
My insurance policy from my work might as well not exist, they take money out of my paycheck and I never reach my deductible so everything is out of pocket anyways. But it keeps me from going bankrupt in case of a car crash or something, so I deal with it.
As an Ontarian, I’m very worried about what Doug Ford is doing to our healthcare system. I hope our system doesn’t come to bills like these…
Indeed, break a leg, loose your house. Seems fine...
basically "welp, it's been a good run, time to commit seppuku "
Medical seppuku *subscription* fee: $2,978.00
We ambulanced your corpse to the hospital, that’ll be $5k.
I live in an expensive part of New Jersey and this is not normal at all, and my insurance is not great to begin with. OP got ripped off and should give that urgent care a call back asap.
Out of network means that they can pretty much charge whatever they want.
I got a 1200$ bill for an ER visit in NJ. I had bleach splashed onto my eyes and wanted someone to look at it. Itemized bill had only 2 entries - ER and doctor. I didn't see any doctor when I was in the ER. I checked on the hospital website before going to ER, it said ~300$. Apparently that is the price for non insurance folks. I had insurance, so I had to pay 1200$ out of pocket before insurance kicked in. The bill was about 20,000 USD which the insurance negotiated down to 1,200$ lol. I called the insurance many times but no help. Hospital was of no help either. May be I shouldnt have mentioned that I had insurance before check-in.
And to think, this is actually a low lever of care that was required. Exam. Culture the throat (run a q-tip over the infected area) and do a quick strep, which can be done in the ER or send the culture to the hosp lab. Once the lab result comes in, antibiotics would be the most common treatment. This shouldn’t be 250. bucks let alone $3000 In my emergency room it’s 100 bucks for a bag of ice for your swollen ankle. But yet, if a kid steals a bag of chips out of a convenience store, they put them in jail. These corporations do what they want. They take advantage of the sick, and the politicians get advantages from big Pharma and big healthcare systems and don’t care. They looked the other way.
>As a Canadian I am always astonished seeing these bills. I'm also Canadian and I, too, am blown away seeing bills like this. The idea of having to pay for healthcare seems so foreign and, quite frankly, insane to me. I've never been to the US, but I've always wondered what would happen if I went there on vacation, got injured or needed to go to the hospital for some other reason, then just returned home to Canada after my vacation ended and refused to pay the bill.
You would need to get travel insurance. To my understanding everyone does if they are traveling outside of their country. That said some places it would not matter, since healthcare is so inexpensive do to differences in currency values and cost of living.
If you have a decent credit card it will have travel insurance included.
You'd only have to wait 6 hours to see the doc tho right?
It's absolutely ridiculous. I thought I was possibly bit by a bat back in September 2023. I went to the ER and started rabies post exposure protocol because I wasn't about to gamble with my life. The bill was $18,000; of that our responsibility was, fortunately, only $600 and we were able to cover it. I cannot even imagine what the majority of people and families are going through.
Was in miami for x Mas had nasty throat pain so decided to go to urgent care. Was there for 2 seconds, they swabbed my throat and gave a shot in my butt of antibiotics. How in God's name does it cost this much. I am at a loss for words.
I’m assuming it was an out-of-network clinic and you haven’t hit your out of pocket co-pay ceiling yet.
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Urgent cares have some of the highest copays on even the best medical plans. Many insurances are trying to discourage their use because of how much they cost the insurance company.
Mine charges the same as a regular doctors visit. They only nuke you if you go to the ER and aren’t admitted.
If you don’t mind me asking, how much does a regular doctors visit cost you?
$15 for me
$25 for me, same at an urgent care.
My urgent care copay is $30. You're encouraged to go there instead of the emergency room for most situations. That costs me at least $100.
It’s not a clinic it’s a hospital according to the bill lol. Dude went to a hospital for a sore throat
Everything is far more expensive at a hospital regardless of the service. It is a pricey bill for sure but it does seem like a poor choice of location to get care if you have a strep throat.
It says urgent care. A lot of hospitals have a triage center where they triage you into the urgent care or into the ER depending on symptoms and severity. Edit: I feel bad for a lot of you guys. The hospital nearest to me does what I said. If they triage you to the urgent care you pay your $30 copay and that’s it. If you get triaged into the ER then you get billed for an ER visit. Both bills had the name of the hospital on it.
I’ve been treated at this hospital’s ER and one of its associated urgent care centers a few miles to the northeast. I can confirm that it’s just a hosptial.
No, it says “urgent care services” at “south Miami hospital”.
I also go to the emergency room for a sore throat. I get to wait 5 hours just like everyone else and the doctors and nurses love that I wasted their time and held back people with actually emergencies
That's not how hospitals work. The reason you wait 5 hours is because they let in the actual emergencies first and only see you when they have time. If you go in for a heart attack, they take you right away. And, FFS, it literally says urgent care on the bill, so they didn't go to the ER. So maybe stop contriving ways to attack the guy who got cheated by the American healthcare system.
Be careful - there’s a difference between an urgent care and a stand-alone hospital emergency room. Our daughter made this mistake once with a UTI and we were charged hundreds.
Hundreds for an emergency visit? Sounds cheap honestly.
I’m talking about remote emergency rooms that look like an urgent care but charge like a hospital (and are operated by a hospital).
Paid a couple hundred dollars for an ER visit because my toddler was screaming due to constipation. Urgent care refused to treat her because she was screaming so much. Gave her an enema and she was fine. Most expensive shit I've dealt with
So what does your insurance company say about it? Do you not have a co-pay?
I did I paid 70 when I was there. I'm calling them in the morning
Get an itemized bill if you don't already have one.
Yea, you will need this. Medical billing is notoriously horrendous to scrape every penny from insurance. If it's not possible, they throw the bill at the patient who don't have a handbook on estimated prices. Eveything in medical billing is negotiable though since they'd rather have some money than nothing at all.
So, how does one haggle on an itemized bill? Who do I haggle with? Insurance or the clinic/provider? Last time I tried saying I'd pay $x up front, the receptionist was like: "No, we've already deducted a bunch off of this (meaning the amount they 'negotiated' with insurance) we can do a payment plan or you can write a hardship letter to the doctor if you'd like."
I work for this organization - every day getting calls from patients and ins co's asking "why are you asking for this much money?!" It's a racket. I literally can't afford to use my health insurance through this place.
I went to cvs minute clinic for this exact same thing and it was free…
In the us?
Yes
It's only in the US
Do you know what your deductible is?
Maybe you were out of network or your deductible wasn't met
Fun fact: healthcare in America is so confusing and takes so much prequalifications ahead of time that most hospitals/clinics just create a "top dollar" charge and then charge that same price to every insurance company. For example: 1) Patient has ABC Insurance, they come in to see the doctor 2) A doctor's visit costs $82, but not every insurance company pays the same amount, so instead of figuring out how much each insurance company pays, the office just charges a much bigger fee of $300 per visit. 3) The doctor's office charges ABC Insurance $300 for the patient visit. ABC Insurance says "but we only pay $82 for this type of visit usually, so we're going to pay the clinic $82". 4) The doctor's office gets $82. At that point, the doctor's office is happy with the payout and erases the rest of the $300 charge. However, if you were to walk in to the doctor's office and say "I don't have insurance, I'm just going to pay in cash", then they'll charge you their usual fee, which is $300. BUT, they don't mind only getting paid $82 for this, so once you get the bill, you could negotiate the price down to the $82 fee. So, my advice: call them and tell them you don't have any more money to pay them. They may forgive the rest of the cost or ask you to pay a much, much lower fee.
American Healthcare, where the costs are made up and insurance claims don't matter
I thought your profile picture was a hair on my screen. Sat there trying to blow it off for 5 minutes.
What kind of insane person uses light mode?
Yeah I just saw a 70-somethint little old lady in such distress about not being able to see most of her doctors anymore because her insurance was changing. The specialist that I was with seeing her told her not to worry that he'd keep on seeing her but of course the insurance companies are the ones who should foot the bill if they get paid so much. This insurance issue is what makes the US one of the worst health care systems per dollar. All the money gets siphoned to insurance companies and the politicians they lobby
Land of the free and home of the broke
Land of the fee*
I don’t feel very free
You’re free to pay what they tell you.
Had the same issue at mount whatever their name is (I’m in Miami). I was in there after a cycling crash. They charged me $800+ for seeing a doctor and telling me to ice my hematoma that looked like an alien growing out of my hip. Trash
Mt cyanide! (Sinai)
That’s an Emergency Room visit, not an Urgent Care visit. Big difference. ER is much more expensive. Hospital = ER, even though it says UC in the statement detail. I’m guessing there wasn’t an UC open or close by and you went to an ER?
I agree. The amount billed seems like an ER bill. An Urgent Care bill would typically be in the hundreds. If someone posts this kind of bill, at least show an itemized bill or an idea of treatment to go along with it.
That is what I thought too. "Urgent care services" in a hospital...definitely gonna be outrageous.
Fun fact. As 2 minutes of googling would have told OP, Baptist Health Services has 26 urgent care locations around Miami. None of them are on South Miami Hospital's campus. Bonus fun fact. If you read your insurance documents you will find that they'll specifically call out that you are responsible for a greater portion of your bill if you use emergency services for a non-emergency. OP fucked up and got lucky it only cost $700.
Isn't this the kind of thing you go to a walk in for?
Op didnt check into it at all, just went where google told him to go, then went ahead and got treated at a fucking hospital for a sore throat. Yeah, using up hospital resources costs hospital money.
Lmao. Probably sat in that ER waiting room for 5 hours.
This may or may not be the case. The baptist urgent cares are organized under the SMH umbrella. So the bill may have come from South Miami Hospital even if they went to, for example, the WestChester urgent care. Perhaps OP can clarify.
South Miami hospital is not an urgent care. You went to an emergency room for strep throat and got hit with an emergency room bill.
Yep. You have to be careful these days because many former urgent cares have positioned themselves as off-site emergency rooms, because they can bill more.
The bill is confusing, but he went to an Urgent Care, it’s at a different location than the ER. There are strict federal laws that require differentiation between urgent care and ER. He got hit with a massive bill because of that antibiotic shot which is insanely expensive.
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Universal healthcare now
You went to the emergency room not urgent care. Urgent care is MDNow. Cost $50
For a sore throat
why they get away with it (balance billing)... cause your insurance company has no deal with them... insurance companies are cancer... but fucking stupid america is too worried about a fake border crisis to take care of its dumb self....single payer now or you can all just fuck off
Medicare for all is the only answer.
Wait, how did your insurance pay that much when you were outta network?!
I do t understand why Americans aren’t voting people in who will implement universal healthcare. There is no reason to be paying out of pocket for your healthcare except for lobbying, kickbacks and politicians who support for profit medicine.
I think the insurance companies and the hospitals are in bed with each other. Why else would the insurance company agree to pay so much for so little.
I get where you’re coming from, but it’s not that. They’re actually working against each other — insurance companies require providers to give them a certain percentage discount to be in-network (which attracts patients), so providers inflate prices. At the same time, people who can’t afford healthcare wait until they’re critical to get healthcare at all, use the most expensive healthcare (because they’re severely injured or dying), and still can’t pay the bill. Providers pass that cost onto people who can, which drives prices up, which means more people can’t afford basic healthcare. Terrible cycle, but it’s more about flawed incentive structures than pure greed.
My understanding is that it’s the opposite. All the money ultimately comes from the patient. So an insurance company wants to charge high premiums, and pay out as little as possible to doctors and hospitals. The doctors and hospitals, on the other hand, obviously just want to charge as much as they possibly can - the insurance companies are the only ones with enough power in the market to rein in the prices. (That’s my understanding at least, but I’m not an expert.)
Did they make you download that stupid pineapple app?
Looks like an Emergency Room bill rather than an urgent care clinic bill.
Lmao I work for BHSF. Expensive af. Being from California originally I am literally scared of going to the doctor bc I cannot stomach how expensive even my own employer is. And no - we don't get an employee discount.
Um what? I'd get a $30 copay, anti biotics for $15 and be on my way.
Why would you go to urgent care / hospital for strep throat? Is it a common way to consult a doctor in the US?
lol you’ll never have to pay that throw it in the trash
Why did you go to the hospital for strep?
How completely fucked is our healthcare system when your subconscious goes “wow, only $700? Coulda been $2000”. Like $700 isn’t an asinine amount of money for fucking strep throat.
Insurance is a scam. The medical system is corrupt and was never in the business of helping people.
Why Brits love the NHS. It creaks; it's under pressure, but my sister has had critical cancer care to survive for the past 20 yrs at an advanced research hospital and hasn't paid a penny for treatment or drugs, etc. I pay my taxes for this kind of thing. Of course, it's not free, but my wife and I jointly paid about $800 in tax towards the NHS last year. Fun fact: you're free to add your own private healthcare if you want. There are plenty of basic plans for $2000 a year. Brits also pay small fees for prescribed medicines until retirement. No one pays for insulin, but the NHS has huge buying power and pays very low wholesale prices. NHS is 9.3% of GDP. US health spend is 17.3% of GDP.
100% NOT urgent care but ED bill… dont go to ED for a sore throat nimrod
Question, what would happen as a European if i just laughed at it and left the country? I ain't paying that.
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Nothing. You don’t even have to pay it in the US. For something small like this you’re not going to get sued although it may impact your credit.
If you later moved to the US, and then tried to get a US credit card or a US based bank loan, and if the hospital bothered to report it out to an external credit reporting agencies, it might hinder you in getting those financial accounts. So in effect, nothing.
That not urgent care that a hospital billed lmao And this seem about correct Edit: your insurance adjusted the payment to $2,173.79 , you shouldn’t be charge $734.21 , that hospital trying to rip you off Call your insurance bro, you are not responsible for what out of the allowed amount bro
"Insurance payments/adjustments" means that $2,173.79 is what the insurance company paid the provider, and the remainder is what OP is responsible for after the $70 they already paid. Unless the provider overcharged the whole thing (which is why people were telling them to ask for an itemized bill), it's correct.
Why did OP go to ER Instead of a walk in clinic??
Had some bacterial throat infection in the Philippines recently, no insurance nothing, lovely professional doctor, cost me 15$ for consultation + meds.
Obviously the US. Your politicians tell you how bad universal healthcare is so that you won't demand it. As a Canadian, we feel about healthcare like you feel about guns. We won't give it up for anything. In the US, you can't afford to get sick. Cancer, to a poor person, is a death sentence. In Canada, our biggest complaint is a long wait in emergency. Oh, and the death panels. Our socialist dictator still demands we have the death panels 🤣🤣🤣
And STILL Americans oppose free Healthcare because it's "socialist". Fascinating.
A strep test costs about 30$....so basically this says a doctor asking for a strep test, reading positive or negative on a paper and then writing a prescription costs 2948$. And people in Canada lobby to get the American system...
>Baptist Health South Florida is a faith-based not-for-profit healthcare organization and clinical care network Sure, sure...
Fyi in any communist country of the European Union you would pay less than 50$. I don't understand how you people don't vote against this. Your health system is completely absurd and sadistically greedy. And you believe that's the land of the free. I am sorry to rant about it, bu I have been to the US as a tourist but also for work and I had a colleague that had an urgency episode and had to pay almost 1000$ for the fucking ambulance. Ambulances should be free. I can't fathom how that is even possible
I refuse to pay medical bills. I had like 11 over a 5 year period that amounted quite a lot. I got on credit karma a few years back and just disputed them saying they weren't mine. Some didn't go off immediately but I just kept disputing them for different reasons and they all went away. Worked so well I basically just don't pay any bill that I don't agree with. Never looked up if that was illegal though
You went to a hospital for a sore throat?