Woke up nauseaous, vomited about five times, and the last one included blood so I went to the emergency room. I spoke to a doctor for less than five minutes and received no imaging. There was one routine blood draw and an IV with saline and Zofran.
God damn America. $3042 to walk in the door. I could have literally flown back to England and been seen at an NHS hospital for a 5th of the cost.
Fun fact: The United States holds the world record in public healthcare spending per capita.
And still people are being gouged by insurance companies and the medical industrial complex.
This has to be one of the world's biggest and most lucrative grifts.
I knew we were head and shoulders above the rest in total spend but just public is something else
The absolute worst argument against m4a, “who is gonna pay for it?!” Annoys me to no end
We are already all paying for it, many times over
Or the argument of “I don’t want to pay for your problems.”
But you literally are paying for my problems, because that’s how insurance works lol. But you’re paying more than most sane people of the world because some insurance company says you’re not actually injured.
What a shitty thing to say, just totally lacking empathy. Death to amerikkka
Obviously, the libertarian solution is to get ride of Government Mandated Insurance. Once everyone pays with cash (or chickens) the system will magically unfuck itself.
The joke with private insurance is how often they "adjust" down the cost by simply refusing to pay these absurd markups. They don't spend any of their own money. They just tell hospital bill collectors to piss up a rope, ostensibly on your behalf.
But half the reason these prices are so absurd is that hospitals go enormously out of pocket to fight with insurance companies over reasonable expenses. A full third of the Fondren Orthopedic Group budget is in its Claims department, of which 4 staff members handle Medicare and 56 others deal with private insurance.
Efficiency, baby!
If you don’t pay that, then how will the PMCs at Pfizer go to brunch?
Have you ever thought of a single person besides yourself?
I think about them all the time. I think about their addresses, their little Romanovs running around with stolen jewels sewn into their jackets, the value of their organs juxtaposed with their lack of value as humans.
I think you have to call and dispute your charges. Never done it personally, but apparently you can get the reduced from their initial obscenity
Even reduced through my insurance company, $803.12. Everyone who works in healthcare admin deserves to be shot in the stomach and thrown to the system they represent.
Disgosting. Hate the emergency room, because it seems to be a direct route to having thousands of dollars owed to a hospital
"I'll give you $600, or you can pay for stamps to send me letters for the next seven years and get nothing."
That's way to high, just ask them to expand on each item and explain the cost factors. Then offer to pay them $50 for the saline and 10 minutes of the doctor's time.
Exactly right.
Did same to a doctor who once called me personally about an outstanding bill. Told him he’d seen me for not more than 90 seconds. And for that I’m not paying what you billed. He hung up and didn’t call back. Never paid at all.
Do something like the comrade above suggested.
Mine was $5000 for an ambulance ride and saline. I was unconscious and they took my credit card and maxed it out ($500 limit lol). Called them later and they gave me a hastily written receipt that said "Diagnosis of possible marijuana injection" because they picked me up from a place where people were smoking and the price was $2500. The saline was $500 and they billed me $2000 for a bed (which was a cot in the hallway).
I literally had to walk myself out of the hospital because no one knew who I was or what was going on when I came to.
Ended up getting them to scratch the entire bill after a couple phone calls.
American ERs are total scams
I think if they get you on record admitting to the debt, they can sue you in court for it. so best practice is to never answer their calls, even if it's to say fuck off.
The fact that a patient even has to go through that is so fucked. Last year I was charged an extra ~$1000 for surgical costs that I knew was supposed to be covered by my insurance and would probably get refunded, but I still had to wait for the hospital / insurance to come to that conclusion as well. Waiting and hoping I wouldn't have to fight for that was so stressful
A year and a half ago I went to the er and thought the 2500 bucks I paid at the front covered the visit until I got a 10k dollar bill in the mail a month later. I had been there for maybe all of an hour lol 🙃
The billing system is just a cat batting at a miniature replica of the Wheel of Fortune
Hope it doesn’t land on bankrupt
I pay like 5 bucks on mine a month I’ll still owe thousands by the time I die but that’s all they’re getting out of me lol
I'm 180 so bucks away from having free healthcare for the rest of the year
What the fuck is up with the USA, man? How have you all not gone into armed revolt yet?
How have you all not gone into armed revolt yet?
the gun owners are mostly petit-bourgeois suburbanite reactionaries, rural land owners, cops, troops, etc. Demographics that want to lynch leftists. When leftists attempt to organize or form their own armed groups in Amerikkka things like the Greensboro massacre happen.
True, I knew this already, but it is a question I can not stop myself from asking. It all just seems so bleak in that Hell-country
yeah i wanna escape but I also know the imperial periphery doesn't want a bunch of Amerikkkan "expats" for obvious reasons and the rest of the imperial core nations are going down the path of the Amerikkkans rather quickly.
also i have family, no passport, not enough money, etc. so i'm trapped in a burning building with no one to put the fire out. :stress:
I am so sorry :stalin-stressed: Why does the USA exist only to torment poor souls
:shrug-outta-hecks: it's ok, most days i am accepting of my fate. i just try to scrape by and help when i am able.
single
IV
clearly there were four :galaxy-brain: if you think about it this was a bargain, them only charging twice
the executives are not usually in the hospital. they're usually on a zoom meeting in Aruba or some shit. only the hospital workers and patients are in the hospital.
I had this exact same scenario. $1k after insurance. Got a Dr friend to prescribe me zofran tablets so I have some on hand, never again
The only thing I wanted was a laryngoscopy to identify whether it was a simple esophageal tear- which it was- or something requiring surgery. They never even tried to visualise it with hand instruments and I already have zofran in my medkit. Just a complete waste of time. In the non-profit hospitals I've worked in that would be an immediate radiology transport and detailed examination.
The blood is scary yeah
Honestly one of the worst parts about it is the humiliation of when I have to go in, the first thing that crosses my mind isn’t will I recover, it’s how much is this gonna cost me
That was my immediate thought. Looked in the toilet, saw the blood, reasoned that if I keep vomiting it's probably going to increase the bleeding and it's happening every 30~ minutes without slowing down. "Well an ambulance would cost $1000 and I bet I can drive there before I start vomiting blood all over my car if I just drive fast."
Fuck up your credit
If your credit sucks already then yeah there’s no downside
Depends on many things. My giant hospital bill never made it onto my credit report. I had to ignore calls from debt collectors tho
When mom died they hit us with a massive bill for her that my dad refuses to pay and I keep telling him that one way or another the debt collectors are going to get their money. Most likely when dad passes I'll get the bill and I'll have to pay like $1 per month to keep them off my ass. A.) Fuck the for-profit healthcare system and B.) if the patient dies there should be no cost, the onus is on the hospital.
I got an EKG before a surgery one time. I didn't have insurance at the time of the EKG so it was going to be self-pay (got insured before the actual surgery inshallah). Got the EKG, went out to the front desk and after a minute I was told my bill would be $1200. I told the receptionist that I was self pay and asked if there was perhaps a price break, so she went back to speak to the Dr. When she came back she told me he was shocked to see the price the hospital was charging for an EKG, that he didn't know it was that much (wtf) and he used his discretion to slash the price to $500 out the door.
In closing, fuck the american medical system where doctors have no idea what they're charging for shit and also have the ability to wave the price away like a magic wand if they feel like it.
If it makes you feel any better, the huge bills Americans pay for health care fund research for cures that benefit the entire rest of the planet.
cures that benefit the company doing the cure research, time and again medical companies have said "well we could cure this condition from the planet forever, but then we wouldn't make enough money by selling everyone on the planet just one pill, so how about we make a shittier cure so that we don't eradicate the condition and you have to get a mothly subscription to our pills"
money doesn't find cures, people do
Fine. Ivermectin did wonders to eliminate parasite infections in the developing world before Trump supporters started eating horse paste.
:doubt:
I’m sorry to doubt you but I imagine most of these outrageous costs go straight into the pockets of healthcare industry ghouls
Nope, that's absolute bullshit and a lie that capitalists tell Americans so we don't chop their heads off.
Wait so do you actually have to pay this or can you just ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist?
If the former, HOW?
I have to pay off the $803 post-insurance amount. If I don't it fucks my ability to buy a house or even rent. This is the reality of communist China.
Fucking yikes. How much have you paid your insurance company for the privilege of having to cough up another $803?
