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Jesus that is awful. Remember when Bernie started that twitter thread about your worst health insurance bill? Parents who had had a stillborn kept getting bills in the baby's name because the baby had their own health insurance. They couldn't pay the bill right away and kept getting monthly reminders of their tragedy. I think about that a lot.
Jesus fucking christ that's a depressing story (this whole thread is). Your SO basically had to pay lawyer fees to avoid being financially ruined by crooks.
Hey, don’t make it seem like I chose to come here! Lol just kidding. But no sadly my parents made that choice for me.
That story is... wild and so sad. I’m sorry that happened to them. :(
ya blew it
I was literally just about to make this post. You moved to the usa?? Damn, you fucked up
how do y’all even know what the fuck you can do if you ARE covered
You straight up don’t anymore. You used to be able to ask a nurse and/or a doctors office would have specialists on staff to navigate the insurance bullshit, but lately I have asked a number of doctors about coverage and they aren’t willing to commit to an answer anymore because they don’t want to be wrong
99% the time you don’t know what you have to pay until the bill arrives,
and it’s difficult to know what is covered,
and sometimes they tell you something is covered when it isn’t and they fight you on it,
and sometimes you go under anesthesia after crossing all your t’s and dotting your i’s and miraculously making sure everything is covered
and some doctor you don’t know about who isn’t in network is in the room for 5 mins and they bill you $20k and you fight for 7 months with the insurance company to reduce it down to $5k instead
Welcome to America, enjoy your stay
Lol my parents came here when I was younger sadly. I would never willingly choose this!!!!
to demoralize you and making it easier to extract profit out of your weakened, struggling form
Ding ding ding.
The harder it is on you, the less likely you are to force them to pay what they owe. If it's hard you'll let the little things slide because it's not worth the hassle, if it's harder you'll let even bigger things slide.
I’m not sure if this is a joke or genuine, but if it is genuine, I feel I really do not understand it at all! :( I guess I know all the terms but I get confused what they mean or what they imply... I know someone who works a bit in the field, so sometimes they help me too at least!!
I work in health insurance so hmu if there's actually something I can help you understand. But generally it's confusing because confusion equals denials which equals profit. And we're all about that profit.
Think about how many people die each year just because they worry about the costs of health care. Not even including the people who know they can’t afford a needed procedure so they don’t go. I fucking hate this place to my core. Like an itch that makes me want to rip the flesh away.
About the best you can do to reduce complexity is an HMO plan, in which the company owns the hospitals and hires the doctors as well. It's a lot easier to stay "in the system" that way and avoid surprise bills. Even then, I've never come across one that did dental as well.
But yeah, it's purposely this bad. Some fun tricks:
- you know Emergency Departments are expensive, so you go to an "urgent care" clinic instead when you can't wait for an appointment. Turns out they're affiliated with a hospital's emergency department, even though they're in a completely different building across town, and you get billed the ED rates anyway
- some random doctor walks in while you're resting in the hospital and asks you some questions. You have no clue who they are. Months later, you get a bill for hundreds of dollars for the "out of network" consult.
- or some random doctor wanders into your surgery, to the same effect, but for thousands of dollars
There's no way to avoid getting fucked, and you just have to hope you get lucky.
Ironically my school’s plan does do dental! Or at least so far as I can tell from the info I’ve read of it.
The doctors randomly wandering in part is crazy to me. Do they do it on purpose to get more money? Is it nefarious or just a common screw-up??? I’m not sure if you’ll know the answer to that but it seriously is mind blowing to me that just ... happens.
I've only learned about this through reading. It's at least a combination of doctors trying to get more money, and the hospitals telling the doctors to find more ways to bill patients.
Here are some examples: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/us/drive-by-doctoring-surprise-medical-bills.html
Yeah, the fact that you can go to a hospital that's "in network" and be seen by doctors that are out of network is fucking insane. I've had it happen to me in the ER where it's not like you're in much of a state to stop a doc from poking their head in to see if they're in network (not that they'd fucking know) especially if you've been waiting to be seen for hours as it is. And it's not like you'd know to do that until after this sort of thing has happened to you either.
you know Emergency Departments are expensive, so you go to an “urgent care” clinic instead when you can’t wait for an appointment. Turns out they’re affiliated with a hospital’s emergency department, even though they’re in a completely different building across town, and you get billed the ED rates anyway
OMG we had a whole zoom conference with our work insurance and they mentioned this.
Everything in America is a goddamn fucking grift. Its fucking unbelievable. I feel like if you don't live in the US you can't even take it seriously....like you feel like shit like this has to be exaggerated.
Everything here is a scam designed to fuck you, and it's all legal because they make the laws.
lol fucking 30k for a rabies vaccine, just go to the vet and say you're a large dog, goddamn
I love when vision insurance covers the basic exam but not anything beyond it. When I had a corneal ulcer because I used my contacts too long since optometrists are too expensive, my then-vision insurance covered the glasses I needed to wear but not the eyedrops I needed to take or the exam needed to diagnose that issue. That then made it a $400 out-of-pocket appointment which was expensive enough that I never went back to the follow-up or subsequent years as long as my glasses are good.
OP, there's a little jingle I like to sing every time I think about health insurance and anyone working in that field. We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.
Acuvue Oasys says it's safe to wear daily for 14 days, but it's actually safe to wear daily for 3 months unless you have corneas.
$30,000 for a vaccine is fucking crazy, like... the shit you could buy with that much money. This country sucks
Health Insurance in the states is a nightmare, I'm an American living in Australia rn and it's so much better here (just in terms of Healthcare, and also paying taxes, the rest of the country is basically a dumpster fire and I'm lowkey not here by choice).
and that sometimes plans don’t cover dental?
They generally don't. That's why you have dental insurance. Welcome to America, enjoy your stay!
Hell, vision insurance can be separate too. Both are relatively cheap, compared to regular health insurance, but yeahhh.....
They're also both almost always total shit so that you have to pay out of pocket too.
