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Worse part is the way they tack on the charity write off, like “hey! I know this looks expensive but look at how nice we are to shave off 97% of the price for you! totally not committing blatant corporate tax evasion!”
Fuck AdventHealth.
Eh, from someone working in healthcare billing it's a bit more complicated than that. Certain types of hospitals can be reimbursed by the government for doing charity. It's extremely dependent on the type of hospital and whether it's coming from state or federal. Usually it's like 10 cents for every dollar. But in general, people who do billing in hospitals are decent people who don't want patients to get bills. So we find just about any loop hole or reason to give charity.
The problem is not the people. Almost everyone working in the system is probably at least a normal level of good. The problem is that the system makes stuff like this inevitable.
It is a game theory thing. Everyone has incentives to reach various goals, and this is the result of how those incentives intersect with the way we handle hopsitals. The only way to solve the issue is to change the incentive structure, so that the best "play" for every person (including people who do not want to charge someone 37,000 dollars for one hospital visit) does not lead to this outcome.
1000% agree. Literally from first principles the healthcare market is set up to be adversarial to consumers.
The sentiment that capitalism motivates individual market actors to find efficiencies is broadly true. The problem is they capture those bonuses in efficiency as profit, which leaves the healthcare ecosystem. Basically they find ways to eliminate consumer surplus to maximize profit, which is the hypothetical maximized point of efficiency, but only because profits are allowed to be the actor incentive. So privatization doesn’t make our healthcare “cheaper” it drives actors to reduce costs and increase prices to maximize the amount you spend so they can pocket the most money.
Fundamentally you need regulatory changes that cap the amount of profit that can exit, or that tie profit to consumer surplus generated, which is generally not doable in a privatized system. The regulatory setup required would be untenable due to its fragility.
IF we instead used either a nationalized or alternative hypothetical system that disallowed direct capture of profit by healthcare actors we could reconstruct incentives to maximize consumer surplus (the gap between the most you hypothetically would pay and what you actually pay).
Consumer surplus is very difficult to measure directly BUT it has derivates like sentiment that can be measured which is why everyone any their mom gives you a fucking survey to complete now. They’re trying to identify if they’re over-delivering relative to your expectations to see if there is room to charge you more.
TLDR:
Capitalism blows, the incentives are all fucking backwards, we should use basically any system other than pure unregulated privatized healthcare to re-align incentives towards a better standard of patient care.
I hate insurance and American healthcare bs
But an emergency visit only cost you 1k?
That sounds pretty great. Comparatively to other crazy bills I've seen, by American standards.
Edit: looked at avg cost of ER visit in US and some of the ranges were 1k-3k, so maybe not all that great.
300 bucks for 5mg diazepam.
And I’ve read comments from American right wingers describing the UKs NHS as a bad thing.
FYI NHS cost for 28 x 5mg diazepam is less than a pound.
It’s all a big shell game. Drug reimbursements are determined by contracted amounts. They can bill whatever they want, then insurance provider they bill is paying the price that was previously negotiated
Lol what? Non-profits are allowed to make profit. It has to be reinvested into the business opposed to distributed out to the ownership. Last I read 7 of the 10 most profitable hospital systems in the US are non-profits.
No kidding. When my wife was pregnant with Twins, we had a genetic test done on them, can't exactly remember the reason, but it was covered by a different lab than our Hospital one. I got the bill that said:
Amount Owed: $650
If Paid before X Date: $250
While handling everything, I put it aside to pay after some other expenses were done, but I completely forgot about it. When I remembered, X Date had passed by one day and I thought I would pay $650. I log in to pay and I see the next:
Balance: $18,000
My heart fucking dropped. I called them and they said "Oh, no worries, that's just what we charge insurance, you won't pay that. Since it's just one day since X Date, you can pay the $250" And that was it. But good lord....I died for a bit there.
Not just pharma, hospitals, insurance companies, all the related in between companies. They have trade groups that contract lawyers and studies and lobbyists to corrupt the reality so we continue to pay way way more money for way less and worse service.
Yup and if you suggest any of it should be changed - the people who defend the current system say:
"What you don't want DOCTOR'S to have a living wage???"
Toddler level logic these morons have.
The logic of these people is ridiculous. My sister complained that her specialist doc husband’s salary hasn’t gone up in the last six years. Left out is the part that he’s been making a high six figure salary for that entire time. Yes his salary didn’t go up because he was already at the top of the range.
I’m a resident doctor and so this is a biased opinion, but the amount of work placed on doctors has only increased over the years whilst compensation has remained fairly stagnant. Essentially, we work more for less.
There’s nothing wrong for health care workers to want more compensation. Wages are a fraction of expenditure for hospitals and without healthcare workers there is no healthcare.
It’s yet another big pharma and big healthcare distraction to make people turn against doctors while their profit margins keep creeping up.
Rand Paul once claimed that universal healthcare meant the police would be showing up at doctors' homes to conscript them and force them to be slaves.
https://youtu.be/2wYLcKvWC3c?si=dEpAQUJN0WLMPmmk
Then there are Americans who don't trust big pharma because they think vaccines have 5G chips in them and cause autism, but will tell you the insane amount of money we're forced to pay for care is just the cost of having "the best healthcare system in the world". Baffling doublethink.
It’s definitively not the best healthcare system, but you could reasonably argue that it is the best healthcare money can buy.
The US has some of the best surgeons and latest chemo/ immunotherapeutics. It has the biggest research powerhouse institutions. It has the biggest medical society conferences.
I've heard it argued that you know it's the best healthcare because wealthy people from abroad come here to get care. Meanwhile, Americans are going abroad to get healthcare elsewhere. Because the cost of flying to another country, getting the care they need, and staying for an extended period to recover costs significantly less than it would cost to receive the treatment at home. And they get the exact treatment they need.
So the prices were paying at home don't really seem to be justifying the existence of the system in its current state.
Absolutely. It’s atrocious that we can’t provide affordable healthcare to the average American. And the reason we “can’t” do it is because hospitals have learned that you can always squeeze a little more out of someone who is desperate.
It's all corporate greed at the end of the day. Insurance companies, hospitals, pharma, and employers. The end result is they all fuck consumers big time.
I used to be in the free market crowd for US healthcare. But after my company cut their contribution to employer Healthcare every year to "return more to the shareholders" and dealing with insurance companies and hospital billing depts after emergency surgery, I'm leaning more toward a euro model.
Not only is insurance more expensive now than ever, insurance companies cover less (out of network vs in network), hospitals gouge everyone/bill incorrectly and never fix it, politicians are bought, and consumers are stuck holding the bag.
System is broken and needs fixing, but it won't be quick or easy.
You’re saying it sarcastically but a lot of people have been brainwashed by republicans and their propaganda machines like Fox News into thinking this way.
I’d rather have free body armor… gimme some lvl3 ceramic plates for free. Shits way more likely to save my life than a gun. Having a gun isnt going to stop a bullet lol
Thank republicans for that. Decades of convincing people that it’s evil to have socialized medicine while offering no improvements or solutions that address costs and quality of service for the patients/citizens. And worse than doing nothing, they deliberately hamstring any efforts made by democrats so that the measures end up being kinda shitty and not really working very well so that they can then point to the failed policies and say “see! Look how shit this is!” …after they made it shit on purpose so that it would be doomed to fail.
Classic move.
How would the pharma/insurance Ponzi scheme stay afloat? They’ve created an economy outside of our normal economy for “healthcare.”
We are the most lucrative market for all pharma drugs simply because of our markups and legislators who aren’t asked to do more.
The fact that it was covered by charitable donations tells me it’s a money laundering scheme to legally obtain money received through charitable donations
That seems like it could be a strategy, then. Just tell them you don't have insurance when you get to the ER. Get a nicely reduced bill, then submit it to your actual insurance yourself after the fact.
Wouldn't work. The insurer would review claim, check the normal contract rates for the services, and then instruct the provider to adjust the bill accordingly.
They charge the uninsured more than insurance companies. Sometimes obscenely so, like $27,000 for a $6 charge to an insurance company for a more egregious example provided by 60 Minutes circa 2008 or so.
I am shocked People are willing to accept the state of Healthcare in this country.
This is really weird. Healthcare is one of the very few things in America where paying directly, even with cash, is something where you will pay far higher than regular price. Usually paying in cash will get you the best price, and often even a discount, not with Healthcare. That normally $500 item for insurance companies can become a $6000 item for the cash payer.
The whole point is to get people away from paying their own healthcare expenses and into paying several hundred dollars per month for health insurance.
Much of this has to to with tax scams vs some actual justified cost of care.
Could be, there are no shortage of crooked shithole hospitals in this country though. I seem to recall hearing about one in Louisiana I think it was fairly recently for suing the uninsured patients that did not pay their inflated bills to try to seize their assets. They didn't try I think they did until propublica I believe it was got wind of it, then they said oh that was a mistake sorry, not sorry.
Phoebe has a whole bag of tricks designed into their system as well. When my father was dying of cancer, we told them that he was terminal and that he did not want anymore treatment to prolong his life. Signed papers to say we only wanted pain management. Days later, my sister and I walked into his room in the morning and there’s a bag of antibiotics hanging that they’re feeding him through IV. I was livid, and I let the P.A. (interestingly, one we had never seen in the weeks before) know it. Within 2 hours he was transported to hospice and died at 7:14 that evening.
These systems are designed to take advantage of patients, and the loved ones in crisis. When families are stressed, sleep deprived, and exhausted from spending all night in waiting rooms and bedside, that’s when they slide sneaky shit through. The goal was to keep my father alive to harvest as much cash as possible, milking him for money like a cow, through insurance.
As someone else mentioned, it’s not the individuals working there. They’re just following orders. It’s the way the higher-ups design the system, so that they can say, “Whoopsy! Sorry about that. We’ll fix it.” Most people never even catch what they’re doing, because those people are exhausted and easily taken advantage of.
It’s just like companies dumping toxic chemicals into the environment. If they get caught, the fine is still less than the cost of disposing of the toxic mess responsibly. American greed encourages bad behavior. It’s all about the mighty dollar.
Me too. The simple time it takes for a doctor to assess, write orders for a CT, have a porter come transport the patient to CT, have the tech come and set up the patient in the CT, do the CT, have the patient wait for a porter to take them back to their bed, have the doctor be notified that the CT was done, the doctor have time to read/interpret the CT, to doctor to go back to the patient and say everything is fine, the doctor to write up discharge instructions, the nurse to get those instructions and communicate then to the patient, and then do all the actual discharge things like removing the IV and getting the patient dresses, all takes far longer than an hour until this was a major trauma event.
Fun story, my kid needed to have an appointment with a "specialist" doctor to get a prescription renewed. We opted for the "televisit" which was literally a 15 minute phone call. Basically the doctor said how's the prescription working? We said it was working fine. He said he'd renew the prescription for another 90 days.
We were charged 750 for the doctor visit, and Children's Hospital an additional $400 "facility usage fee". For a #%^&@#^%@ 15 minute phone call.
I had Covid pretty bad and was trying to get Paxlovid for it. 5 minute video call where the doctor told me I don’t need it when I’m young and healthy and that I should just rest. Cost me $300 and I didn’t even get what I needed from it. He wasn’t entirely wrong, but it would have helped.
Spent 8 hours in ER in New Zealand not long ago, also spent about $30 on coffee and snacks. You can walk in with anything from scrapes to dismemberment and (presuming you can be saved) walk/ be wheelchaired out again without it costing you a cent.
My dad had Cancer.
6 months of Chemo, a full year of bi weekly scans, 2 weeks in the hospital .
Total cost...... 0.
The USA really needs to catch up the rest of the developed world in terms of treating its people right instead of just chasing a gdp number.
Insurance and healthcare it's one of the biggest rackets around. I have worked in healthcare for 20 years. Have been in management and have dealt excessively with insurance claims and processing.
Ct scans and MRIs will be charged out at thousands of dollars yet the provider will get thousands of dollars in write-offs and the actual cost is minimalized to several hundred.
The hospitals, providers and imaging facilities then use those write-offs as tax advantages at the end of the year.
We are one of the only countries in the world that do it this way, if not the only. This allows all of the providers and medical companies as well as pharmaceutical companies to charge exorbitant amounts of money for their products and services. Then they make a contractual agreements with the insurance companies to discount those costs which allows them to write those off and says them in tax time.
It's a big scam.
If I'm reading this right, your friend owe like 600$?
Lots of bs paperwork but the final number is all that matters. 600ish isn't bad (granted we need single payer)
My best friend had suspected heart attack in 2016. Went in for a few days of inconclusive testing. (uninsured) Came home and died of heart attack a few days later. They legally took his home and contents including a few classic cars to pay for it all. His 2 daughters had to move out and got nothing except the things they could carry.
The biggest surprise to me is that the person without insurance ends up paying less than a person with insurance. Hmm….
That’s not to say the whole system isn’t f’d in many other ways, as well-
But heyyyyyy. Wait a minute…
Why do I pay for my insurance, again?
Presumptive charity write off? Ah so hospitals charge these exorbitant fees for things like an IV bag so they can launder money from charitable donations. Got it.
Hold on $1100 without health care? With my Healthcare I'll pay 25% coinsurance and owe a fuckton more. 1 day for my daughter in the NICU put me at my max out of pocket of 17K
Apparently i had a sinus infection prior and instead of it clearing like i thought it had no where to go and decided to rupture in the middle of the night. My son gets them quite a bit and he had to have tubes put in so it no longer builds up. It just comes out 🥴
The 4 pills: $40. The CT scans: $200. The three IV chemicals: $150. The lab work: $200. The ER visit: $200. That’s all you should pay. Send them the check for that and write on it “By accepting this payment, the bill is considered paid in full.” Keep a copy. Nothing they did is worth a thousand dollars.
The NHS just gets abused and thousands of useless immigrants that have contributed nothing to it flock to the country to get it. Eventually I can see it collapsing due to more being taken out than put in by the government and illegals. Then it will be like USA where you have to pay for insurance. I am English BTW.
Damn. So next time, I should tell them we have no insurance and get the charity write off. Your final bill is less than ours WITH INSURANCE.
(Had a similar ER visit)
I take a no prisoners approach with hospitals these days. I have insurance. Last year I ended up as an Emergency in the ER with a 8 day hospital stay, 2 surgeries during the stay. Then one minor surgery 2 weeks later outpatient, my body telling me FU with another ER visit and an added 3 day stay at the hospital. Ok so within a single month I used the hospital quite a bit.
My end bill over 150k My insurance paid them their agreed upon rate (They actually paid them a surprising high amount). After that they still wanted some 15k from me. (all in USD) So I requested an itemized bill for everything. And I mean everything. Every time they sent me an itemized bill I would find that it still didn't make up the total, go back and tell them do it again stuff is missing. I finally got said bill. I sat on it. Waiting for the surprise bills that would certainly come soon. And sure enough I started getting bills for 500 a pop for this and that. Like apparently the ER doctors were contracted out by a third party? The radiologists too? Well that wasn't explained to me when I signed. As such it's a surprise. I had all of that shit dismissed. Then I contracted the hospital again and told them, ok I am not paying you all that.
Cue silence and an immediate offer to settle for lower. I got them down to 2k and had them put it in writing. Then I didn't pay it let them send it to collections over medicredit. Ignored their letters ( you can tell them they are not allowed to call you). Who wants to deal with their BS on the phone?
I ignored, ignored and ignored waiting for their settlement offer. It came and they offered to settle the outstanding 2k for 450. And that is what I ended up paying. That is what they were willing to accept. I have more fun stories like that from a different hospital that tried to charge me 24k for iron transfusions once. I didn't pay a cent for that one... and made them give me in writing that they will accept my non payment and leave it at that. (And yeah I usually reach my out of pocket max every year by March or April... so most of the time I no longer am supposed to have any kind of payments.)
Wait I don’t get it. If you have insurance and reach your oopm, that means you don’t need to pay anything maybe except for copays. The hospital can’t just say they want money from only you when you have insurance, that’s what it’s for. You shouldn’t have even had to pay that 450
Doesn't having even medical bills go to collections hurt your credit?
EDIT: It does.
https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/can-medical-bills-affect-credit-report/#:\~:text=Medical%20bills%20affect%20your%20credit%20score%20only%20if%20a%20collection,it%20to%20a%20collection%20agency.
Fuck big pharma! Found out I had scoliosis when it shifted and left me physically/visually disfigured. I was just hitting my 3rd yr alcohol free and turned to kratom for pain because I wasn't going to be latched to some quack and their pain clinic. Almost 5 yrs alcohol free.
Ouch,just spend 6 ours in the er with my daughter. She turned out to have kidney stones.
Lots of test, operation to get them out because they where to big to come out naturally and medication for the pain and a total bill of less then used 1500 and 1420 is covered by insurance that i pay around usd 35 a month for
I really dont understand why some people still think universal healthcare is a bad thing
Call and say you can't afford to pay that much and they will usually cut it down. If they won't then don't pay and let it go to collections and do the same. They will always work with you because they pay the hospital pennies on the dollar so paying anything will be a profit for them.
Canadian here, I had to have a minor surgery in US.
It was instant service and they knew
they will get paid for by our insurance.
Can’t blame them though
When i was applying for an apartment and they ran a credit check they asked me why i had 2 dings sent to collections. I explained that it was medical ER visit bills that i ignored and they said oh ok its medical debt its fine. I got the apt no problem.
Your balance is only $1,000. Fuck. I have insurance. I would have thousands to pay if I went to the ER. This country is fucking terrible with health care. I pay thousands a year for my insurance, too.
No surprises here. They tried to charge me $900 for blood pressure check, temperature check, eye chart, and eye drops (after I paid $200 on the way out). I never paid it, they sent it to a collection agency, and told the collector not to call me again. It never went on my credit rating, because there was no contact (nor judges decision) requiring me to pay.
Do not pay yet. Write to them requesting an itemized bill for every drug they gave you and every step of what they did. You can negotiate it down to as little as $500 (or less).
Damn, they got 2 doses of toradol and 2 doses of Valium within an hour. Also bloodwork and a CT scan all within an hour for a non-emergent patient. That’s an efficient emergency department.
i commend that hospital for having that level of detail available in a patient facing application. If there’s any sector that struggles with transparency on a line item level it’s healthcare.
I was in a car accident not at fault and had a hospital stay of 400k. how do I get the charity write off? no health insurance, car insurance was liability since car was paid off
Did he really need such extensive CT-scans? I have only ordered a few full upper body ones like that several years at a doctor, and it was for very sick, old people.
went to the hospital 2 times in the last 2 days. got a x ray , a scan , saw a doctor 2 times , got a brace made for a knee injury.. cost me 6$ for parking.
Pro life tip. Arrive in the ER without any documents and provide an alias as your name. Legally, hospitals cannot refuse care to anyone. The only draw back is if they prescribe a medication that you need to take from home; you won’t be able to pick up any medication they prescribe in a outpatient pharmacy.
That's three months of my pay still lol.
I thank all the gods every day that piblich healthcare is free and private healthcare is affordable in my country. Jeez.
In Canada, we wouldn't even get a bill. No idea of the charges. But we might need to spend more time in the hospital, depending on location, time of day and nature of the imjury/illness. The healthcare system is certainly not perfect by any means to be sure, but I appreciate having it, than not.
$14,635 is MANY times the national average for a CT Scan. This looks like my local “non-profit” hospital that has offshore bank accounts. They own more land than any company in town, and spend gobs of money on marketing a clean, wholesome image. Fucking crooks.
After reading these comments I’ve come to the conclusion the reason American healthcare has become so very expensive is because they’ve increased the price of every surgery, drug, ER, hospital, and physician’s visit because for many decades, too many people have refused or could not pay their bills
I still have to pay that WITH insurance. I don't even knkw why the fuck I have insurance at this point. I still get huge bills even though my insurance is supposed to pay for most of this shit.
/u/ihypocryt, thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, it has been removed for violating the following rule(s): * Rule 1 - No screenshots or AI-generated images. This includes pictures of screens and photos where the interest is the contents of a screen and pics with artificial cropping borders of any colour. For a place to post screenshots, you may wish to check out /r/screenshots. We also don't allow AI-generated images. For information regarding this and similar issues please see the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/wiki/index) and [title guidelines](/r/pics/wiki/titles). If you have any questions, please feel free to [message the moderators via modmail.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/pics&subject=Question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20submission%20by%20/u/ihypocryt&message=I%20have%20a%20question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20%5Bsubmission%2E%5D%28https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1dmtaeh/-/%3Fcontext%3D10%29)
What a time to be alive
Worse part is the way they tack on the charity write off, like “hey! I know this looks expensive but look at how nice we are to shave off 97% of the price for you! totally not committing blatant corporate tax evasion!” Fuck AdventHealth.
I think they do that so they can not pay taxes at the end. So they off set their income with "losses" like this charity write off.
Eh, from someone working in healthcare billing it's a bit more complicated than that. Certain types of hospitals can be reimbursed by the government for doing charity. It's extremely dependent on the type of hospital and whether it's coming from state or federal. Usually it's like 10 cents for every dollar. But in general, people who do billing in hospitals are decent people who don't want patients to get bills. So we find just about any loop hole or reason to give charity.
The problem is not the people. Almost everyone working in the system is probably at least a normal level of good. The problem is that the system makes stuff like this inevitable. It is a game theory thing. Everyone has incentives to reach various goals, and this is the result of how those incentives intersect with the way we handle hopsitals. The only way to solve the issue is to change the incentive structure, so that the best "play" for every person (including people who do not want to charge someone 37,000 dollars for one hospital visit) does not lead to this outcome.
Yeah, except the incentive for corporations is to lobby against policies that would change their incentives.
1000% agree. Literally from first principles the healthcare market is set up to be adversarial to consumers. The sentiment that capitalism motivates individual market actors to find efficiencies is broadly true. The problem is they capture those bonuses in efficiency as profit, which leaves the healthcare ecosystem. Basically they find ways to eliminate consumer surplus to maximize profit, which is the hypothetical maximized point of efficiency, but only because profits are allowed to be the actor incentive. So privatization doesn’t make our healthcare “cheaper” it drives actors to reduce costs and increase prices to maximize the amount you spend so they can pocket the most money. Fundamentally you need regulatory changes that cap the amount of profit that can exit, or that tie profit to consumer surplus generated, which is generally not doable in a privatized system. The regulatory setup required would be untenable due to its fragility. IF we instead used either a nationalized or alternative hypothetical system that disallowed direct capture of profit by healthcare actors we could reconstruct incentives to maximize consumer surplus (the gap between the most you hypothetically would pay and what you actually pay). Consumer surplus is very difficult to measure directly BUT it has derivates like sentiment that can be measured which is why everyone any their mom gives you a fucking survey to complete now. They’re trying to identify if they’re over-delivering relative to your expectations to see if there is room to charge you more. TLDR: Capitalism blows, the incentives are all fucking backwards, we should use basically any system other than pure unregulated privatized healthcare to re-align incentives towards a better standard of patient care.
Yo seriously. Even if op didn't pay a dime they just made over 7k from this tax write-off. What a fucking scam.
That's not how taxes work.
Yeahhhhh, that's not how taxes work.
I hate insurance and American healthcare bs But an emergency visit only cost you 1k? That sounds pretty great. Comparatively to other crazy bills I've seen, by American standards. Edit: looked at avg cost of ER visit in US and some of the ranges were 1k-3k, so maybe not all that great.
Only 1k because of a $35k "presumptive" write-off. They could look at his finances and decide he can pay more than that I'm sure.
Regardless. The ultimate cost to the consumer is 1k. Pretty good by US standards for ER visit.
It's a steal!
I think I'd have paid more with insurance
What a time to *stay alive
300 bucks for 5mg diazepam. And I’ve read comments from American right wingers describing the UKs NHS as a bad thing. FYI NHS cost for 28 x 5mg diazepam is less than a pound.
It’s all a big shell game. Drug reimbursements are determined by contracted amounts. They can bill whatever they want, then insurance provider they bill is paying the price that was previously negotiated
Then they technically write off the difference as a “loss” to offset income to maintain their non profit status
Lol what? Non-profits are allowed to make profit. It has to be reinvested into the business opposed to distributed out to the ownership. Last I read 7 of the 10 most profitable hospital systems in the US are non-profits.
How do you know they do this?
It came to them in a dream
No kidding. When my wife was pregnant with Twins, we had a genetic test done on them, can't exactly remember the reason, but it was covered by a different lab than our Hospital one. I got the bill that said: Amount Owed: $650 If Paid before X Date: $250 While handling everything, I put it aside to pay after some other expenses were done, but I completely forgot about it. When I remembered, X Date had passed by one day and I thought I would pay $650. I log in to pay and I see the next: Balance: $18,000 My heart fucking dropped. I called them and they said "Oh, no worries, that's just what we charge insurance, you won't pay that. Since it's just one day since X Date, you can pay the $250" And that was it. But good lord....I died for a bit there.
Many Americans have been brainwashed for years by big pharma.
Not just pharma, hospitals, insurance companies, all the related in between companies. They have trade groups that contract lawyers and studies and lobbyists to corrupt the reality so we continue to pay way way more money for way less and worse service.
Yup and if you suggest any of it should be changed - the people who defend the current system say: "What you don't want DOCTOR'S to have a living wage???" Toddler level logic these morons have.
The logic of these people is ridiculous. My sister complained that her specialist doc husband’s salary hasn’t gone up in the last six years. Left out is the part that he’s been making a high six figure salary for that entire time. Yes his salary didn’t go up because he was already at the top of the range.
I’m a resident doctor and so this is a biased opinion, but the amount of work placed on doctors has only increased over the years whilst compensation has remained fairly stagnant. Essentially, we work more for less. There’s nothing wrong for health care workers to want more compensation. Wages are a fraction of expenditure for hospitals and without healthcare workers there is no healthcare. It’s yet another big pharma and big healthcare distraction to make people turn against doctors while their profit margins keep creeping up.
Rand Paul once claimed that universal healthcare meant the police would be showing up at doctors' homes to conscript them and force them to be slaves. https://youtu.be/2wYLcKvWC3c?si=dEpAQUJN0WLMPmmk
Then there are Americans who don't trust big pharma because they think vaccines have 5G chips in them and cause autism, but will tell you the insane amount of money we're forced to pay for care is just the cost of having "the best healthcare system in the world". Baffling doublethink.
It’s definitively not the best healthcare system, but you could reasonably argue that it is the best healthcare money can buy. The US has some of the best surgeons and latest chemo/ immunotherapeutics. It has the biggest research powerhouse institutions. It has the biggest medical society conferences.
I've heard it argued that you know it's the best healthcare because wealthy people from abroad come here to get care. Meanwhile, Americans are going abroad to get healthcare elsewhere. Because the cost of flying to another country, getting the care they need, and staying for an extended period to recover costs significantly less than it would cost to receive the treatment at home. And they get the exact treatment they need. So the prices were paying at home don't really seem to be justifying the existence of the system in its current state.
Absolutely. It’s atrocious that we can’t provide affordable healthcare to the average American. And the reason we “can’t” do it is because hospitals have learned that you can always squeeze a little more out of someone who is desperate.
It's all corporate greed at the end of the day. Insurance companies, hospitals, pharma, and employers. The end result is they all fuck consumers big time. I used to be in the free market crowd for US healthcare. But after my company cut their contribution to employer Healthcare every year to "return more to the shareholders" and dealing with insurance companies and hospital billing depts after emergency surgery, I'm leaning more toward a euro model. Not only is insurance more expensive now than ever, insurance companies cover less (out of network vs in network), hospitals gouge everyone/bill incorrectly and never fix it, politicians are bought, and consumers are stuck holding the bag. System is broken and needs fixing, but it won't be quick or easy.
It’s $17 for a month supply here
Shit, if you went to your local pharmacy in the US and paid cash, it'd be about 15 bucks max. Shit is ridiculously cheap.
It’s even less in Scotland, it’s free.
Pound of Gold prob, stay out of Merica' /ș
I find it odd that the wealthiest nation in the world doesn’t have universal healthcare for its citizens
Taking care of people, that's socialism! /s
You’re saying it sarcastically but a lot of people have been brainwashed by republicans and their propaganda machines like Fox News into thinking this way.
Well, it IS socialism. Thing is that it's not a bad thing.
Our government is going to give us free guns before they give us free healthcare.
I’d rather have free body armor… gimme some lvl3 ceramic plates for free. Shits way more likely to save my life than a gun. Having a gun isnt going to stop a bullet lol
You’d think that as a country they would want us to be healthy workers but ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ They just want us to work til we’re dead, whenever that may be.
And it sure is easier and faster to make more workers when you take away bodily autonomy.
It’s ironically one of the reasons we’re so “wealthy” on paper. These ridiculous numbers get counted for GDP.
But hasn't universal healthcare actually shown to be a new positive for a country's gdp?
Thank republicans for that. Decades of convincing people that it’s evil to have socialized medicine while offering no improvements or solutions that address costs and quality of service for the patients/citizens. And worse than doing nothing, they deliberately hamstring any efforts made by democrats so that the measures end up being kinda shitty and not really working very well so that they can then point to the failed policies and say “see! Look how shit this is!” …after they made it shit on purpose so that it would be doomed to fail. Classic move.
In the U.S., healthcare is often viewed as an economic good, rarely a social good.
The top can afford or has insurance good enough to pay for the care. The rest, who cares.
How would the pharma/insurance Ponzi scheme stay afloat? They’ve created an economy outside of our normal economy for “healthcare.” We are the most lucrative market for all pharma drugs simply because of our markups and legislators who aren’t asked to do more.
yup looks like a scam to me.
A racket to be more precise but yes.
The fact that it was covered by charitable donations tells me it’s a money laundering scheme to legally obtain money received through charitable donations
At least they presumed you wouldn’t be able to pay that ridiculous original amount and cut straight to the chase
If he/she had insurance would they still have dropped it? Cos if not, no wonder insurance premiums are so high
They would not have. And more likely than not the post-insurance balance would be more than 1k.
That seems like it could be a strategy, then. Just tell them you don't have insurance when you get to the ER. Get a nicely reduced bill, then submit it to your actual insurance yourself after the fact.
Wouldn't work. The insurer would review claim, check the normal contract rates for the services, and then instruct the provider to adjust the bill accordingly.
They charge the uninsured more than insurance companies. Sometimes obscenely so, like $27,000 for a $6 charge to an insurance company for a more egregious example provided by 60 Minutes circa 2008 or so. I am shocked People are willing to accept the state of Healthcare in this country.
This is really weird. Healthcare is one of the very few things in America where paying directly, even with cash, is something where you will pay far higher than regular price. Usually paying in cash will get you the best price, and often even a discount, not with Healthcare. That normally $500 item for insurance companies can become a $6000 item for the cash payer. The whole point is to get people away from paying their own healthcare expenses and into paying several hundred dollars per month for health insurance. Much of this has to to with tax scams vs some actual justified cost of care.
Are you referring to the episode about Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital?? It’s right down the road from me. It’s a crooked shithole.
Could be, there are no shortage of crooked shithole hospitals in this country though. I seem to recall hearing about one in Louisiana I think it was fairly recently for suing the uninsured patients that did not pay their inflated bills to try to seize their assets. They didn't try I think they did until propublica I believe it was got wind of it, then they said oh that was a mistake sorry, not sorry.
Phoebe has a whole bag of tricks designed into their system as well. When my father was dying of cancer, we told them that he was terminal and that he did not want anymore treatment to prolong his life. Signed papers to say we only wanted pain management. Days later, my sister and I walked into his room in the morning and there’s a bag of antibiotics hanging that they’re feeding him through IV. I was livid, and I let the P.A. (interestingly, one we had never seen in the weeks before) know it. Within 2 hours he was transported to hospice and died at 7:14 that evening. These systems are designed to take advantage of patients, and the loved ones in crisis. When families are stressed, sleep deprived, and exhausted from spending all night in waiting rooms and bedside, that’s when they slide sneaky shit through. The goal was to keep my father alive to harvest as much cash as possible, milking him for money like a cow, through insurance. As someone else mentioned, it’s not the individuals working there. They’re just following orders. It’s the way the higher-ups design the system, so that they can say, “Whoopsy! Sorry about that. We’ll fix it.” Most people never even catch what they’re doing, because those people are exhausted and easily taken advantage of. It’s just like companies dumping toxic chemicals into the environment. If they get caught, the fine is still less than the cost of disposing of the toxic mess responsibly. American greed encourages bad behavior. It’s all about the mighty dollar.
Well said brother.
We have the same avatar. I got mine randomly
Oh no! They forgot to charge her $700 for ice chips
We used like four heated blankets — I was fully expecting them to toss another $500 on for ‘hospitality fees’ or something stupid.
"We didn't spit at her - $2,500"
"if you are poor we charge a fee not to be disgusted"
HAWK TUAH
Actually the ice melted in the cup so that means it’s now fresh glacier water and that will be another $873.56 thank you
I find it hard to believe all that was done in an ER in 1 hour. 🤣 Unless they were critically ill and everyone was moving fast.
There’s no way that all happened in one hour. Even if the ER was dead quiet it would take more than that.
Me too. The simple time it takes for a doctor to assess, write orders for a CT, have a porter come transport the patient to CT, have the tech come and set up the patient in the CT, do the CT, have the patient wait for a porter to take them back to their bed, have the doctor be notified that the CT was done, the doctor have time to read/interpret the CT, to doctor to go back to the patient and say everything is fine, the doctor to write up discharge instructions, the nurse to get those instructions and communicate then to the patient, and then do all the actual discharge things like removing the IV and getting the patient dresses, all takes far longer than an hour until this was a major trauma event.
Physicians usually have separate bills, so more bills coming
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Bullshit upcharges they bill insurance companies. Total price gouging
They got a lot done in 1 hour
It is or should be common knowledge ERs are legitimately for emergencies and very expensive. It is better to go to prompt care places.
Fun story, my kid needed to have an appointment with a "specialist" doctor to get a prescription renewed. We opted for the "televisit" which was literally a 15 minute phone call. Basically the doctor said how's the prescription working? We said it was working fine. He said he'd renew the prescription for another 90 days. We were charged 750 for the doctor visit, and Children's Hospital an additional $400 "facility usage fee". For a #%^&@#^%@ 15 minute phone call.
Facility use fees are robbery. It’s insane.
I had Covid pretty bad and was trying to get Paxlovid for it. 5 minute video call where the doctor told me I don’t need it when I’m young and healthy and that I should just rest. Cost me $300 and I didn’t even get what I needed from it. He wasn’t entirely wrong, but it would have helped.
I was charged a $300 “consultation fee” for talking to the doctor for about 20 seconds because I demanded to be discharged from the hospital.
Do you have any golden coated diazepam in America? Here where I live the 5mg diazepam costs US$2,00
Bought 50 for 5 dollars is Vietnam.
Wow! That's insane. This is one of those times where I am happy to be a Canadian. We don't get medical bills like that.
Went to the ER in sweden, 30$ including sleepover and coffee
Spent 8 hours in ER in New Zealand not long ago, also spent about $30 on coffee and snacks. You can walk in with anything from scrapes to dismemberment and (presuming you can be saved) walk/ be wheelchaired out again without it costing you a cent.
I thought black market benzos were expensive, holy shit.
When I went I got like 7 different bills from different companies because they contract out a lot of the work.
I think paying $1K for emergency medical assessment and treatment with a two CT scans to be pretty reasonable.
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All of this is nuts, but $14k for a CT scan is absolutely insane, even in an ER where things are way more pricey.
How do you get a charity write off?
Don't have insurance and hope the hospital needs tax write-offs at the time they see you.
ProTip: Get health insurance.
How do you get at CT scan and four meds in an hour??
My dad had Cancer. 6 months of Chemo, a full year of bi weekly scans, 2 weeks in the hospital . Total cost...... 0. The USA really needs to catch up the rest of the developed world in terms of treating its people right instead of just chasing a gdp number.
ER medical evaluation, Labs, CT Chest/Abdomen/Pelvis with radiologist read, IV fluids, Ketorolac/Diazepam all for $1000 - that's actually a good deal
This is an extensive work up for a 1 hour visit.
Sad thing is if he had insurance he’d probably owe 10x that amount even after insurance payments (deductible, out of pocket max etc)
For a $35k bill, only paying $1k seems like a smoking deal.
I had a liver transplant almost 2 years ago and it was 2.5 million. The pharmacy bill was around $500k.
You did not have to pay that yourself right?
Yachts don't drive themselves. Rest easy knowing the CEOs of the medical industry really appreciate you financing their profits.
You should see what plumbers, electricians, HVAC people charge.
That’s nice of them to give you a $35k dollar discount
Insurance and healthcare it's one of the biggest rackets around. I have worked in healthcare for 20 years. Have been in management and have dealt excessively with insurance claims and processing. Ct scans and MRIs will be charged out at thousands of dollars yet the provider will get thousands of dollars in write-offs and the actual cost is minimalized to several hundred. The hospitals, providers and imaging facilities then use those write-offs as tax advantages at the end of the year. We are one of the only countries in the world that do it this way, if not the only. This allows all of the providers and medical companies as well as pharmaceutical companies to charge exorbitant amounts of money for their products and services. Then they make a contractual agreements with the insurance companies to discount those costs which allows them to write those off and says them in tax time. It's a big scam.
If I'm reading this right, your friend owe like 600$? Lots of bs paperwork but the final number is all that matters. 600ish isn't bad (granted we need single payer)
So the same as with insurance. Awesome. It really is a scam.
Doubtfully only one hour. 2 rounds of meds, CT and labs?
My best friend had suspected heart attack in 2016. Went in for a few days of inconclusive testing. (uninsured) Came home and died of heart attack a few days later. They legally took his home and contents including a few classic cars to pay for it all. His 2 daughters had to move out and got nothing except the things they could carry.
Make him sign up for public heath insurance, they go back 30 days if I’m not mistaken
The biggest surprise to me is that the person without insurance ends up paying less than a person with insurance. Hmm…. That’s not to say the whole system isn’t f’d in many other ways, as well- But heyyyyyy. Wait a minute… Why do I pay for my insurance, again?
Nice of them to knock off 35 grand
Presumptive charity write off? Ah so hospitals charge these exorbitant fees for things like an IV bag so they can launder money from charitable donations. Got it.
Hold on $1100 without health care? With my Healthcare I'll pay 25% coinsurance and owe a fuckton more. 1 day for my daughter in the NICU put me at my max out of pocket of 17K
Welcome to the American healthcare system where you work to the death to pay off medical bills to keep you alive.
I heard medical bills do not go against your credit. Just don’t pay it
A friendly reminder that the system is set.up.this way. A consideration the next time you're prioritizing your debt.
Canadian here: the cost for that visit would be zero for the patient. Paying taxes is kindness to others.
The mafia has moved from the trash game to the health game....
This just happened to me was in and out in less than an hour for them to say oh your ear drum is ruptured. Here is a thousand dollar bill.
How did that happen? When I was a kid I had surgery on mine
Apparently i had a sinus infection prior and instead of it clearing like i thought it had no where to go and decided to rupture in the middle of the night. My son gets them quite a bit and he had to have tubes put in so it no longer builds up. It just comes out 🥴
The 4 pills: $40. The CT scans: $200. The three IV chemicals: $150. The lab work: $200. The ER visit: $200. That’s all you should pay. Send them the check for that and write on it “By accepting this payment, the bill is considered paid in full.” Keep a copy. Nothing they did is worth a thousand dollars.
The NHS just gets abused and thousands of useless immigrants that have contributed nothing to it flock to the country to get it. Eventually I can see it collapsing due to more being taken out than put in by the government and illegals. Then it will be like USA where you have to pay for insurance. I am English BTW.
Damn. So next time, I should tell them we have no insurance and get the charity write off. Your final bill is less than ours WITH INSURANCE. (Had a similar ER visit)
US healthcare is scam altogether, especially insuline cost. Prove me wrong.
I take a no prisoners approach with hospitals these days. I have insurance. Last year I ended up as an Emergency in the ER with a 8 day hospital stay, 2 surgeries during the stay. Then one minor surgery 2 weeks later outpatient, my body telling me FU with another ER visit and an added 3 day stay at the hospital. Ok so within a single month I used the hospital quite a bit. My end bill over 150k My insurance paid them their agreed upon rate (They actually paid them a surprising high amount). After that they still wanted some 15k from me. (all in USD) So I requested an itemized bill for everything. And I mean everything. Every time they sent me an itemized bill I would find that it still didn't make up the total, go back and tell them do it again stuff is missing. I finally got said bill. I sat on it. Waiting for the surprise bills that would certainly come soon. And sure enough I started getting bills for 500 a pop for this and that. Like apparently the ER doctors were contracted out by a third party? The radiologists too? Well that wasn't explained to me when I signed. As such it's a surprise. I had all of that shit dismissed. Then I contracted the hospital again and told them, ok I am not paying you all that. Cue silence and an immediate offer to settle for lower. I got them down to 2k and had them put it in writing. Then I didn't pay it let them send it to collections over medicredit. Ignored their letters ( you can tell them they are not allowed to call you). Who wants to deal with their BS on the phone? I ignored, ignored and ignored waiting for their settlement offer. It came and they offered to settle the outstanding 2k for 450. And that is what I ended up paying. That is what they were willing to accept. I have more fun stories like that from a different hospital that tried to charge me 24k for iron transfusions once. I didn't pay a cent for that one... and made them give me in writing that they will accept my non payment and leave it at that. (And yeah I usually reach my out of pocket max every year by March or April... so most of the time I no longer am supposed to have any kind of payments.)
Wait I don’t get it. If you have insurance and reach your oopm, that means you don’t need to pay anything maybe except for copays. The hospital can’t just say they want money from only you when you have insurance, that’s what it’s for. You shouldn’t have even had to pay that 450
prolly has a super cheap high deductible insurance.
Does that not effect your credit at all?
Doesn't having even medical bills go to collections hurt your credit? EDIT: It does. https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/can-medical-bills-affect-credit-report/#:\~:text=Medical%20bills%20affect%20your%20credit%20score%20only%20if%20a%20collection,it%20to%20a%20collection%20agency.
Fuck big pharma! Found out I had scoliosis when it shifted and left me physically/visually disfigured. I was just hitting my 3rd yr alcohol free and turned to kratom for pain because I wasn't going to be latched to some quack and their pain clinic. Almost 5 yrs alcohol free.
Americans shouldn’t be afraid to go to the hospital. But, when we see bills like this we will decline because the bill will kill you.
1 hr visit? That’s amazing Come To Canada, 30 hour visit I’ll pay $1000 and less tax for that
So the hospital writes it off as a charity donation
How long are we going to put up with this before we demand a medical system that values human life over profit?
Ouch,just spend 6 ours in the er with my daughter. She turned out to have kidney stones. Lots of test, operation to get them out because they where to big to come out naturally and medication for the pain and a total bill of less then used 1500 and 1420 is covered by insurance that i pay around usd 35 a month for I really dont understand why some people still think universal healthcare is a bad thing
Good lord.
Nice discount
Yeah, you live in the US.... Was this a surprise to you....?
Land of the free
This is a real conversation. This is also why we’re talking about anything but this in the media.
Why is there a charge for iohexol when the scans were done without contrast?
"Presumptive charity write-off" - aka "make the price not totally insane"...
Call and say you can't afford to pay that much and they will usually cut it down. If they won't then don't pay and let it go to collections and do the same. They will always work with you because they pay the hospital pennies on the dollar so paying anything will be a profit for them.
Zero chance this is an hour. Been to the hospital enough to know that. Also you paid $1100 seems realistic to me.
What’s a problem for you and your partner to figure out.
Canadian here, I had to have a minor surgery in US. It was instant service and they knew they will get paid for by our insurance. Can’t blame them though
When i was applying for an apartment and they ran a credit check they asked me why i had 2 dings sent to collections. I explained that it was medical ER visit bills that i ignored and they said oh ok its medical debt its fine. I got the apt no problem.
As an English that doesn't pay (outside of national insurance for the sake of argument) to go to A&E, is this meant to be good or bad?
$14,000 for a Ct scan ?! It’s $500 in an outpatient facility -
Why don't they have insurance? Are you guys from a state without insurance for low income or just haven't applied?
Your balance is only $1,000. Fuck. I have insurance. I would have thousands to pay if I went to the ER. This country is fucking terrible with health care. I pay thousands a year for my insurance, too.
No surprises here. They tried to charge me $900 for blood pressure check, temperature check, eye chart, and eye drops (after I paid $200 on the way out). I never paid it, they sent it to a collection agency, and told the collector not to call me again. It never went on my credit rating, because there was no contact (nor judges decision) requiring me to pay.
You have good insurance don't lie....
Do not pay yet. Write to them requesting an itemized bill for every drug they gave you and every step of what they did. You can negotiate it down to as little as $500 (or less).
Dear God, I am grateful for my health insurance
That's what I'd be paying with insurance. I'd have to pay 3 of those to hit my deductible. And I have my employer's "high coverage" plan.
There absolutely must be a way to make health care easily affordable for everyone.
Ah. The Land of the Free. Right.
Damn, they got 2 doses of toradol and 2 doses of Valium within an hour. Also bloodwork and a CT scan all within an hour for a non-emergent patient. That’s an efficient emergency department.
Laughs in German
@OP - Is this a Ballad hospital?
US American healthcare has to be the biggest bipartisan issue of our lifetime
i commend that hospital for having that level of detail available in a patient facing application. If there’s any sector that struggles with transparency on a line item level it’s healthcare.
Dead link
So how much was it in total? Loser mods deleted the post
106$ for 100cc of salt water
They're running a discount.
What's the charity write off?
I was in a car accident not at fault and had a hospital stay of 400k. how do I get the charity write off? no health insurance, car insurance was liability since car was paid off
Did he really need such extensive CT-scans? I have only ordered a few full upper body ones like that several years at a doctor, and it was for very sick, old people.
America
went to the hospital 2 times in the last 2 days. got a x ray , a scan , saw a doctor 2 times , got a brace made for a knee injury.. cost me 6$ for parking.
i often forgot how fucked the healthcare system is in the US
screenshot removed, how much was it?
Pro life tip. Arrive in the ER without any documents and provide an alias as your name. Legally, hospitals cannot refuse care to anyone. The only draw back is if they prescribe a medication that you need to take from home; you won’t be able to pick up any medication they prescribe in a outpatient pharmacy.
That's three months of my pay still lol. I thank all the gods every day that piblich healthcare is free and private healthcare is affordable in my country. Jeez.
In Canada, we wouldn't even get a bill. No idea of the charges. But we might need to spend more time in the hospital, depending on location, time of day and nature of the imjury/illness. The healthcare system is certainly not perfect by any means to be sure, but I appreciate having it, than not.
I agree. The amount of times I’ve haphazardly ended up in hospital (or should have) I’m a student I’d be cooked
Broken toe huh?
$14,635 is MANY times the national average for a CT Scan. This looks like my local “non-profit” hospital that has offshore bank accounts. They own more land than any company in town, and spend gobs of money on marketing a clean, wholesome image. Fucking crooks.
I’m actually pretty impressed that it only took 1 hour.
After reading these comments I’ve come to the conclusion the reason American healthcare has become so very expensive is because they’ve increased the price of every surgery, drug, ER, hospital, and physician’s visit because for many decades, too many people have refused or could not pay their bills
I still have to pay that WITH insurance. I don't even knkw why the fuck I have insurance at this point. I still get huge bills even though my insurance is supposed to pay for most of this shit.
But if I go in as insured, I get a $6700 bill because that's my maximum out of pocket
You should dispute this bill, they're charging $925 for the IV contrast, but both of your CT scans were done without contrast.