211–220 of 249 posts
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As a US citizen, how is that not a lawsuit?
As a non US citizen, saving your eye sight is more important than losing it for an opportunity to sue?
Basically, she would be compensated, and it would serve as a deterrent to our US hospital system to not behave as poorly.
I would even argue it is discrimination based on nationality.
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You forgot: 3. This is actually a good thing, because we get health care when we need it and aren't exposed to crippling debt? (your system entirely indefensible from every possible view point)
aren't exposed to crippling debt Whoa there. My family has a good friend whose child was born with a severe genetic disease in Canada. They are paying a ton out of pocket for care for their child since the gov't doesn't pay (night nurse, some physiotherapy). Both parents are having to work full time just to pay the medical bills. For your average Canadian everything gets paid for, but if you have special needs, you'r…
(indeed, it's unfortunate for your friend and I'm sorry that they're in that situation)
For the average person though (which, when we talk about American healthcare, is largely who we are discussing), and a for the majority of the population, things work out very differently. Myself and the members of my family have had countless hospital stays, ER visits, surgeries, checkups, ambulance rides (approx $300 flat fee), assessments, scans and x-rays. All without any of us carrying any debt or dealing with any related financial hardship (lower tax bracket, so no special benefit plans or anything).
Friend's kid's appendix needed removal, multiple night stay at the hospital. No cost. What does that look like in America?
I had a deviated septum and didn't breath great. I breath just fine now after my totally covered septoplasty. What does that look like in America?
Kids recently got strep throat and needed a doctors appointment to get a prescription for antibiotics ($42 to cover the prescription) What does that look like in America? (honestly I'm curious about this one, would it be more than a couple hundred dollars for that?)
edit (spelling)
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> so balance billing to that would be a net negative actually If the regulated standard treatment costs were somehow lower than the actual delivery costs, sure. But how on eath could that happen? It's in everyone's best interest for hospital administrators to be heavily involved in setting these costs, and they have no interest in losing money.
Hospital administrators are the problem. They don't contribute to medical care, and their job is to increase profit that goes to higher salaries of themselves and other administrators. Regarding balance billing: If Medicaid pays $100 for a $500 procedure, and private insurance pays $400 with the expectation of a 20% coinsurance from the patient but patient refuses to pay, who is going to pay the other $100? Is the ex…
On what planet would the special interest groups responsible for setting reimbursements make it less than the cost of delivery?
Let's try again:
> If a medical provider overcharges $100 for a $400 procedure
Ok now your position makes more sense. Debt recovery is a well-known problem and yes, providers write it off or sell the debt on.
> What other business exists where it's ok for people to get something and refuse to pay the bill?
Loans, contracts, anything covered by tort law really.
How can people read and hear about stories like this, and even possibly think it's OK or even normal? How do lawmakers in the USA convince people that this is acceptable? I have never directly paid a single cent for healthcare, and neither has anyone I know. When I had to get 6 stitches in my forehead at 2 AM on a Sunday morning, it cost me nothing. When my friend needed to get the tip of his finger reattached, it co…
When comparing different health care systems there are dozens, probably even hundreds, of points they can be compared on.
If a US politician or party advocating universal, affordable, effective healthcare uses Australia, or Canada, or the UK, or Germany, or any other specific system as a model, or even just as an example to compare to, their opponents can find for that specific system something that it does not handle as well as the US currently does. They use those to convince their constituents that the current US system is better than the proposed replacement.
If the politician advocating change does not reference specific other systems, then their opponents say they are pushing for a government takeover of healthcare using an untried, untested system based just on theory and speculation.
Another thing they like to do is label every other system as "socialized medicine", and paint a picture of adopting such a system meaning we will have to go to government assigned doctors who work in government owned hospitals and deal with a giant, intrusive, inefficient bureaucracy for every medical thing we do no matter how minor.
I paid $5500 last year for an unnecessary emergency room visit (doctor sent me down to get a scan). They wired me up to machines and made me wait 5 hours for the scan, then 3 hours to get discharged. They wouldn’t let me leave until the doctor on duty wrote up her treatment recommendation. Even though I was just there for a scan. No insurance last year so after my “35% cash payer discount” it came out to $5500 after…
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Why didn't you just wait to see your primary physician?
Lay people don't have the training to determine if an ailment is life-threatening or not; that's why they pay for insurance, so they can see a medical professional who is qualified to say if you could die or not.
Emergency rooms should be for emergencies. You yourself will know if you are about to die.
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I've never met anyone (of either party) who thinks that stories like this are acceptable. The issue, as always, is how do we fix it? Pointing to European democracies merely shows that it can be done, it doesn't necessarily offer a blueprint for how to make it happen in a country with very different size and culture. Bernie Sanders' "medicare for all" is the plan I've seen get the most support. If we got single payer…
We are on pace to run a $1 trillion deficit this year thanks to the Republican tax cuts. Simply rescinding the cuts and putting things back they way they were in 2017 gets us about 2/3 of the way to paying the cost of Medicare for all. It can be done, we the people need to stand up and demand it while voting in leaders who will make it happen.
So let's say we want to add Bernie's $1.4 trillion Medicare-for-all to 2020's projected budget of $4.6 trillion -- we're now spending about $6 trillion total in 2020. To maintain the same annual deficit we have in 2017, we'd need tax receipts of $5.3 trillion, or 24% of the projected GDP. If we wanted to balance the budget, we'd need tax receipts of $6 trillion, or 27% of GDP. That is massively higher than the US has ever been able to get. Undoing the Republican tax cuts would barely put a dent in it.
Since raising revenue to 27% of GDP through aggressive taxation is unrealistic, let's say we could do 20% of GDP -- Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter era policies were able to reach that level. That means we need to raise $6 trillion in 2020, and we need that to be 20% of GDP. So our GDP in 2020 would have to be $30 trillion. We would need to sustain 16% annual economic growth during a period of record taxation to get there. The growth has never been that high, not even during record booms, and we would need to reach it and sustain it for three years straight.
Bottom line, if you want Medicare-for-all, you're going to have to accept much higher annual deficits than this country has ever seen -- and that's after a major tax increase on the rich.
The data supporting this post is here: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-an...
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Does this actually work? Won't they detain you and call the police like a shop or restaurant would if you don't pay the bill?
You forgot the "They must treat you by law" part. You are effectively coercing them into treating you when you walk in the door.
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If you use insurance they are less willing to negotiate. (but you are getting the negotiated price anyway; the paranoid part of my brain thinks they run a scam here by recoding bills that come after the deductible has been met, which is a different sort of negotiation than agreeing on prices for services)
The urgent care clinic near me will charge $200 for a visit if you show insurance. If you claim to not have insurance, the same visit is $80.
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You forgot: 3. Canadians pay for their health care in tax, anyways. (However: https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0411/do-canadian... )
You forgot: 3. This is actually a good thing, because we get health care when we need it and aren't exposed to crippling debt? (your system entirely indefensible from every possible view point)