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I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

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Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#91

Post by dmitrygr »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #87
leesalminen wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$20,000 is nothing for litigation these days. Most advise planning for a minimum of $50,000 or $100,000 to fight something out with a judge.

Serious question that I feel I already know the answer to but, how do people afford to defend themselves if the costs are that high?!

Serious, and depressing, answer. They don't. This is why plea bargaining is rampant in America. It isn't necessarily very fair, because for many people this ends up ruining their lives. But facing the choice of POTENTIALLY going to prison for a number of years, and to jail for weeks awaiting trial, or pleading guilty to something that does not put them jail at all, they choose the latter (since a few weeks of absence from the world messes your life up quite a bit if you didn't prepare - you'd lose your job, maybe apartment). Even if that plea forever taints them in the eyes of employers

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#92

Post by lazyasciiart »

brightball wrote: post #70
jastanton wrote: post #6

I was nodding along until this: > They posted my entire medical record, including notes about my mental health, my bills, my insurance info, my driver’s license, birth date and home address,” she said. wow. That violates HIPAA law. The counter-sue is going to be huge. Also, I had a related issue where a doctor threatened to sue based on my yelp review. I cut the review back to verifiable facts instead of opinion and…

My question around reviews in medical is always around how a physician is supposed to be able to respond because of HIPAA? It almost seems unfair to be able to review them since there is very little they can do to refute anything without violating it. It seems like there should be some special set of rules around medical reviews, in my opinion at least.

Reviews are opinions. Some of them are lies. Some of them are fake. It is almost never a good idea for a business to try a detailed rebuttal to a negative review, no different for doctors.

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#93

Post by lazyasciiart »

duked wrote: post #78

I just went on their yelp page and was noticed a huge spike in negative review (talk about the streisand effect...). but what surprised me was the yelp notification: "Active Cleanup Alert This business recently made waves in the news, which often means that people come to this page to post their views on the news. While we don’t take a stand one way or the other when it comes to these news events, we do work to remov…

That doesn't say "everything during that period". It sounds like they're going to remove all the stuff like "I've never been here but they sound evil 1 star!"

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#94

Post by [deleted] »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #66
ssijak wrote: post #45

One thing that sticks to me when I read such articles (I am not from US) is how ridiculously pricey medical services are. Common, 1k$ for a regular exam that costs like 20euros in my country in private clinics?! And I read about this ridiculous prices US so often that I am dumbstruck that people are cool with it. Another thing that struck me is that if you don`t have money, evil people can just silence you by suing y…

The "prices" are moves in a game played between hospitals and insurance providers, and don't correspond to anything real or to the amount that gets paid. If a hospital discovers that the patient doesn't have insurance they'll be charged the real (more reasonable) prices instead.

[deleted]

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#95

Post by [deleted] »

mschuster91 wrote: post #17

A variation of this scam is also endemic in the German mandatory insurance system (e.g. http://www.ln-online.de/Lokales/Luebeck/Krankenkassen-betrog... ). In contrast to privately insured people (basically, public servants, company founders, rich and ultra rich) who get to see the bills of the medical provider, they can bill the "common" insurance providers (GKV, Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung) directly without the…

[deleted]

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#96

Post by mnm1 »

ssijak wrote: post #45

One thing that sticks to me when I read such articles (I am not from US) is how ridiculously pricey medical services are. Common, 1k$ for a regular exam that costs like 20euros in my country in private clinics?! And I read about this ridiculous prices US so often that I am dumbstruck that people are cool with it. Another thing that struck me is that if you don`t have money, evil people can just silence you by suing y…

Half or almost half of the population here would let you die of curable sickness or disease just to save a couple bucks (for what purpose, I'm not sure, probably to kill more Arabs or line rich people's pockets). When you understand the underlying hate in America, all the things you list above become obvious as to why they exist. But look on the bright side: if you're lucky enough you can be here profiting off of all these sick people's misery instead of being one of them. You just need to be born in the right family at the right time. That's what most Americans hope for: that they were born to the right family at the right time instead of the one they were born into. Because they sure aren't about to change social class after being born...

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#97

Post by OscarCunningham »

nambit wrote: post #79
OscarCunningham wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "prices" are moves in a game played between hospitals and insurance providers, and don't correspond to anything real or to the amount that gets paid. If a hospital discovers that the patient doesn't have insurance they'll be charged the real (more reasonable) prices instead.

Millions of americans pay those sticker prices. Just because millions more don't or get discounts doesn't change the fact that those are very real prices.

Yes. The system is bad.

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#98

Post by SolarNet »

Nadya wrote: post #34
jastanton wrote: post #6

I was nodding along until this: > They posted my entire medical record, including notes about my mental health, my bills, my insurance info, my driver’s license, birth date and home address,” she said. wow. That violates HIPAA law. The counter-sue is going to be huge. Also, I had a related issue where a doctor threatened to sue based on my yelp review. I cut the review back to verifiable facts instead of opinion and…

>Wow. That violates HIPAA law. The counter-sue is going to be huge. Basically an open and shut case too. Assuming they were smart enough to "correct" the mistake it may not be a Tier 4 ($50,000+) violation, but instead a Tier 3 violation ($10,000 - $50,000 per violation) of willful neglect. I'm not sure if each violation above would be considered a single large violation or multiple small violations ( 1 violation vs…

The quote is taken out of context I think (this is a tabloid) the doctor probably posted the information to the court docket under seal at the request of the judge or at least probably in accordance with the law.

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#99

Post by shanecleveland »

I had a terrible experience with a vacation rental, so I left a brutally honest review. Was aggressively met with verbal lawsuit threats. I ended up talking with the owner quite a bit about how disappointing of an experience it was for us. I agreed to remove the original review in replace of a less "colorful" one. He at least said he understood some points and agreed to make some changes. But I got the feeling it was common for him to use these scare tactics to prevent bad reviews. And it worked. Not worth it to me to fight this battle, so I chose not to provide another review. I just wanted to prevent others from going through the same thing. The rental site was of no help and said they don't get involved.

In this case, the doctors bigger concern may be insurance fraud , if overcharging and/or performing unnecessary procedures.

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#100

Post by dang »

tabtab wrote: post #49
heisenbit wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deliberately writing bills for services not performed is fraud. Of course there can be billing mistakes and corner cases where it is not clear what exactly has been performed. Excessive billing that goes beyond what insurance pay can motivate people to fight back... There are so many things wrong in how the doctor behaved it is mind-boggling and a big red flag. Fighting angry and stupid people in court is best avoide…

Re: Of course there can be billing mistakes and corner cases where it is not clear what exactly has been performed... This is where good lawyers know how to play. They have experience. Unless the consumer's layers are equally skilled/powerful, usually the deeper pockets win, I hate to say. It's why the rich get richer while the rest get [bleeped]. It's one of the reasons Hillary was unlikely to be jailed for being sl…

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