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

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101–110 of 268 posts

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

#101

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…

Detailed anonymous review, no one can sue you.

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

#103
Yelp ought to stick up for the reviewers, at least in some small capacity. I mean, if people feel like they can't be honest in Yelp reviews without getting sued, doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of Yelp?

I'd hate to see it become another ZocDoc, where five stars reviews are copypasted ad infinitum.

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

#104
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…

Yes. Evil people can just silence you by suing you, and yes, you cannot afford to defend yourself.

Present company (much of the HN demographic) excepted: a fair number of HN posters are very atypical in terms of their resources for doing things like hiring lawyers.

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

#105
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can explain just that in the response and not much more. Even if the patient reveals PHI you should avoid confirming or acknowledging it as the "covered entity" under HIPAA. A confirmation of a diagnosis is different than a person discussing symptoms. I would argue that you probably should avoid even acknowledging that the person is a patient or has been seen in the office. The approach will reinforce to others h…

It's not unfair in the sense of "advantage over competitors", but it definitely seems unfair in the sense of "not being allowed to publicly refute public allegations against you".

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

#106
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it happened. The story is in a tabloid, and that's such an insanely egregious breach of HIPAA that I'm a little skeptical that it played out exactly like that.

Perhaps not exactly. But of all the tabloids, the NY Post has to be one of the most reputable.

I contend that all tabloids are disreputable.

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

#107
post #96
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…

How can you claim to understand them when you're posting their oppositions propaganda instead of their own arguments? That's like starting a conversation by referring to a pro-choicer as a pro-death... even if you have great arguments against the choice of abortion it's not going to lead to a productive conversation.

As a sibling poster to you said, the ridiculous pricing is part of a game between insurers and care providers. Throwing more money at insurers might not be the ideal answer.

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

#108

Yelp ought to stick up for the reviewers, at least in some small capacity. I mean, if people feel like they can't be honest in Yelp reviews without getting sued, doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of Yelp? I'd hate to see it become another ZocDoc, where five stars reviews are copypasted ad infinitum.

Yelp's customers are the business owners.

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

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a civil case obviously, so all that jail stuff won't apply to this, but just curious... If cheap litigation is 20K, and "battling out with a judge" is 100K how come the first time I'm hearing about this is in a HN comment? Seems like no one is going up to bat against this stuff until it affects them.

Reminds me of that famous poem "First they came for the ..."

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

#110
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.

That's not true at all. I currently have a ~$450 bill for a test where I breathed in a tube for 10 seconds at a constant rate. That's after my insurance paid 4k for it already.
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