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Insured, but Still Owing $109K for a Heart Attack

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Re: Insured, but Still Owing $109K for a Heart Attack

#201

Post by HamSession »

dalore wrote: post #180
HamSession wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of factors that can go into heart disease. Some of these factors are: 1. Under/over working out, especially for white men over working out can lead to increased shear stress on the arteries 2. Genetic familia hypercholesterolemia aka high cholesterol. This is caught by a blood test and fixed with statins. 3. High Blood Pressure again exams and medication 4. Size of ldl particles, this one is new 5. Ge…

There is a faulty assumption that higher cholesterol leads to higher risk of heart disease, but the fact the opposite is true. http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2016/11/familial-hypercholesterol... A few of the other facts/assumptions you make are outdated. Statins do very little to improve mortality. Inflammation can be reduced by cutting out carbs and sugar. Eating more saturated fats and omega 3 also reduces your risk of…

I wouldn't put much faith into the non ldl hypothesis we have extensive studies that show that lower cholesterol (total and ldl) cause less myocardial infarctions.

[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa1405386 People with a gene that naturally produces lower ldl levels lead to less Hard CD events.

[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Statins cause less heart disease and strokes even more than originally thought.

[3] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Even if people with low risk factors cutting LDL with stains causes lower number of events

Re: Insured, but Still Owing $109K for a Heart Attack

#202

Post by chatmasta »

megamindbrian2 wrote: post #168

Another easy solution, file for bankruptcy. No sane judge will kick a family out of their house over a medical bill. That would be counter productive to their recovery and cause undue hardship. If you don't see the utility in bankruptcy, just remember our President has used it several times over decades. Edit: it's also known as unsecured-debt, which means the worst thing anyone can try to do to you is ruin your cred…

Bankruptcy really is the ultimate medical insurance. In fact, when so many people don't even have $2k in liquid assets, it almost makes more sense to skip paying actual medical insurance, and just declare bankruptcy in the event of massive medical bills.

What that doesn't help with, though, is something like being diagnosed with a chronic condition where pills cost $800 a pop.

Re: Insured, but Still Owing $109K for a Heart Attack

#203

Post by krupan »

cimmanom wrote: post #190
theseatoms wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Price has become divorced from end user value basically anywhere you look in the medical field.

So... When you're in the ambulance dying of a heart attack, you're supposed to be negotiating over your saline drip or on the phone with another ambulance company looking for a better deal?

Maybe if you had picked an example of some medical supply that is used only in emergencies your sentiment would make sense. The price of saline, and nearly all medical supplies, absolutely could be subjected to market pressures in the majority of medical situations, which would drive the price down for everyone, even for heart attack victims.

Re: Insured, but Still Owing $109K for a Heart Attack

#205

Post by krupan »

0x7f800000 wrote: post #130
maxxxxx wrote: post #35

How is a regular person who has other things to do than to read and understated all the details and traps of his health insurance supposed to navigate this insane system? From what I read going to a hospital is pretty much a gamble that has a certain probability to bankrupt you and there is pretty much nothing you can do about it. There should be bipartisan agreement that these practices are just not acceptable and t…

Yes, I demand full and final information about what the heart attack I am currently suffering is going to cost me to be treated at this hospital. If I think you are trying to extort me, I am just going to go to another hospital.

I'm actually not sure if you are being serious. If the information on costs for emergency services were clear and available up front people could shop around ahead of time and basically write up a living will saying, if I have a heart attack, take me here.

Insurance companies are the reason the costs are not clear and up front.

Re: Insured, but Still Owing $109K for a Heart Attack

#206

Post by krupan »

dcosson wrote: post #81

I feel like whenever I hear crazy stories like this about healthcare it usually involves these weird in or out of network issues. I'm certainly not an expert on healthcare, but is there no way to attack the problem from this angle? If you have a hospital with a certain list price for a particular procedure, why is it legal for them to charge one insurance company 5% of that price and charge another insurance company…

Prices, more and more, are negotiated between very few providers and customers. It's like there are 3 fruit stands and 3 buyers of fruit, and those three buyers of fruit are willing to buy huge quantities of fruit (provide a hospital business with lots of patients) as long as the fruit stand meets their price demands. The fruit stand can take it our leave it. If they leave it, they lose out on 1/3 of their potential sales. They go through this kind of negotiation with each of the three fruit sellers every so often.

This is far from an ideal free market.

Re: Insured, but Still Owing $109K for a Heart Attack

#207

Post by JumpCrisscross »

antisthenes wrote: post #165
FireBeyond wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you realize that the hospital was charging $19,000 for a stent that cost $1,500, you realize that painting Calver as someone who is going to cost us all money is misdirected anger. And, to be clear, they charged $19,000 for the stent, not "stent plus theater time to place it plus surgeon, anesthesiology, OR nurses", of course not. Those are all absolutely billed separately.

Hospitals should be legally mandated to accept replacement of materials in lieu of payment. If I can source the same stents for cheaper than the hospital bills me, they should be required to erase them from the bill and accept them as material replacement. It's not as if medical supplies are unavailable to the end consumer. https://www.esutures.com/product/0-in-date/41-boston-scienti... Here are the stents available…

> never ever pay what you were sent from the hospital right away

This is actually good advice. It shocked me when I realised it. But it’s good advice.

Re: Insured, but Still Owing $109K for a Heart Attack

#208

Post by mfringel »

krupan wrote: post #205
0x7f800000 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I demand full and final information about what the heart attack I am currently suffering is going to cost me to be treated at this hospital. If I think you are trying to extort me, I am just going to go to another hospital.

I'm actually not sure if you are being serious. If the information on costs for emergency services were clear and available up front people could shop around ahead of time and basically write up a living will saying, if I have a heart attack, take me here. Insurance companies are the reason the costs are not clear and up front.

"Sorry, sir. Your spouse's living will restricted emergency care provider vendors such that she was unable to receive care in time. With our CareWatch(tm) package, we can give you geo-fence alerts with response times that would be outside your living will provider preference range. Press one to be connected with a sales associate."

Re: Insured, but Still Owing $109K for a Heart Attack

#209

Post by krupan »

Here's the deal. Insurance is a simple concept. Take house fires. They are fairly rare, but they do happen. We could all just save up enough money to cover a house fire ourselves, or, since we know that house fires are rare, we can pool our money together as friends and neighbors and when one of us in that pool gets unlucky and has their house burn down, it can be covered by insurance. A lot of us pay a little money for peace of mind that if a rare catastrophic event does hit us, we'll be OK.

This same concept applies to some medical issues, but there are a lot of medical issues it does not apply to. Getting a routine infection and needing antibiotics? Everyone is going to need that. It makes no sense to pool our money and pay out for the rare person that needs money for that. How many other medical expenses are like that? Even things that are rare for a group of 20-year olds like heart attacks are actually a lot less rare (more common than house fires, probably) for an older age group. So while it might make sense for a group of 20-year olds to pool money together to pay for the rare heart attack amongst that group, it might not make any sense for an over-50 group of people to do that same. It definitely doesn't make sense for a 20-year old to join that group. Yet this is exactly what we do. We all pool our money together and use it to pay for every medical expense that comes up. Minor infection? Use insurance! Need a couple stitches? Use insurance. Routine screening? Wow, didn't see that coming, good thing I have insurance.

This is insane, and this is the root of all our problems.

Re: Insured, but Still Owing $109K for a Heart Attack

#210

Post by antisthenes »

mythrowaway1124 wrote: post #182
antisthenes wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hospitals should be legally mandated to accept replacement of materials in lieu of payment. If I can source the same stents for cheaper than the hospital bills me, they should be required to erase them from the bill and accept them as material replacement. It's not as if medical supplies are unavailable to the end consumer. https://www.esutures.com/product/0-in-date/41-boston-scienti... Here are the stents available…

Honest question - does this really work? I have tried it once or twice without success. Are there particular 'magic phrases' you need to use, or is it jut a question of persistence? Does it impact your credit?

> Are there particular 'magic phrases' you need to use, or is it jut a question of persistence?

My situations varied, but when I had no insurance and was living off of savings, I found a generic "hardship" form and explained my situation to them - they waived 80% of the fee without much resistance. This is compared to the laughable discount of 2% they offered me on the spot if I paid in cash (at the moment of the visit)

In other situations, I'd imagine it's more a question of persistence, but I'd venture to say you can knock off at least 50% on _any_ hospital bill.

I recently bought a house, and my credit was 800+, so I don't think it does in any appreciable way.

That wasn't the gist of my post though. I was advocating more to resist the bullshit and to legislate something that allows the customer to replace materials instead of paying a hugely marked up item.

Same concept would be applicable, for example, for a car mechanic shop. Just because they billed me $600 for brake pads doesn't mean that they've actually provided me with a 10x markup of value on having bought brake pads myself for $60 - at some point this needs to be treated as "usury" (I don't know if there's a word for exorbitant markup on a regular good).

Another thing I would add - don't put your social security number on medical forms. I've never seen it enforced and there's no medical reason for them to have it.

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