Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

khn.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 377 posts

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

#281

Post by antisthenes »

logfromblammo wrote: post #263
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…

Nope. No way. Have we learned nothing from "fulfilled by Amazon" counterfeits? The supply chain has to be verifiable as genuine goods from the factory to the hospital floor. Trying to verify the authenticity of patient-supplied replacements would be a nightmare.

Then force hospitals to price match or force them to show YOU, the customer, how much the item actually cost when it was delivered to them for storage.

I wasn't actually seriously suggesting that patients be required to source the item physically, then physically deliver it to the hospital in person.

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

#282

Post by int_19h »

Scarblac wrote: post #61
InclinedPlane wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think someone who is staring at bankruptcy is going to say to themselves "I know what I'll do, I'll spend thousands of dollars I don't have on a lawyer to solve this problem for other people in 5 years"?

You're right, that's unrealistic. In fact this sort of thing is why government was invented.

You need a government that is responsible to its citizens. We don't have that - we have a government that is responsible to its biggest donors. The more some company or some industry can abuse the market to extract insane profits, the more they can lobby the legislatures to cover their ass and secure their business model.

And it's not just health insurance. Case in point: we have companies writing tax accounting software lobbying against simplification of tax code. And it works!

https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11320386/turbotax-boycott-lobb...

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

#284

Post by keithnz »

From outside of the US, it baffles me ( and I'm sure others ) why the US doesn't embrace governement based healthcare. We pay the same kinds of tax rates etc and don't have to pay for health insurance on top of that(though you can get extra health insurance for pretty cheap if you want). It's kind of like governement education which the US does pay for up to a certain point. Not only is it worth educating your population, it's worth looking after their health as well.

The amount of misery and unpayable debt it seems to cause people who live in the US seems really unecessary. Not to mention nearly everyone in good heealth has a certain level of anxiety about whether their insurance is good enough and will cover them.

Mind you guns also seem unecessary yet the general response to that seems to be, It's ok, we will live with our fear and everyone should be carrying guns and make it so everyone needs to be prepared to kill other people in gun fights. If you get wounded of course, then prepare for living the rest of your life in medical debt.. :I

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

#285

Post by jimbokun »

senorjazz wrote: post #271
dawnerd wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are surprised when I tell them I simply refused the 3k dollar (after insurance) couple hour hospital bill for having the flu. They couldn't tell me why two tylenols, a saline drip, and a prescription cost that much. (I was vomiting blood which is why I was taken in). They ended up dropping the bill altogether as insurance had already paid them.

> They couldn't tell me why two tylenols, a saline drip, and a prescription cost that much I know the US system is different to what I grew up with (UK NHS), but I have had similar "treatment" when ill as a tourist in 3rd world countries: couple of pills / drip. I understand that the difference of systems in regards to extensive care, but a couple of pills and a drip - why on earth is such basic care just not free to…

Have you been following the quality of people running our government?

I mean, I know this seems like just a snarky political comment. But it's just the honest answer. Our federal government is simply completely dysfunctional right now, incapable of solving anything.

For what it's worth, "Medicare for All" has been polling increasingly higher recently, due to more Americans being basically ready to give up on the current private system entirely.

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

#286

Post by asendra »

krupan wrote: post #249
Terr_ wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you're joking, but that's a pretty lazy fallacy of composition there. Ex: Human memory sucks, but you can generally trust the immutability of books, despite them being written and copied and bound and distributed and sold by humans. It's all about using strengths in the right direction and order to sidestep weaknesses.

Fallacy of composition says I look at a few stupid humans and decide that all humans are stupid. That's what the person who I was replying to was doing in reply to my original post. I was trying to point out that if their supposition is true then we are all screwed no matter what. Fortunately their supposition is false. Humans are not generally shortsighted and stupid, if you give them a chance.

Does this mean the average American is shortsighted and stupid then?

“But the average American has less than $4,000 in savings, while 57% of U.S. adults have less than $1,000 to their names.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/budget-...

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

#287

Post by amichal »

NTDF9 wrote: post #218

Has anyone in the US considered flying overseas to get treatment done? Many hospitals in third world countries are cheaper and more humane. Sure, you lose out on the ability to sue them if things go awry but where is the tradeoff between six figure debt at an old age vs paying $10000 to get the whole thing done?

Not intentionally but this happened to me. I have bad adult asthma and spent 6hr in an my in network ER (on the advice of my pcp) a couple of years ago. Got some meds a chest X-ray (turns out I had pneumonia!) and got sent home stablized. my bill for the 6h (with BCBS insurance) was ~$3k. Last year I was in Japan for 2 weeks and again got sick. After avoiding it for a few days I again went to the ER and got the same treatments/test (this time it was only the flu). Bill (no insurance at all) $200. Round trip direct flight to Japan from my house is $1300 and takes less then a day. Makes me think what I might want to do next time...

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

#288

Post by dragonwriter »

keithnz wrote: post #284

From outside of the US, it baffles me ( and I'm sure others ) why the US doesn't embrace governement based healthcare. We pay the same kinds of tax rates etc and don't have to pay for health insurance on top of that(though you can get extra health insurance for pretty cheap if you want). It's kind of like governement education which the US does pay for up to a certain point. Not only is it worth educating your popula…

> From outside of the US, it baffles me ( and I'm sure others ) why the US doesn't embrace governement based healthcare.

The US has had majority public support for fully-public healthcare for at least ~30 years.

What it has lacked—even among politicians championing “healthcare reform” like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—is politicians willing to challenge the insurance industry even with the backing of majority public support.

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

#289

Post by whamlastxmas »

DesiLurker wrote: post #143
swebs wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here's a handy list of all representatives and how much they took from healthcare lobbyists. https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary.php?ind=H&cyc...

whats amazing to me is how little money it takes to sway a politicians vote. yes there are big numbers in the list but most of them are 10s of thousands. its just amazing that they are willing to put their conscience aside and condemn people to bankruptcy or worse for that little. for the worshipers of free market they sure are selling themselves off cheap.

The problem isn't that they're bought with $10k. They're approached and told "Take this money or we'll give your competitor $5 million to campaign and take your place". And they know they follow through with the threats, so they take the $10k.

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

#290

Post by observer12 »

dawnerd wrote: post #276
defen wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just let it go to collections. You'll get harassed for a little over a year. Debt older than a year is almost never pursued by collections agencies. I don't understand. Is there no penalty to not paying other than a hit on your credit score? Can't you end up with wage garnishments or liens or something like that?

It'll definitely show up on your credit report. The key is a lot of lenders supposedly will just look past it. Ultimately it's up to them if you get a loan or not, not just based on the number alone.

One caveat, you definitely want to contest the debt in writing regularly. If it goes away because the collector failed to respond you are fine. If it goes away because they "forgive" the debt, its seen as income by the IRS and you will pay taxes on it. So imagine the tax bill if 200K of "income" is added to your taxes one year.
Post reply on HN