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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

#331

Post by lacker »

sriram_sun wrote: post #243
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.

I believe there should be legal consequences for getting things this wrong. Wondering how they came up with the $19,000 number. Also, in speaking with a vascular surgeon I know, their hourly rate is between 200-350/hr. The middlemen and hospitals have figured out how to milk this cow and they're feasting.

Hospitals should be required to publicly post prices, just like fast food restaurants are now required (in some places) to publicly post the calories for each dish.

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

#332

Post by nojvek »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #246
sriram_sun wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe there should be legal consequences for getting things this wrong. Wondering how they came up with the $19,000 number. Also, in speaking with a vascular surgeon I know, their hourly rate is between 200-350/hr. The middlemen and hospitals have figured out how to milk this cow and they're feasting.

Absolutely, and it is this sort of practice that all Americans could get behind legislation that made it illegal. Unfortunately we can't seem to have a civil discussion on health care to find the issues we have in common.

Our total bill for a normal delivery was 25k. 25k for a doctor and nurse to pull a baby out of the vag!

It took 2 months for the bill to arrive.

Healthcare in US is like legal extortion. You could literally bill for breathing hospital air and people would have to pay.

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

#333

Post by sneak »

sturgill wrote: post #254
rdtsc wrote: post #52

> St. David’s HealthCare defended its handling of Calver’s bill and sought to blame the school district and Aetna for offering such a narrow network. So while dying of a heart attack he should have been negotiating with the ambulance driver, the paramedics, the nurses, each intern and doctor to make sure they are "in-network". > St. David’s said it was now willing to accept $782.29 to resolve the $108,951 balance bec…

I once got cut by a skate playing hockey. Showed up at the hospital pulsing blood from my leg. My first question to them, “Do you take X insurance?” Only after they assured me that my insurance would be accepted did I drag my bloody leg into the care room. Turns out the doctor that the hospital assigned to me did _not_ take my insurance. I got billed the full amount, yelled very loudly at lots of people, and when I “…

A good start would have them providing a price list, up front, so you can intelligently request transport to a hospital that doesn’t have a 1000% markup on parts, and reasonable charges on labor.

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

#334

Post by amanaplanacanal »

leesalminen wrote: post #306
jimbokun wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 curr…

> dysfunctional right now Just now? It’s seemed dysfunctional to me since I was capable of understanding government, circa 15 years ago. My parents felt the same way 30 years ago, and their parents felt the same way 50 years ago.

It's dysfunctionaler.

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

#335

Post by ako »

The US is proof that a free-market system for healthcare does not work. This is also illustrated by all the stories here.

For free-market to work, a consumer needs to be able clearly understand what he is buying and how much it will cost before he consumes whatever he buys. This allows him to shop around, and find the best seller and price.

The current system just drives prices up instead of down, as the seller, who is in it for the profit, can set his prices after the goods have been bought. Ofcourse prices will go up, there's no competition anymore, as the buyer has already consumed the goods.

Trying to make this transparent before an operation would not work. It would just turn healthcare into another IT project, where seller will offer you the lowest prices, and then come up with extra-work that also needs to be done. Image being operated on, and the surgeon informs you they've discovered some required extra work, asking you if you will agree with the additional cost...

It's clear to me that healthcare and free-market are an incompatible combination, it needs to be heavily regulated, and probably single-payer.

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

#336

Post by amanaplanacanal »

krupan wrote: post #209

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…

You are absolutely right, but we should probably just stop calling it "insurance", since it is nothing like what you are talking about. It's more like a pre-paid health plan. You pay a certain amount per month, and the plan pays for your health care. It's more like a co-op.

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

#337

Post by smsm42 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #246
sriram_sun wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe there should be legal consequences for getting things this wrong. Wondering how they came up with the $19,000 number. Also, in speaking with a vascular surgeon I know, their hourly rate is between 200-350/hr. The middlemen and hospitals have figured out how to milk this cow and they're feasting.

Absolutely, and it is this sort of practice that all Americans could get behind legislation that made it illegal. Unfortunately we can't seem to have a civil discussion on health care to find the issues we have in common.

Medical billing is a nightmare. I have HMO insurance (which means the process should be really streamlined - everything is in-house) and I once tried to figure out why certain rather simple bill item was billed certain cost. It took about three weeks, multiple calls and emails, and speaking to several people, to get to the stage where they said "this is probably because if it was classified as code X, though we can not give you rules why it is code X and not code Y, and there's no way to know upfront which it would be, we'll just send you the bill later and you pay whatever we say" and even then they couldn't answer why sometimes they billed certain percentage upfront and sometimes another, so that you end up getting different pre-payments and different bills for the same thing. This whole thing is an ungodly mess.

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

#338

Post by kamaal »

sriram_sun wrote: post #243
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.

I believe there should be legal consequences for getting things this wrong. Wondering how they came up with the $19,000 number. Also, in speaking with a vascular surgeon I know, their hourly rate is between 200-350/hr. The middlemen and hospitals have figured out how to milk this cow and they're feasting.

This isn't just restricted to US. It has become very common even in a country like India for doctors and hospital owners to invite their doctor buddies for 'second opinions' and looking at non-issues and then billing the patients 'consulting fees'.

There is also a huge industry built along the lines of phony testing.

The term used for that think is called 'basin test', basically samples are flushed down the basin and made up numbers are put in reports. You can put in what you like as the doctors know the patient is healthy.

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

#339

Post by agumonkey »

pc86 wrote: post #45
agumonkey wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The power of companies. They write words and numbers on a stamped letter and now it's god spell. I once played dumb to an importer abusing fees, after monthes of bouncing mails to different people babbling the same thing over and over, then dealing with a 'lawyer firm' who behaved the same (basically nobody knew precisely what they were talking about). They suddenly accepted to give me a rebate of NN%. So I received…

I don't think anyone is treating the company's word as law. Just about everything is open to negotiation just about all of the time. I'm assuming you mean "gospel" and not the 1971 Broadway musical.

People have and will pay the minute they receive an official looking letter.

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

#340

Post by zaarn »

nojvek wrote: post #332
ChuckMcM wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, and it is this sort of practice that all Americans could get behind legislation that made it illegal. Unfortunately we can't seem to have a civil discussion on health care to find the issues we have in common.

Our total bill for a normal delivery was 25k. 25k for a doctor and nurse to pull a baby out of the vag! It took 2 months for the bill to arrive. Healthcare in US is like legal extortion. You could literally bill for breathing hospital air and people would have to pay.

>You could literally bill for breathing hospital air and people would have to pay.

Don't be ridiculous. You'd be billed for air and hospital odor separately!

Though I should note that a delivery is usually more complex than simply waiting there for the little one to fall out, there is some after care and such that is being performed plus the doctor is usually not that cheap either. (They have a lot of student debt to pay off after all)

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