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Biggest health insurer plans to deny ER bills if it doubts you had an emergency

arstechnica.com

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Re: Biggest health insurer plans to deny ER bills if it doubts you had an emergency

#71

Post by slownews45 »

safdafh wrote: post #59
slownews45 wrote: post #16

This occurs because it's the area you can get hit with totally extraordinary out of network bills your insurer may have to pay. Super lucrative for hospital / physician / transport providers. Your kid bumps their head. "There was no blood, but the baby was inconsolable. Jang and her husband worried he might have an injury they couldn’t see, so they called 911, and an ambulance took the family — tourists from South Ko…

The counter point to this, is that I know of a family member went to the ER after passing out (after the 2nd incident) and was able to diagnose a life threatening condition. If they had a healthcare plan like this, they would have probably not gotten care and would be at risk, because the only reason the diagnosis happened was due to symptoms that only show up immediately after their incident. The risk here is having…

Not arguing insurers care about patient health at all.

But being charged $18,000 for a doctor to look at you for 15 minutes? If people paid out of pocket these bills would be uncollectible.

Re: Biggest health insurer plans to deny ER bills if it doubts you had an emergency

#72

Post by doggodaddo78 »

For-profit healthcare should be illegal and there should be sufficient doctor appointments to go around. Right now, Americans pay more than anyone, wait weeks or months for appointments, and receive much poorer care than equivalent countries.

Re: Biggest health insurer plans to deny ER bills if it doubts you had an emergency

#73

Post by doggodaddo78 »

schaefer wrote: post #14

I was born in the USA, but every day I question if I will be able to afford to retire in this country, or if I need to plan to emmegrate elsewhere while I still can. My primary concern is healthcare costs. How am I supposed to budget for healthcare costs during retirement when it's already so complicated. 530,000 American households are bankrupt each year due to medical costs [1]. It seems like the most complex piece…

Why are there so many American homeless people? Lack of funds... not the drugs, mental, lazy, etc. excuses.

Why are there so many Americans with so little savings and yet hyperconcentration of wealth by a panoply of billionaires? Income inequality derived from the rich owning the political establishment.

Re: Biggest health insurer plans to deny ER bills if it doubts you had an emergency

#74

Post by DoreenMichele »

doggodaddo78 wrote: post #73
schaefer wrote: post #14

I was born in the USA, but every day I question if I will be able to afford to retire in this country, or if I need to plan to emmegrate elsewhere while I still can. My primary concern is healthcare costs. How am I supposed to budget for healthcare costs during retirement when it's already so complicated. 530,000 American households are bankrupt each year due to medical costs [1]. It seems like the most complex piece…

Why are there so many American homeless people? Lack of funds... not the drugs, mental, lazy, etc. excuses. Why are there so many Americans with so little savings and yet hyperconcentration of wealth by a panoply of billionaires? Income inequality derived from the rich owning the political establishment.

Why are there so many American homeless people? Lack of funds... not the drugs, mental, lazy, etc. excuses.

Thank you for saying that. I will add: The US has some sucktastic housing policies that are an underlying cause of this social cancer.

Re: Biggest health insurer plans to deny ER bills if it doubts you had an emergency

#75

Post by doggodaddo78 »

schaefer wrote: post #14

I was born in the USA, but every day I question if I will be able to afford to retire in this country, or if I need to plan to emmegrate elsewhere while I still can. My primary concern is healthcare costs. How am I supposed to budget for healthcare costs during retirement when it's already so complicated. 530,000 American households are bankrupt each year due to medical costs [1]. It seems like the most complex piece…

I met a girl at a coffee shop with nasal infusion pump and stage IV cancer. She was preparing for her bankruptcy hearing across the street because the doctors and hospitals were taking everything she had and she had to fight to keep some scraps. That's how America works: get sick, die and lose everything to vulture corporations.

Re: Biggest health insurer plans to deny ER bills if it doubts you had an emergency

#76

Post by doggodaddo78 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #74
doggodaddo78 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are there so many American homeless people? Lack of funds... not the drugs, mental, lazy, etc. excuses. Why are there so many Americans with so little savings and yet hyperconcentration of wealth by a panoply of billionaires? Income inequality derived from the rich owning the political establishment.

Why are there so many American homeless people? Lack of funds... not the drugs, mental, lazy, etc. excuses. Thank you for saying that. I will add: The US has some sucktastic housing policies that are an underlying cause of this social cancer.

I know a former NY Daily News and Village Voice writer and merchant mariner in Palo Alto/Campbell/Los Gatos, CA who is disabled and has no money except the paltry Social Security. He's perfectly sane, well-read, highly-intelligent (law school dropout in the hippie era), but lacks the funds to miraculously "pickup himself up by his bootstraps." A person can't get anywhere from nowhere without some sensible help like every other civilized country does. America is great if you're rich but it's like Brazil if you're not. European countries tend to be great if you're poor or middle-class, but not as great as the US if you're rich.

Re: Biggest health insurer plans to deny ER bills if it doubts you had an emergency

#77

Post by DoreenMichele »

doggodaddo78 wrote: post #76
DoreenMichele wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are there so many American homeless people? Lack of funds... not the drugs, mental, lazy, etc. excuses. Thank you for saying that. I will add: The US has some sucktastic housing policies that are an underlying cause of this social cancer.

I know a former NY Daily News and Village Voice writer and merchant mariner in Palo Alto/Campbell/Los Gatos, CA who is disabled and has no money except the paltry Social Security. He's perfectly sane, well-read, highly-intelligent (law school dropout in the hippie era), but lacks the funds to miraculously "pickup himself up by his bootstraps." A person can't get anywhere from nowhere without some sensible help like e…

Yes, I'm aware. I have about six years of college. I spent nearly six years homeless.

I still write about it sometimes on various blogs of mine, like Street Life Solutions.

Re: Biggest health insurer plans to deny ER bills if it doubts you had an emergency

#78

Post by doggodaddo78 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #77
doggodaddo78 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a former NY Daily News and Village Voice writer and merchant mariner in Palo Alto/Campbell/Los Gatos, CA who is disabled and has no money except the paltry Social Security. He's perfectly sane, well-read, highly-intelligent (law school dropout in the hippie era), but lacks the funds to miraculously "pickup himself up by his bootstraps." A person can't get anywhere from nowhere without some sensible help like e…

Yes, I'm aware. I have about six years of college. I spent nearly six years homeless. I still write about it sometimes on various blogs of mine, like Street Life Solutions.

Cool. I lived in a vehicle (a car, another car, and then a can) for 9 years to save rent and then to live minimally. It took me 10 years to graduate between work and the echos of the dotcom era messing-up course availability. Doing alright now if anyone were wondering.

Re: Biggest health insurer plans to deny ER bills if it doubts you had an emergency

#79

Post by dorchadas »

schaefer wrote: post #14

I was born in the USA, but every day I question if I will be able to afford to retire in this country, or if I need to plan to emmegrate elsewhere while I still can. My primary concern is healthcare costs. How am I supposed to budget for healthcare costs during retirement when it's already so complicated. 530,000 American households are bankrupt each year due to medical costs [1]. It seems like the most complex piece…

I'm debating this for myself currently. I'm a teacher and, in the low CoL area I live in, I make pretty well with good insurance and decent retirement because of when I started teaching. I am, however, getting a leave of absence to go to Ireland to pursue a masters program in Applied Math and Theoretical Physics.

It's really tempting to just stay and work a data science job, though I do enjoy the time teaching gives me off, the fact it'll pay off my loans and that I can live comfortably with plenty to save to travel abroad for a few weeks every summer (I realize I might be one of the few teachers like this and I credit it solely to being single and no children).

And, yeah, I'll get state insurance when I retire, but it just sounds nice living in Europe (using the Ireland masters as a jumping-off point for networking) and not having to worry about it at all, even if I have to give up a lot of the stuff I value about teaching (namely, 75+ days off a year and a decent work schedule)

Re: Biggest health insurer plans to deny ER bills if it doubts you had an emergency

#80

Post by avgDev »

hpoe wrote: post #64
hibern8 wrote: post #19

I will never be able to understand a person who doesn't think healthcare is a human right.

Well I don't think it is a human right for the simple reason that medical care is technically a limited resource.l, there is not an infinite supply of doctors or medicine there is a limited supply no matter what that theoretical limit is. Ergo it can't be a human right because it is limited, a right is something that everyone should have. Also what do we mean by "healthcare" is it anyone should be allowed to have any…

"Healthcare" as what any other first world country has. Everything is covered, sometimes you wait for non life threating issues or you can pay and do things privately. Cosmetic stuff is not covered and some things may not be covered once you are a certain age and there is lack of research proving it may work.

We fund police, fire, infrastructure as a society, we can fund healthcare as a society as it is generally cheaper than whatever the fuck we are doing here in the US.

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