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She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money

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Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money

#51

Post by MisterBastahrd »

boringg wrote: post #43
rwmj wrote: post #4

I really don't understand why the US doesn't have a grown up healthcare system. Do you just not see how much better healthcare is in the rest of the developed world?

Clarification. US health is great if you are employed, have a good income or are retired and on medicare. If you don't fall into those categories it is pretty tough

US healthcare isn't great regardless of what metric you choose to use.

It's mid-tier all the way around except for cost, where it far exceeds any other system in the world.

Never being able to access the healthcare you're paying for because you can't afford the insane deductibles is even worse than not having healthcare at all, because when you DO have an emergency that you need to see a doctor for, your rates would often be lower out of pocket with the money you could have saved.

Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money

#52

Post by onemoresoop »

kingsloi wrote: post #6

Exactly the same happened to me & my family, and we've also appeared on NPR for a similar situation: > https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/09/22/1121612... My daughter died. Our story aired a year later. Another year later, so around 2 years after my daughter's death, I received a hospital bill for a little over $3,000, for her initial few weeks of ICU care. I never acknowledged it. I couldn't bring myself…

Sorry for your loss.

Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money

#53

Post by kelseyfrog »

cypherpunks01 wrote: post #31
rwmj wrote: post #4

I really don't understand why the US doesn't have a grown up healthcare system. Do you just not see how much better healthcare is in the rest of the developed world?

Corporate regulatory capture.

And the institutionalization and legal enshrining[1] of work ethic.

Basically the two tier healthcare system has a legal basis for it's existence and structural support in the form of economic incentives to continue in perpetuity, and sustain itself.

This is going to seem either extremely obvious or completely bonkers depending on your point of view. so it makes an interesting scissor statement.

Furthermore one component of the system is the foundational belief that "work is virtuous," and healthcare is a boon based in reaping rewards of that virtue.

1. I wanted to say legalization. It's the right word, but it has the wrong meaning.

Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money

#54

Post by goodbyesf »

kingsloi wrote: post #6

Exactly the same happened to me & my family, and we've also appeared on NPR for a similar situation: > https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/09/22/1121612... My daughter died. Our story aired a year later. Another year later, so around 2 years after my daughter's death, I received a hospital bill for a little over $3,000, for her initial few weeks of ICU care. I never acknowledged it. I couldn't bring myself…

> We haven't heard a peep since.

Good. But just to be safe, you should check your credit report from time to time to make sure they didn't send your account to collections.

Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money

#55

Post by stusmall »

boringg wrote: post #43
rwmj wrote: post #4

I really don't understand why the US doesn't have a grown up healthcare system. Do you just not see how much better healthcare is in the rest of the developed world?

Clarification. US health is great if you are employed, have a good income or are retired and on medicare. If you don't fall into those categories it is pretty tough

I have great insurance through my employer. Last week my spouse was suppose to go in for a surgery that multiple doctors made it clear she needed. We were on the books for months for the surgery. Insurance denied it the day before, throwing all our plans up into the air. The surgeon suggested getting a different surgery that wouldn't fix the problem. The idea is that when it didn't work it would act as evidence to convince insurance to pay for the original one.

We have a terrible, stupid, inefficient system. It's drowning in its own chaos and bureaucracy.

Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money

#56

Post by skyyler »

gaulish wrote: post #40
grecy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I love my quality of care in the US. My insurance is quite reasonable Does it matter to you that 27.6 million of your countrymen have no insurance? [1] Does it matter to you that 66.5% of all bankruptcies are due to medical bills [2] and that Almost 1 in 5 adults with health care debt either lose their homes or declare bankruptcy ? [2] Do you simply not care that the people in your community and society struggle to…

[flagged]

Let's start with drug testing our public officials and banning them from consuming alcohol and junk food :-)

Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money

#57

Post by chrisfinazzo »

kingsloi wrote: post #6

Exactly the same happened to me & my family, and we've also appeared on NPR for a similar situation: > https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/09/22/1121612... My daughter died. Our story aired a year later. Another year later, so around 2 years after my daughter's death, I received a hospital bill for a little over $3,000, for her initial few weeks of ICU care. I never acknowledged it. I couldn't bring myself…

Here I was thinking I was the only one with insane insurance stories...

The closest experience I can think of to this was when I was a sophomore in college in 2006. In short order, I had a seizure, was taken to a local Trauma ICU, and hours later flown to a Level 1 facility in another part of the state.

The hospital where I stayed billed us without issue, but the Trauma center decided it was the right thing to do when it sent the unadjusted bill to me at my college address. Oh, and the medical transport people who flew me around the state of NJ? Nothing.

Just super.

I also could talk about how earlier this year I spent 23 days in the ICU for an infection related to the same condition, and how an event from April-May still isn't settled as far as insurance goes, but I'm stressed enough at this point.

Score 1 for PTSD!

It occurs to me that I've surely met the deductible and OOP limit for the year, so that might explain why we've been so slow to see things get resolved.

To top off this cavalcade of awfulness, the person who hired me into my current job lost her fight with pancreatic cancer last week.

2023 sucks.

Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money

#58

Post by AmericanChopper »

beej71 wrote: post #48
AmericanChopper wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but what could you have gotten if you paid as much there as you pay in the US? If you ignore the fact that I was already paying substantially more for it with higher taxes, the answer is still nothing. Countries with public healthcare don’t have expansive private healthcare systems, and nowhere in the world has a healthcare system that offers the level of service that the US system does. For example my sister was g…

Last I checked, Americans already pay more tax for health care than anybody except the Norwegians.

Overall perhaps, but the taxes I paid in NZ were much, much higher than what I paid in the US, even when accounting for health insurance and other out of pocket costs.

Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money

#60

Post by yongjik »

boringg wrote: post #43
rwmj wrote: post #4

I really don't understand why the US doesn't have a grown up healthcare system. Do you just not see how much better healthcare is in the rest of the developed world?

Clarification. US health is great if you are employed, have a good income or are retired and on medicare. If you don't fall into those categories it is pretty tough

I work as a developer in Silicon Valley, and my wife also works. So we probably have a better insurance (and better income) than 95% of Americans.

My wife probably burned 10+ hours of her life making phone calls that amount to "No no, I've already called the insurance company and they say the record is wrong on your side! I have to call your other office? No, I already called them! Why am I still getting a bill when it must be covered by the insurance ...!!!"

And none in our family is even badly sick. Don't want to imagine what will happen if one of us actually gets sick.

US healthcare system fucking sucks.

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