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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

#71

Post by mindslight »

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

No it's really not, regardless of the financial aspects. Doctors' time is parceled out into nearly-useless 15 minute chunks, appointments are booked full months out, "insurance" companies demand unnecessary paperwork and add more delays to run your clock out, inpatient rehabs (nursing homes) are understaffed death camps, and everyone generally operates in "not my job" cover their ass mode, including things like referring you to the "emergency" room (many hour wait!) at the drop of a hat.

Some of these change when you're truly end of life and in the ICU, and otherwise there are brief flashes of doctors actually giving you attention. But for the most part trying to receive healthcare in the US is like squeezing blood from a stone, independent of the soul crushing billing shakedowns.

It's more like you can imagine US healthcare is great if you don't need it, or don't proactively think about what needs to be done. Of course that's a great way for something to go unaddressed and kicked down the road until the next appointment (or ER visit).

I can't speak to other country's failings, but I can say this bogeyman narrative about "government run health care" is utterly fallacious. We already have the equivalent in the form of corporate-bureaucracy-first health care.

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

#72

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mdorazio wrote: post #36
junofan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not donations. It’s the fact that the largest employer in nearly every congressional district is a healthcare system. Heard this from a guy who worked on the ACA.

Even beyond employment, healthcare represents a ridiculous 18% of the US GDP these days.

That number is ridiculous but it's also the broken window fallacy. If people spent less on healthcare inefficiency they'd have more money and spend it on something else. So it's not like you actually have to preserve the wasteful bureaucracy as though you're gaining something from it -- the jobs would just move to whatever industry supplies the things people would buy if they weren't forced to waste their money on this.

The real problem is the employment, because then you have not just the industry but its unions lobbying to preserve the inefficiency.

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

#73

Post by russdill »

yongjik wrote: post #60
boringg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A really great trick I learned is to use the 3 way calling feature of your phone. Call the insurance company, go through the please go away don't bother us menu system (now with voice recognition!), wait on hold for an agent, speak with the agent and tell them you are going to conference in your doctor's billing department, and call your doctor. Have them speak directly with each other.

This is also usually necessary to find out if something will be covered.

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

#74

Post by taylodl »

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

Clarification - not true.

I can point you to several people who have great jobs, great insurance, and tens of thousands of dollars in medical expenses. Nowhere else in the civilized world does this happen.

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

#75

Post by nsvd »

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?

Do you really not understand? Powerful people are making tons of money at the expense of everyone else. Isn't that how the system is designed? What's confusing about it?

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

#76

Post by causi »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #69
causi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The maternal mortality rate for the US is 4.7 times higher than New Zealand's. The infant mortality rate is 61% higher.

I could also cherry-pick some statistics to try prove a point. But the point I’m actually making is that the healthcare I had access to in the US was far better than the healthcare I had access to in New Zealand (or anywhere else), regardless of how much I was willing to pay. Complaints about systemic issue of healthcare costs in the US are perfectly valid (and there are other somewhat unique problems with it as well…

the healthcare I had access to in the US was far better than the healthcare I had access to in New Zealand (or anywhere else), regardless of how much I was willing to pay.

Can you back that up with data?

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

#77

Post by AnthonyMouse »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #41

We simply need a sort of statute of limitations for B2C transactions. - Your employer can incorrectly pay you for a long time and then demand the money back. - A hospital bill can come (afaik) anytime in the future - You can dispute charges, the provider can fail to provide customer service, but your credit score is negatively affected. Etc. We need bills that focus on favoring the "little guy" in the fight so that w…

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/debt-relief/debt-relief-statu...

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

#78

Post by meepmorp »

javajosh wrote: post #13

I'd like to see a new regulatory regime that allows individual health care providers like doctors, nurses, etc to start their own practices that are cash only. The sense I get is that small strappy businesses like that can't start because of the regulatory regime that's too expensive to comply with. But yeah in the end all of this machinery that gets between the patient and the provider and affects that relationship…

> I'd like to see a new regulatory regime that allows individual health care providers like doctors, nurses, etc to start their own practices that are cash only.

We already have that. Medical practices aren't required to take health insurance and can charge cash for services.

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

#79

Post by vlark »

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…

I'm sorry for your loss. Losing a child is a horrible experience and you never really get over it; time moves on but the emptiness persists. I wish you and your family well.

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

#80

Post by AmericanChopper »

causi wrote: post #76
AmericanChopper wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could also cherry-pick some statistics to try prove a point. But the point I’m actually making is that the healthcare I had access to in the US was far better than the healthcare I had access to in New Zealand (or anywhere else), regardless of how much I was willing to pay. Complaints about systemic issue of healthcare costs in the US are perfectly valid (and there are other somewhat unique problems with it as well…

the healthcare I had access to in the US was far better than the healthcare I had access to in New Zealand (or anywhere else), regardless of how much I was willing to pay. Can you back that up with data?

You mean like my healthcare records?…
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