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Bay Area couple shocked by $200K hospital bill for rabies shots

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Re: Bay Area couple shocked by $200K hospital bill for rabies shots

#121

Post by piva00 »

autoexec wrote: post #118
piva00 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words have meaning, socialism has a meaning: > Socialism: a political philosophy and movement encompassing a wide range of economic and social systems, which are characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. That is the meaning, it's not meaningless. It becomes meaningless when people just accept that it can mean anything they want, it can't. Socialism has a very speci…

Words do have meanings, the word socialism has so many meanings that using the term just makes things less clear. Even your preferred definition is so overbroad that it strains usefulness. Any definition that lumps together the political philosophy of Keir Starmer with that of Joseph Stalin is one of questionable utility.

That's the thing, it does not lump Keir Starmer's political philosophy and Stalin's. To be defined as socialism it needs to encompass the social ownership of the means of production, Keir Starmer's economic-political philosophy does not encompass that and hence it's not socialism...

It's the one of the most defining characteristics of socialism, if Keir Starmer is not defending that the ownership of the means of production should be socialised it is not socialism.

Re: Bay Area couple shocked by $200K hospital bill for rabies shots

#122

Post by red-iron-pine »

1letterunixname wrote: post #32
bagels wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hospital administrators don't take a hippocratic oath, unless they happened to also be doctors too.

Most were. Still, their staff do. But the point you're appearing to make normalizes injustice if they didn't happen to take an oath. What does this have to do with anything?

The vast majority of hospital admin staff aren't. Plenty of secretaries, orderlies, cafeteria workers, and janitors. The accountants, IT, lawyers, and HR probably weren't doctors or nurses either.

Re: Bay Area couple shocked by $200K hospital bill for rabies shots

#123

Post by JohnFen »

wizofaus wrote: post #91
JohnFen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother got cancer (she survived it, fortunately). She had a fantastic insurance policy, made good money (well above the average income), and had money in the bank. Her medical costs ended up bankrupting her. That was where the scales fell from my eyes and I learned that what we're taught about the purpose of insurance (to protect us in the case of a catastrophic expense) is just pure BS.

I assume you're using the word "fantastic" as in "imaginative or fanciful; remote from reality"?

I mean it as in "much better than average", of course.

Re: Bay Area couple shocked by $200K hospital bill for rabies shots

#124

Post by JohnFen »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #98
JohnFen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother got cancer (she survived it, fortunately). She had a fantastic insurance policy, made good money (well above the average income), and had money in the bank. Her medical costs ended up bankrupting her. That was where the scales fell from my eyes and I learned that what we're taught about the purpose of insurance (to protect us in the case of a catastrophic expense) is just pure BS.

Was this before or after the ACA? As far as I understand it, the ACA got rid of ceilings on benefits and added a max pay per year.

Much before. But what did her in wasn't benefit ceilings, but rather the insurance company fighting everything they were obligated to pay out. it wore her down. It's very hard to fight the insurance company while at the same time fighting cancer. She got down to 80 pounds, couldn't eat, sleep, or do much of anything more than just hang in there. Constantly engaging in dispute resolution with the insurance company was not something she was capable of.

And they knew it. That's why they fought paying out every nickel. Evil bastards.

If it doesn't show, I have literally nothing good to say about the insurance industry.

Re: Bay Area couple shocked by $200K hospital bill for rabies shots

#125

Post by porkbeer »

mindslight wrote: post #106
nradov wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't attempt to defend the hospital but even outside of healthcare, price gouging is almost always legal. There are only a few limited circumstances where it is banned in a subset of US states.

"Price gouging" is only legal when a contract is formed. A contract requires well defined consideration, as well as a meeting of the minds - neither is present when a person is not told an up front price (especially after asking), and is under medical duress.

Did you know your little printed recipt is a contract?

Re: Bay Area couple shocked by $200K hospital bill for rabies shots

#126

Post by mindslight »

porkbeer wrote: post #125
mindslight wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Price gouging" is only legal when a contract is formed. A contract requires well defined consideration, as well as a meeting of the minds - neither is present when a person is not told an up front price (especially after asking), and is under medical duress.

Did you know your little printed recipt is a contract?

It's better described as evidence of a contract. But I guess a signed piece of paper is merely evidence of a contract as well, despite being commonly referred to as "a contract".

But this isn't really relevant when discussing healthcare, because the problem is precisely with providers not dealing in specifics that would be necessary to create a printed receipt. It would be a terrible system if hospitals demanded full payment ahead of treatment and price gouged patients on the spot, but it would be significantly more legitimate than what we currently have!

Re: Bay Area couple shocked by $200K hospital bill for rabies shots

#127

Post by aniken »

JohnFen wrote: post #124
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this before or after the ACA? As far as I understand it, the ACA got rid of ceilings on benefits and added a max pay per year.

Much before. But what did her in wasn't benefit ceilings, but rather the insurance company fighting everything they were obligated to pay out. it wore her down. It's very hard to fight the insurance company while at the same time fighting cancer. She got down to 80 pounds, couldn't eat, sleep, or do much of anything more than just hang in there. Constantly engaging in dispute resolution with the insurance company was…

Are there by chance companies you could pay to do this on your behalf as a service? (get the money owed by insurance) Seems like something ChatGPT would be good at, if this doesn’t already exist, and then the company would charge a small percentage of what they force the insurance company to pay. If ChatGPT can ace the bar exam, you’d think it could devour all the related case law and coverage legalese from your policy, and generate effective legal responses.

Re: Bay Area couple shocked by $200K hospital bill for rabies shots

#128

Post by jfengel »

xiphias2 wrote: post #101
1letterunixname wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Americans don't realize how bad they have it. They've grown accustomed to being punched and slapped around and so won't rebel. They'll keep giving all of what little and shrinking of what they have to legitimized criminals.

How? They don't have internet? Even in Zurich, Switzerland, one of the most expensive places and healthcares in the world, it's 85 CHF / shot: https://reisemedizin.uzh.ch/en/pre-travel_advice/rabies Emergency room is 50 CHF extra in non-emergency cases: https://www.thelocal.ch/20210617/emergency-room-visits-to-no... .

We do have Internet, but we've gotten used to being told that the Internet lies to us. We've been repeatedly told that people wait months for treatment in the UK, and that Canadians are streaming over the border to get health care in America.

We read horror stories like this one, but say "Whew, glad that won't happen to me." We imagine that because of capitalism, if our insurance company screws us over, we'll change to the next one -- freedom we wouldn't have if we had a national health care.

It never seems to occur to us that all of the private insurers have a capitalism-driven goal of maximizing profits, and national insurers don't.

Re: Bay Area couple shocked by $200K hospital bill for rabies shots

#129

Post by bagels »

1letterunixname wrote: post #32
bagels wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hospital administrators don't take a hippocratic oath, unless they happened to also be doctors too.

Most were. Still, their staff do. But the point you're appearing to make normalizes injustice if they didn't happen to take an oath. What does this have to do with anything?

Only pointing out that many didn't take an oath, not that what they're doing is ethical. Holding people to an oath they didn't take doesn't make much sense.

Re: Bay Area couple shocked by $200K hospital bill for rabies shots

#130

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

maxerickson wrote: post #96
etrautmann wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors are NOT to blame here. It's almost as inscrutable and impossible for them to understand the process as the patients. Doctors often times have to battle insurance companies on behalf of the patients to get them the drugs they need with coverage. My wife is a cancer physician and spends hours on the phone convincing insurance companies that patients actually need the treatments she's proscribed. It's an infuria…

Doctors could, to some approximation anyway, go on strike. They endorse the system we have by working in it (and have not been silent participants in building either).

That particular deck is stacked against the favor of doctors and patients.

After all, a care facility can probably be reasonably confident that if a patient needs help, doctors will feel compelled to care for them.

Put another way, would you want to walk into a hospital/ER/your doctors office for something acute and get an apology that care is unavailable because the doctors are on strike?

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