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Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

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Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#181

Post by tmaly »

cletus wrote: post #34

In Australia the Leftist government of Gough Whitlam introduced health-coverage-for-all in 1975 with a scheme called Medibank. In 1984 after a couple of governments, Bob Hawke's Leftist government created the Medicare scheme (Medibank became a government provider of private health insurance), which exists to this day. The most interesting stat I ever heard about Medicare was this: prior to Medicare the number one cau…

We still cannot get a price list of medical procedures in the US thanks to the antitrust exemption provided in McCarran-Ferguson Antitrust Act of 1945.

I think repealing this would be a good start. All other industries are required to provide price lists. My friend went to the ER recently for a sprained thumb. They wrapped it in some bandage and he got a bill for $14,000.

His insurance is covering 80% but he is still on the hook for $2800 for a sprained thumb. Something is not right here.

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#182

Post by flexie »

chimeracoder wrote: post #169
flexie wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's the essence of this: In the developed world, this is all but a US specific issue. Cancer and other life threatening diseases rarely bankrupt Europeans, Canadians, Australians, Kiwis, Japanese etc.

> Cancer and other life threatening diseases rarely bankrupt Europeans, Canadians, Australians, Kiwis, Japanese etc. Sure, but they're also dramatically less likely to survive the cancer than Americans are at a population level. There have been multiple long-term studies on cancer survival rates that have demonstrated this.

The US is barely in the top among developed nations, and it's not much better than the next 10-15 countries: https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/cancer-trends/data-cancer...

And it's notoriously difficult to compare. If cancer is registered as "discovered" early, because a for profit doctor starts treating it early, but the government hired doctor maybe doesn't, the early treated will statistically appear as living longer.

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#183

Post by smallgovt »

triplewipeass wrote: post #13

When I was in my early 20s, I got myself a beefy life insurance policy that covers suicide after some waiting period that has expired many years ago. I know that in case of crippling illness I can always take the easy way out while preserving my assets plus the life insurance payout. My family would be taken care of.

It's interesting to me that life insurance policies exist that cover suicide. I assume it means that people over-estimate their eventual willingness to commit suicide.

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#184

Post by bryanlarsen »

5trokerac3 wrote: post #133
cletus wrote: post #34

In Australia the Leftist government of Gough Whitlam introduced health-coverage-for-all in 1975 with a scheme called Medibank. In 1984 after a couple of governments, Bob Hawke's Leftist government created the Medicare scheme (Medibank became a government provider of private health insurance), which exists to this day. The most interesting stat I ever heard about Medicare was this: prior to Medicare the number one cau…

The United States currently has the highest 5 year survival rate for all cancers combined. I think it's a fair question to ask if that would continue to be the case in a MFA system for 300 million patients. Considering what a disaster the insurance marketplace was, I'm very skeptical. Edit: what I mean by "disaster": when it launched, the site completely crashed for over a month and then, when it finally came back up…

5 year survival rate is poorly correlated with treatment efficacy. It's mostly correlated with how early a cancer is diagnosed.

In most cases it's a good thing to detect cancers early, but saying a country is good at detecting cancers is not near as strong of a statement as saying that a country is good at treating cancers.

And this gets complicated by prostrate cancer -- many would argue that mass screening for prostrate cancer causes more pain and suffering than it prevents.

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#185

Post by arkades »

burkaman wrote: post #171
5trokerac3 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States currently has the highest 5 year survival rate for all cancers combined. I think it's a fair question to ask if that would continue to be the case in a MFA system for 300 million patients. Considering what a disaster the insurance marketplace was, I'm very skeptical. Edit: what I mean by "disaster": when it launched, the site completely crashed for over a month and then, when it finally came back up…

That's a cherry-picked stat. Most health outcomes are worse in the US than other rich countries with universal healthcare. There are many studies and charts you can search for, here's one: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26746...

To be fair, most health outcomes are directly related to financial issues: controlling for all other variables, it's the single most consistent predictor.

If you look at pretty much any general population level outcome, a country with a high concentration of health insurance (as proxy for financial resource to get healthcare) is going to have bad "average" outcomes.

If you look at metrics that select a sample that tends to have access to healthcare (e.g., cancer tends to cluster in over-65s, who have access to Medicare and, at greater rates than the general population, Medicaid), you're going to get a look at "what the healthcare technology is like in that country for people with access to it."

It's entirely fair to point out that average outcomes suck for average people because "average" access to healthcare is "really shitty access to healthcare."

It's also fair to point out that if you change how the system operates, it's not unreasonable to ask whether you'll change the system's strong points, which may well be "technically sophisticated care for those that actually have access."

My position on this is a third, orthogonal position (which is that how you pay for care and the operations that produce that care are not unrelated, and fractured, free-market operations produce fractured care, and that operations have much more day-to-day impact on healthcare outcomes than technical sophistication.) But it's unrelated to the above.

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#186

Post by dontreact »

5trokerac3 wrote: post #177
dontreact wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. actually has worse health outcomes overall than Japan and France who both have universal coverage (through different systems)

What are "health outcomes"? "5 year cancer survival" is a definable metric. "Health outcomes" is very vague. Is there a scoring system? Are different illnesses/conditions ranked?

Lifespan Deaths due to preventable causes

On both of these the US is somewhere in the 30s in terms of rank among countries. But we are #1 in terms of cost per capita :)

5 year cancer is too low level in my opinion to give an overall picture

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#187

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

lenticular wrote: post #55
zawerf wrote: post #9

I think that's just a corollary of "63% Of Americans Don't Have Enough Savings To Cover A $500 Emergency": https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2016/01/06/63-of-... EDIT: My comment is in reference to the old thread title, which was something like "More than 42 percent of the 9.5 million people diagnosed with cancer from 2000 to 2012 drained their life's assets within two years"

Even with insurance, folks often wind up with six figures of bills out of pocket treating cancer. That's a huge amount for the even most frugal of the lower or middle class.

When my son was born he fit in my hand and spent his first three months in NICU. I guess the nurses thought his survival was questionable so they entered in his name into the computer as “Baby Boy”. A few months later I started getting bills (eventually around $3 million) because there was nobody named “Baby Boy” on my insurance. Calling the insurance to try and correct was a nightmare - wait on hold for an hour, get 3rd degree interrogation about my identity, wait on hold, explain that son was on insurance but not called literally “Baby Boy”, wait on hold, get interrogated for his details on son’s identity, wait on hold, long series of questions to determine Baby Boy isn’t real and let me know about penalties for fraud. Three hours later done, that covers the first $50. Decided I would never do that again, let it go to collections and explain it to the judge. Turns out that before it goes to collections it goes to someone with a brain who realizes “Baby Boy” is in-fact the infant boy with identical birth date on my policy, notices stop coming. No telling how much money they spent sending me all the nasty payment due letters in the mean time.

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#188

Post by rconti »

I cannot even imagine the toll this would take.

I have a very simple set of recurring claims against my healthcare provider that I'm handling myself (out of network, no problem, I thought). Due to job changes I had successfully had my charges reimbursed by my previous 2 insurance companies over the past year.

The current one has taken 6 months to finally start reimbursing me -- and actually, they're almost caught up! Every goddamned time, the helpful phone persons sees the problem: "Your provider was entered as an XYZ type of provider instead of a ZYX provider, so it was being sent to the wrong unit. I'll re-enter him correctly, delete the old entry, and resubmit your claims marked as urgent. They should be processed within 7-10 days..." Very helpful staff. They seem to get it. They seem to figure it out. They seem to fix it. And it's never. fucking. fixed. And so you wait 7 days. You want 10 days. Still in process (if the horrible online system even allows you to login today). You wait 14 days, thinking maybe that was 10 BUSINESS days. Then you call back. Again, and it's the same thing. Over and over again.

My reimbursements came totally out of sequence. The claim numbers don't match. The dates on the claim number don't match the dates on the EOB, they're paying me back for the wrong visits!

But somehow, somewhere, on the backend, someone is reconciling it. Amazingly, the amounts are adding up. I think the processors are REALLY GOOD at not accidentally double-paying, so even though they're paying me for the wrong dates here, the next time they avoid double-paying, and find ANOTHER date to pay for (properly). It actually looks like it'll somehow all get paid back. Again, all one insurance company and one health care provider. And it's my insurance. And it's top tier private tech company employer PPO type stuff.

My wife was in the hospital after a car crash. The first EOB I got for $200,000 saying "Denied", and that number didn't even include the surgery. I just laughed. It went to the wrong insurance, a simple call and it was sorted.

But I can't fathom having less than perfect insurance (and I don't even know how to manage to maintain good insurance while having cancer and potentially being out of work and having a partner who might not be able to work while they're helping you), and having millions of dollars in bills, and having them come in from countless different providers.. sheer misery.

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#189

Post by BucketSort »

Miner49er wrote: post #149
BucketSort wrote: post #33

At what point do we become so outraged that people are being killed for profit that we actually change things? Our culture is so obscene. We need to change our attitude on egregious wealth from admiration to disgust. When you see a mansion, you should see the trampling of lives for exorbitant luxury; when you see a million dollar car, you should see children going hungry; but what you really see is something you can…

Very unfortunate this is being downvoted. It's simply true. Lots of resources and time are wasted on pointless things. If we organised our society better we could end so much suffering and have more time for the things that really matter in life.

It's because my negative tone. And I'm sorry for my tone. It's just that every day I see us slipping further and further into becoming a completely corrupt country without any humanitarian values. In the end, I love everyone just the same, I'm just so disappointed in what we are allowing ourselves to become.

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#190

Post by bubbleRefuge »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #168
cletus wrote: post #34

In Australia the Leftist government of Gough Whitlam introduced health-coverage-for-all in 1975 with a scheme called Medibank. In 1984 after a couple of governments, Bob Hawke's Leftist government created the Medicare scheme (Medibank became a government provider of private health insurance), which exists to this day. The most interesting stat I ever heard about Medicare was this: prior to Medicare the number one cau…

If health care for all reduces prices and total cost, then yeah. Otherwise, the cost will cripple the government, and by extension taxpayers. Right now they can declare bankruptcy and just don't pay (at a great cost, no doubt) but the government will have to pay. Cancer is a fact of life,38.4% will get it in their life https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics and unless costs are dramatically lowe…

The federal government cannot be crippled because it can issue currency ad-infinitem. As AOC is wonderfully publicizing, the notion that government finance works like household and business finance is finally starting to be debunked and at least talked about openly. There maybe other problems with universal healthcare, but financing it is not one of them.
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