What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills • Hacker News Board

Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills

#451

Post by arethuza » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 9:33 AM UTC

tokyodude wrote: post #402

cogman10 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Don't let The Perfect be the enemy of The Good." We are overspending on the quality of health care we get today. Further there is a lot of fear mongering about socialized medicine. I've experienced medicine in both the UK and the US. I can tell you, there isn't a difference in quality. Further, when I got a cold and went in, wait time wasn't 6 hours or whatever other BS people claim. Wait time was ~10 minutes. In fa…

I've had different experiences from you. My experience in the UK was wait 90 minutes in a waiting room and when it was finally close to my turn I was told I could only see a nurse and she wasn't allowed to proscribe any medicine so if I wanted to see a doctor I should go down the street to the private doctor. This was in London near Soho. In Japan the first time I went to a doctor it was for stomach pain. He gave me…

Are you a UK/EU citizen and were you registered where at the GPs you went to?

Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills

#452

Post by goobynight » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 9:37 AM UTC

prewett wrote: post #386

fencepost wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1000/month is probably a heck of a plan or in a really expensive market if it's for a single person, and it's probably still decent for family coverage. If it was through the ACA Exchange it's probably also a Gold plan that when you look at maximum out of pocket costs simply loads up the premium rather than the OOP payments.

In California the cheapest plan is about $450/month from the Obamacare marketplace, so I'm not sure $1000/month is going to be that outstanding. And as I understand it, $450/month is about the minimum a plan can cost, since Obamacare outlawed the old high-deductible catastrophic insurance. Also, I doubt that the average family has $12,0000 of medical bills a year, and would be better off paying out of pocket except f…

Yep. You get a choice to be gouged on premiums or essentially gamble, hoping that life doesn't reset your savings to $0 (or lower) by getting in a car accident or something.

Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills

#453

Post by willyt » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 9:40 AM UTC

tokyodude wrote: post #402

cogman10 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Don't let The Perfect be the enemy of The Good." We are overspending on the quality of health care we get today. Further there is a lot of fear mongering about socialized medicine. I've experienced medicine in both the UK and the US. I can tell you, there isn't a difference in quality. Further, when I got a cold and went in, wait time wasn't 6 hours or whatever other BS people claim. Wait time was ~10 minutes. In fa…

I've had different experiences from you. My experience in the UK was wait 90 minutes in a waiting room and when it was finally close to my turn I was told I could only see a nurse and she wasn't allowed to proscribe any medicine so if I wanted to see a doctor I should go down the street to the private doctor. This was in London near Soho. In Japan the first time I went to a doctor it was for stomach pain. He gave me…

Assuming you are not an EU citizen, you are don't get free healthcare in the UK anyway. They probably told you to go to the private doctor because if you are non-EU you would have health insurance which would cover this no?

Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills

#454

Post by kwhitefoot » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 9:54 AM UTC

I stopped reading when I saw the minimum charge for walking through the door was USD 500 and that a family was charged USD 18 k for a nap and some formula milk; it was just too depressing.

No amount of analysis of the details is going to fix those things.

Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills

#455

Post by kwhitefoot » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 9:57 AM UTC

ddebernardy wrote: post #139

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #28

I was a victim of the surprise out of network bill in the Portland, OR area. I did all my research before hand: hospital in network, surgeon in network, etc. but ONE person in that operating room was not in network and SURPRISE i'm out thousands of dollars. The worst part about this is my state passed a bill to stop this prior to my surgery, but the bill's effective date was roughly 3 months later. Talk about bad tim…

I'm at a loss as to why the US is still dead set to have no meaningful health coverage. I got burned by this in California a decade ago. A dentist charged me $4,500 to fix a broken tooth (panic!) and fill in a cavity on a Sunday. Had I known then what it might have cost I'd have simply flown back to Europe in the next flight ($600-800 at the time) and get the same thing done for under $100-200 with a full refund from…

Even here in Norway, even on a Sunday it wouldn't have cost anywhere close to USD 4500. I have asked colleagues in the US about the cost of dentistry and most of it even when booked in advance is noticeably more expensive than here. But of course here we have full transparency, I can shop around.

Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills

#456

Post by kwhitefoot » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 10:02 AM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #434

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't have to be government _paid_, just regulated. Literally saying "you can't charge more than X for service Y". It isn't unprecedented either, see taxi tariffs in some areas.

Price controls never work. Its bad economics.

Works in this context in several European countries. Switzerland for instance has compulsory insurance schemes where the prices are regulated and the insurer cannot refuse to insure.

Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills

#457

Post by swish_bob » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 10:07 AM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #435

ncallaway wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that's true. What serious single payer proposals have been put forward that would eliminate private-pay, private insurance, or private care? I've never seen one. In fact, almost all "single payer" health systems that exist in other countries have private care and private insurance options. For example, such options are available in both the UK with the NHS and in Canada. I've never once spoken with an…

It most definitely means banning private insurance (not private care). Thats why its "single". IT has to, because otherwise it would have to compete on the market as any other plan, and it would fail because all private insurance would dump the expensive patients on to medicare, which will need to either increase prices or increase taxes to survive. Plus the whole point is to eliminate dealing with the adminsitrative…

This is quite evidently rubbish, as demonstrated by the fact that I live in the UK, receive most of my healthcare for free, on the NHS and also have private medical insurance (provided by my employer).

Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills

#458

Post by swish_bob » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 10:11 AM UTC

darawk wrote: post #288

MattGrommes wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the article you'll find that the problem is that while the hospital may accept your insurance, a particular doctor won't. Also for some reason some doctors don't even know what insurance programs they'll bill.

Seems easy to solve by forcing doctors to accept the insurance plans that their hospital does.

Seems easier to solve by just having a single entity paying the doctors'/hospitals' costs.

Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills

#459

Post by refurb » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 10:40 AM UTC

bdamm wrote: post #284

phd514 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada did. It's not that far-fetched.

That's a stretch. There are still a lot of private clinics operating in Canada for various grey-area medical needs. Also, Canadian (really, provincial) healthcare doesn't typically cover dental, and there's a massive grey area in rehab and injury recovery where private clinics abound. Certainly it is true, I agree, that emergency hospitals and ambulances are public-option only.

Doctors in Canada have to choose to participate in either the public system or private system. They can’t straddle both.

Hence there are VERY few private clinics in Canada except for services where the govt realized it was in their benefit to allow it (MRIs).

Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills

#460

Post by wastedhours » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 10:48 AM UTC

tokyodude wrote: post #402

cogman10 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Don't let The Perfect be the enemy of The Good." We are overspending on the quality of health care we get today. Further there is a lot of fear mongering about socialized medicine. I've experienced medicine in both the UK and the US. I can tell you, there isn't a difference in quality. Further, when I got a cold and went in, wait time wasn't 6 hours or whatever other BS people claim. Wait time was ~10 minutes. In fa…

I've had different experiences from you. My experience in the UK was wait 90 minutes in a waiting room and when it was finally close to my turn I was told I could only see a nurse and she wasn't allowed to proscribe any medicine so if I wanted to see a doctor I should go down the street to the private doctor. This was in London near Soho. In Japan the first time I went to a doctor it was for stomach pain. He gave me…

The UK system isn't amazing, unless you're evidently having an "emergency", you can be waiting for hours (once waited for 4 hours with a broken wrist for example) - that being said, the triage is pretty solid and you'll cycle through intermediate steps in the meantime.

I think the best part is not having the mental burden of potentially going bankrupt afterwards...