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The Cost of Not Getting Tested for Coronavirus: A $10K ER Bill

thecity.nyc

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Re: The Cost of Not Getting Tested for Coronavirus: A $10K ER Bill

#51

Post by makomk »

CydeWeys wrote: post #18
platetone wrote: post #15

We decided (slash "made the mistake") of going to the emergency room last summer. Spent less than two hours in an exam room before being dismissed with no conclusion and referral to another doctor. Got a $9500 bill about six months later and have been billed a 10% copay on that (insurance paid $5500 already at their negotiated rate). Still fighting it as absolutely absurd, but there's really no hope. This country is…

Meanwhile, I went to the emergency room in a hospital with my girlfriend in London two years ago and it was free for her. We're Americans. Guess which country has better health outcomes.

Yeah, here in the UK she could've been told that she wasn't going to get tested for coronavirus over the phone for free. It's a much more civilized system. (Though to be fair, we did a little better at adding Italy to the list of qualifying countries promptly than the USA.)

Re: The Cost of Not Getting Tested for Coronavirus: A $10K ER Bill

#53

Post by servalan »

platetone wrote: post #15

We decided (slash "made the mistake") of going to the emergency room last summer. Spent less than two hours in an exam room before being dismissed with no conclusion and referral to another doctor. Got a $9500 bill about six months later and have been billed a 10% copay on that (insurance paid $5500 already at their negotiated rate). Still fighting it as absolutely absurd, but there's really no hope. This country is…

Hopefully, the hospital won't put a lien on your home. Some states allow them to do that.

Re: The Cost of Not Getting Tested for Coronavirus: A $10K ER Bill

#54

Post by smacktoward »

mntmoss wrote: post #34
smacktoward wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember studying political science as an undergrad two decades ago. My professors all said the same thing about the Electoral College: “it’s a relic that has long since stopped serving a practical purpose, but people live with it because it never rocks the boat. If there’s ever an election where the winner of the popular vote doesn’t actually win because they lost in the Electoral College, there will be a huge mas…

On the other hand, the nature of "collapse" is the suddenness with which it takes place. There are all kinds of changes taking place right now, as a result of this crisis, that were previously dismissed as politically infeasible. When the crisis is over there will definitely be some attempt to roll everything back to the "good old days", but not all of it will stick, and we'll have a different set of trends emerge -…

Yeah, this what Rahm Emanuel was getting at with his infamous line “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” A crisis can break through the logjam of everyday interests that normally prevent action. It wakes people up and changes the way they look at things.

(Not always in a good way, of course. But still.)

Re: The Cost of Not Getting Tested for Coronavirus: A $10K ER Bill

#55

Post by bradstewart »

munk-a wrote: post #45
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An opposite example, went to the ER last year and spent a couple hours there. Paid a $100 copay. Haven’t seen any other bills.

When I lived in the states I was on a medication I needed to get filled every month (Methylphenidate for the curious) due to life situation my cost to do so varied in this manner over the span of half a year: 30$ (1$/pill) while on uni insurance 0$ on state healthcare while unemployed (Green Mountain Care) 270$ (9$/pill) while employed and not qualifying for employer healthcare 120$ (4$/pill) while employed with my b…

It's pretty crazy how this works. Despite having pretty good coverage, I often use GoodRx because the prices are so much cheaper than using my insurance...

Re: The Cost of Not Getting Tested for Coronavirus: A $10K ER Bill

#56

Post by themagician »

aurelwu wrote: post #19

The statement from the hospital management boggles my mind: "In addition, there are different parts to a patient bill. One part is what the hospital charges the insurance company, one part is what the insurance company eventually pays [...]" I can't think of any other business transaction where someone just puts a giant number on a bill and then is happy if someone pays ~25% of it. Such companies would be shunned by…

A lot of businesses work like that. There is a retail price and then a discount is applied depending on who you are. That's kind of how all retail works, really.

Even working with Amazon or Walmart is kind of like that. You invoice them for one amount, but you get paid much less based on different deductions for things like discounts, co-ops, damage allowance, etc.

Re: The Cost of Not Getting Tested for Coronavirus: A $10K ER Bill

#57

Post by karatestomp »

aurelwu wrote: post #19

The statement from the hospital management boggles my mind: "In addition, there are different parts to a patient bill. One part is what the hospital charges the insurance company, one part is what the insurance company eventually pays [...]" I can't think of any other business transaction where someone just puts a giant number on a bill and then is happy if someone pays ~25% of it. Such companies would be shunned by…

Nothing about hospital billing would fly anywhere else. Bills just showing up after the fact with little ability to verify their accuracy, constant errors one can catch anyway (so how many are missed?), bills showing up months later from a half-dozen different sources when you only had one apparent "vendor", and so on.

I bet we received between 100 and 200 pieces of mail for each of our kids' births, including maternal care before the births. Probably averaged 40-60 hours dealing with billing and billing problems with each one, maybe more. And ours were all totally normal and about as easy as it gets, and we had insurance. I think we ended up missing some tiny bill we could easily have paid in each one (oh, yeah, they also like to give you very little time to pay) and had them go to collections.

Re: The Cost of Not Getting Tested for Coronavirus: A $10K ER Bill

#58

Post by kortilla »

lostgame wrote: post #23
munk-a wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not - the effect these prices have on the poor is an unintended[1] consequence of the true aim. Extracting the most money possible from insurance payors - honestly, if hospitals could bill "You owe us 50$ or as much of that that your insurance would cover" then they would. Nobody actively wants to impoverish the poor (except for a small number of utterly terrible people) but payors force cost pass on to thei…

[flagged]

A shill accusation never goes over well. The commenter just pointed out that this is an emergent property of the incentives with the insurance system and pricing laws. Nobody is doing it intentionally to “hurt the poor”.

Re: The Cost of Not Getting Tested for Coronavirus: A $10K ER Bill

#59

Post by joe_the_user »

Wow, this brings home what a huge crisis this is for US health care system. It's not just the huge costs or huge administrative overhead as such. It's that the entire system is built as "we design a giant filter-rationing-marketizing system to dole out services and you pay for both the service and the rationing process". This stuff can't work for the Coronavirus at all. Testing needs to free and fast, not even "free eventually but there's bureaucracy first". Who knows when or if this paradigm will be abandoned but if it isn't, suffering will be tremendous.

But either way, the risks discrediting the filter-ration paradigm. If X can be provided for free to everyone, the question of why can't you will loom that much larger.

Re: The Cost of Not Getting Tested for Coronavirus: A $10K ER Bill

#60

Post by munk-a »

streblo wrote: post #40
platetone wrote: post #15

We decided (slash "made the mistake") of going to the emergency room last summer. Spent less than two hours in an exam room before being dismissed with no conclusion and referral to another doctor. Got a $9500 bill about six months later and have been billed a 10% copay on that (insurance paid $5500 already at their negotiated rate). Still fighting it as absolutely absurd, but there's really no hope. This country is…

My daughter had an allergic reaction to food last year, which required us to give an epipen. We were told when this happened that we needed to call 911 and have her taken to the emergency room for observation and potentially for further treatment. We did, the ambulance came and took her to the hospital, which is under a mile away. We then had a similar experience to yours - spent about 2 hours in the hospital being o…

That ambulance bill is insane. Up here in Canada ambulance charges are paid out of pocket but my wife had a low blood pressure emergency and got an ambulance called and was only out 300$ for a three mile drive (through dense city streets even).

I'm even of the opinion that that bill was a bit excessive.

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