Woman receives $5,751 ER bill for an ice pack and a bandage
77 replies, posted
My mum was asked to get a repeat MRI for her kidney stone for whatever reason, and for doubly whatever reason they wanted to do one with and without contrast. It hadn't moved, but she was billed $2k with insurance to find out it didn't move at all. Thats' not to mention you have NO idea what you're going to be billed ahead of time, nor how much the person who pushes a button on the computer is going to charge you until after its done (oh, turns out that guy charged $1k)
Obamacare is not universal government operated healthcare. Its subsidized directly by taxpayers, namely middle-class ones via privatized healthcare. Obamacare forces everyone in the nation to have healthcare regardless of they can afford it. If youre Lower class making nothing, then you can get your health care almost completely paid for or completely paid for by state medicaid. If youre like me, middle class but still fuckin poor because of cost of living, then you dont qualify for cheap insurance or having your insurance paid for. So youre stuck paying out the ass for overpriced healthcare that gives you as much coverage as not having healtcare
BUT if you dont have healthcare, youll get fined by the IRS during tax season for lack of coverage.
Obamacare is fantastic for poor people but completely detrimental for lower-middleclass like me. The system is broken and is completely inferior to a single provider nationalized system.
This sounds absolutely retarded and has left me wondering how the US dropped the ball so goddamn hard when they had so many functioning countries to imitate.
Because the socialist bogeyman was very, very scary.
We ALMOST had a public option but
A senator from Massachusetts died and in a freak special election, a republican got elected.
The last moron democrat needed to overturn the Republican filibuster said to ditch it, so they obliged in order to get *Something* passed.
it's stuff like this that terrify me, because I've been having very bad ear problems lately and this is keeping me away from the hospital. I can't afford help Luckily it seems my ear is getting better after days of desperate self care (laying on the floor for hours doing laborious cleaning of it lol)
Its tought to imitate that when you would have to have a government take over of several billion dollar private industries for the system to work.
Considering i have an anxiety problem to begin with. This is honestly a fear of mine that i have when it comes to living in this God Forsaken stupid fucking nation. All that needs to happen is some event or situation completely out of my grasp of control, fucks up my body, system, or limb. Then i have to spend probably the rest of my life having to clean up that debt.
The ACA is the Capitalist solution to healthcare, it builds off older ideas that were created as the Conservative alternative to Single-Payer. Rather than cover everyone through taxes, you force them to pay for Insurance from private companies, and as a concession these companies have stricter rules to follow. Most notably, they cannot deny you coverage for preexisting conditions, which was a common practice beforehand and they would even try to use the "preexisting condition" excuse to drop people's plans when they finally needed them.
Imo it was an experiment, it hasn't been tried on this scale before. And it failed imo, because forcing companies to cover preexisting conditions whilst also mandating that mostly everyone buys their product has meant the cost of insurance has risen dramatically, and so have deductibles (the amount of money you have pay before Insurance will cover you). The poorest cannot afford it and receive subsidized healthcare which is not as reliable as Single-Payer, those who do not qualify but cannot afford the premiums are forced to pay fines and not have any coverage at all, and those who did have decent insurance now have worse insurance at a higher price.
At least here in Denmark, shit doesn't need to be life-threatening for you to go to the ER. We don't know how badly she sliced her ear, and it might've required stitching to avoid permanent cosmetic damage. I've gone to the ER for less, and Denmark spends waaaaay less on healthcare regardless. No matter what, the bill is insane, she didn't even see a doctor.
Also you registered today just to post in this thread?
Not surprising to me, my buddy had an incident involving minor lacerations and they gave him an ambulance ride and didn't even treat him and he wound up with a 5k bill for it.
I'm glad I live in Canada, when I needed an ambulance because I was bleeding out from wounds sustained during a prior mugging and they didn't charge me a cent for the ride and subsequent treatment and x-rays.
Insane costs like that are not just limited to the US. In the Netherlands, dentists really love to fuck you over by charging outrageous costs on top of your treatment. They'll say that you have a hole in your tooth that needs filling, and then they ask if you want to know how it works. If you answer yes, they explain it to you and then charge a hundred euros for "consultation".
Mom got to lay in a hospital bed and nothing else, and had to fork out a grand.
Thanks America.
It's not just insurance thats the issue, its the mass inflation of medical costs thats the issue. The medical industry has become 100% for profit and it's pretty disgusting to be honest.
A box of bandaids being marked up by a dollar so Bandaid can give their employees a nice raise is one thing; raising the cost of epipens by 1,000% to justify the CEO getting a fatcat bonus is another thing. The whole industry needs to be regulated and actually have laws enforced upon it.
A for-profit system.
i was charged a thousand dollars for a five minute visit to my cardiologist who told me i was completely healthy
Why is healthcare so expensive anyway? Like, not even cures for bulshit, but simple crap like band aids?
Artificially raising prices because they can.
Had something similar happen to me, got hit by a car while walking to school one morning (nothing major, but the person who hit me and everyone else around was pretty insistent on me going to the ER.) They put some light pressure on my chest to check for broken ribs and gave me some Tylenol then sent me home. $4,000 bill, but thankfully my parents had decent insurance and we didn't pay much, if any.
But people are dying and suffering
Yea, and they need those baindaids so theyll pay whatever price you charge them.
Its easy to get away with 1,000% price increases when people will die without them.
If the US government has taught me anything over the past year or so, it's that profit is the only thing that matters to anyone.
Because there's cases where poor people who for various reasons can't get discounts on plans (due to things like combined income, etc) end up paying either hundreds a month for a plan or pay hundreds a month in fines because they aren't covered.
Because the Republicans refused to pass it without making completely retarded changes to it that effectively gimped it so badly that it's almost worse than nothing at all, all so Gen X will blame the Dems for proposing it in the first place.
Well honestly it sounds like the real problem is about 50% of your population
It's a lot more deep and complex than that unfortunately
whew.
I'l be the first to admit that it's getting hard to tell the difference between satire and people's actual beliefs, but fucking come on lol.
Personal doctor? I don't think she's that rich. Clinic maybe, but that's only if there's a clinic like that around. Where I live you have two options for medical care: schedule an appointment that'll be months away, or go to the emergency room and see a doctor. If you're concerned about an injury and want to see a doctor that day, you don't really have a choice.
No, I found out that day that I could no longer log into my old account that I created in 2005.
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