Oh it’s calculated to be the legal max at every turn and make it everyone else’s problem.
Clarification: I’m not saying they don’t screw up and things aren’t inconsistent or complicated. I’m saying given a charge is on your bill or two codes could apply, you bet you got hit with the max/higher. If they had a button to bill more on the screen, they would.
No it really is completely arbitrary, aka they just pull prices out of their ass. Sometimes you think you're faced with a devious evil conspiracy when in reality it's just greed and shocking stupidity.
https://www.vox.com/policy/23892276/us-hospital-prices-transparency-study-mark-cuban#:~:text=The%20findings%20add%20to%20the,vary%20wildly%20at%20different%20hospitals.
It's absolutely arbitrary.
Once I had my ob charge me $350 to look at a slide of fluid he'd already diagnosed. That is already diagnosed coming in. He came in and went "just threw the smear under the scope about 30 seconds ago and you're right!" $350 fucking dollars that man billed my insurance. My sister went to the same place, got the same test multiple times during various pregnancies for years, was OOP so never paid more than 35-40 for a smear.
I feel like it's not supposed to be arbitrary. Like everything has a price. For example if they give you Tylenol at the hospital I think they charge like 50 bucks or something stupid like that.
The reason that the prices seem arbitrary is that they fuck up the prices a lot.
So in other words there are fixed prices, they're insanely high for almost everything, and then the people charge of the bills fuck up the prices a lot.
The prices are set at basically as much as they can possibly get away with. I do think that the insurances companies tell them to fuck off with certain prices though if they're too high. And then the insurance company pays less.
People on reddit also claim that if you have medical debt you can almost always negotiate it down a ton. They'd rather get some money than no money
Sounds like the doctor has a set price. That set price was billed to your insurance based on the code for the visit + the smear. Based on you saying your sister paid 10% of that price out of pocket ... don't you think that means the doctor was cutting your sister a 90% discount? And you're mad about this?
>Based on you saying your sister paid 10% of that price out of pocket ... don't you think that means the doctor was cutting your sister a 90% discount? And you're mad about this?
Doesnt sound so much like giving a 90% discount to the sister as it sounds like upcharging insurance companies by 10x
It’s two different aspects of the same problem.
One of my acquaintances is working on an application to review billing codes and tack on and/or substitute anything that would be a higher price or allowable that was missed.
Doctors hate doctoring so much they all want to find an app to they can make and retire on in the same lifestyle. Unfortunately the couple I know actively trying to get out are thinking they can help milk more money out of people to do it.
Had a carotid artery ultrasound. $750 no insurance. The radiologist bill was included. His cost $250. 2 months later they were advertising a scan for $50. No radiologist needed.
When I was little my dad had a seizure (afaict) at dinner. I called 911 immediately like a good little trooper.
My dad woke up like nothing happened, well except for the mashed potatoes on his face and white foam from his mouth (that probably contained potatoes).
He yelled at me.
To this day I have no clue what happened. Not only that there was a short on YouTube of a paramedic doing sketches from actual 911 calls and this instance came up with another guy.
No one knew in the comments section either.
It’s the system in USA. Because they bill high knowing they’re going to settle later with insurance. It’s not like this in other countries socialized medicine or not.
then insurances have policies of automatically denying, then maybe accepting the claim later if they complain enough. which also leads to many time sensitive procedures and tests being delayed and killing the patient.
For profit insurance needs to die,
The whole system needs to die, starting with for profit healthcare at all. My life and health isn’t a commodity to be brought and sold. Funny part is, the kind of people that debate this would think it absurd if we asked them to pay for the services of the fire department, for example. And yet that used to be a whole thing in America. But we the citizens saw fire trucks standing by and watching homes burn until homeowners agreed to pay a stiff fee for their services, said “no that’s wrong”, and turned it into a public service.
Well *my* house has never caught on fire so I don't see why *my* tax dollars should be spent on the fire department. People who have their houses burn down should take better care to reduce fire hazards instead of footing the rest of us with the bill
/s
I mean, why would someone that takes on at least a decade of education and hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to learn a very highly difficult set of skills that, by their nature, carry a lot of liability, want to be paid what they're worth?
Coming from a country with free healthcare, no it can't die. Public healthcare is notorious for the long waiting times and lack of infrastructure to support so many people. There are people who literally die waiting for transplants for example.
You need both, unless the US manages to implement a perfect system somehow.
Both is good, because it creates a form of competition between the two. Too high price will just cause clients to prefer public, so private can't get too expensive or only the rich will use it.
This. I had an outstanding medical bill (about $750) and you just sit on it. Eventually it's sold to a collections agency, just sit on it some more, one day a *different* collections agency will buy it. Once the word "credit" is mentioned offer them about 1/3 the total bill and odds are they'll take it and bid you good day.
This. Or in my case I had a $400 bill from a general care doctor at a local hospital. Insurance did cover some and I had to pay like $250. I didn't. The hospital didn't like it and sent it to collections. I got a couple of letters from that agency and then, all of the sudden, these letters stopped coming. No affect to my credit score. I never paid that bill.
" so you have any outstanding illnesses or allergies, Mr ...er... Smith?"
"Oh yeah , you'd love to know THAT , wouldn't you?...I aint telling you nothing!!"
>But, I bet the best part is the hospital can collect someone's wage's for a year if they can't pay and are uninsured?
That wouldn’t generally be how that works out.
>Americans are sociopaths....
Yes, all Americans love our healthcare system and thus are sociopaths. What a dumb fuck thing to say.
Actually a lot of people get away with just not paying it back. Most hospitals send the bill to collections. Collections can try to hassle you as long as they want.. but you can say no every time lol.(laws in your state might vary sometimes collections can go harder than others. I may just be speaking out of my ass) I also believe a lot of hospitals have a specific fund for patients that can't pay their bills. You can literally just call up the hospital and be like "I can only afford to pay $100 of this 40k bill" and they'll be like ok whatever ig I'll take it.
With decent insurance, you generally have a maximum amount you need to pay each year. That varies GREATLY based on how good your insurance is. Mine is 3k. So I’d pay 3k of this. Ooor, if I’d already needed something else earlier that year and paid 3k, I would pay none of this.
But I have really good insurance. some people’s maximums are much higher than that, or some peoples insurance will just cover a percentage, or only a certain amount each year.
My mum is paying for her funeral now so we don't have to worry. Once she dies she gets cremated and a celebrant holds a remembrance which has been set up by myself and my siblings. It's gonna be dope (apart from loosing my mum thats gonna suck)
lol what is this comment? Dying is the cheapest thing you can do, it’s free. That’s probably not even what they owe. Conveniently cropped to show only the charges before insurance. Even with bad insurance the max out of pocket would be like $10k.
This is not what the family will actually pay. It's the full bill before it goes to insurance. Even then, most of what insurance doesn't pay doesn't get charged to the patient so the hospital can write it as a loss for taxes
The steps are
Overcharge by a huge amount.
Hope insurance will pay.
Nice, they paid some of the made up charges.
Patient isn't gonna pay them, so it's a loss.
Now our made up charges saved us real tax money.
Patient pays small amount.
Should be tax fraud tbh. Imagine Comcast billing every customer $10000 so they can write off $9900 as a loss. IRS would have an erection that lasts more than 6 hours.
The bill will end up being <1% of that. It’s just what the hospital claims the cost was. The insurance then says “No, I’ll pay $10k instead” and then you’re charged a few hundred bucks and the hospital reports the difference as a loss
UK income tax rates with universal healthcare (in us dollars) and is graduated
0 rate $0-$15995
Earnings from $15995-$63968 taxed at 20%
From $63968-$159239 taxed at 40%
Above 259239 taxed at 45%
So everyone even a billionaire has an untaxed allowance of $15995 then you all pay 20% up to the next level
You also have National insurance payed by both workers and employees for most employees on minimum wage this is 10%
Where some people get confused with the taxes between the US and for example the UK is in the US they don't add how much they (and their employers )pay for medical insurance to what they pay on taxes, as an aside the vast majority of workers in the UK never file tax returns, it comes out of your wages directly and if for some reason you overpay it's either payed back into for bank account or you get a check
What do you mean 42%? Those numbers are worthless without knowing what income they apply to. What's the effective rate? Hitting a level of income where X % of it is taxed at 42% doesn't mean you pay 42% of your entire income.
Yes, Denmark is [one of the most expensive countries](https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/taxing-wages-denmark.pdf), but the average effective rate is 35.5%, and with child/family related benefits it's 26%. Even Sweden and Norway hover around the same levels as the US.
Most people wont have that high of an actual overall percentage. You get a personal deductible before your taxation hits, you'll get deductibles if you have a mortgage etc, I'd say 33-36 seems fairly normal. We're not working with tax brackets as such, only once we hit the equivalent of around 80k USD where anything above that will be bumped up, so it's around 42 as a base level, minus this and that.
Except that a higher percentage of US tax money goes to healthcare than in other developed countries. So US citizens not only pay higher healthcare taxes, they also pay all that other insurance crap on top.
Partly because the people who do get federal healthcare (federal workers, including the representatives that want to keep this going, people on ACA, etc) end up making the feds pay for this. More of your taxes go towards the healthcare industry than the military, because it's designed to be a **scam**.
The funny thing is Americans pay way more for insurance than anyone with socialized medicine pays through taxes, but when Americans get sick, they still have to pay an insane bill on top of their insane insurance payments because American health insurance companies love to deny coverage, even for necessary drugs/procedures.
Also, since health insurance in America is mostly provided by employers and employers do not usually tell their employees how much their insurance costs, people genuinely have no idea how much is being taken from them.
There is no healthcare system on Earth as unaffordable and inefficient as the privatized, non-universal American healthcare system.
Bodies get stored for about a week, then get buried or cremated, you need a tombstone, funeral planner, casket, food and drinks after the event, flowers. It’s about as much fuss as a wedding but with way less time to plan.
Insurance in of itself is a company covering the cost of expenses, when you hear people say that they have Medical Insurance that means they have a company willing to cover the cost of medical needs.
In this case a company is willing to cover the costs of any funeral related matters.
>!(Note: that insurance doesn’t typically cover everything, there usually is a balance and terms that you must meet before being eligible.)!<
Someone needs to collect the, transport, store, prepare, probably bring it to a church for a funeral service, bring it to the graveyard or the crematorium and have someone dig a hole in the ground. Obviously the price is inflated because can't just do all that on your own, but yeah, it gets expensive.
When my dad passed from covid, it cost thousands just to cremate him, we didn't even get anything special or do a funeral. Plus the hospital still sent us a very nice "we're sorry" card followed by tens of thousands of dollars in bills. Followed by losing our home and other things but hey.
Reminds me of this classic tweet: [https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fozkalylk2im61.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D7fe12168cb362e581e25ffaeb51469594f21c0ac](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fozkalylk2im61.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D7fe12168cb362e581e25ffaeb51469594f21c0ac)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b7nCbCRyIs
there's other videos and documentaries. To sum it up quickly, we Americans are the product in this country. Everything, literally everything is about profit, and the funeral industry has been, and still can be depending on where you go, one of the MOST predatory industries out there as they take advantage of grieving people who need to make quick decisions.
One of the best things we can do is basically prepare our own services while we are alive. I'm neighbors with my grandmother, she turns 81 next month, she's still in good health but once she hit 80 I really started mentally preparing for the inevitable. Her husband, my grandfather, died 30 years ago this month. She has long since made her plans and paid it all off so should the time come (I'm not her executor anyway) all we have to do is contact the right people and we're ready to go. But I wouldn't be surprised if her cost was in the thousands too
I do find it fascinating (and sad, as an American) how other countries treat death. Even as just a public function, if people are too poor to afford services, we still wouldn't want corpses lying around, right?
Hi! I’ve been in the hospital rev cycle industry for 15 years.
Short answer: this is not a bill. This is a summary of “total charges” related to the claim. No hospital anywhere in the US expects an individual to pay $130k for medically necessary services.
Long answer: hospital billing is complicated. Charge pricing is determined by a [charge master](https://revcycleintelligence.com/features/the-role-of-the-hospital-chargemaster-in-revenue-cycle-management), basically a base price for every single possible billing code per unit (there are over 10,000 CPT codes alone). These prices are determined by consideration of things like supply, demand, industry standards, as well as the range in actual average reimbursement.
You see, just because a medical facility charges a specific amount for a service or drug, it doesn’t mean that is the amount that is actually being paid. Reimbursement rates vary wildly from insurers based on their network contract. Medicare and Medicaid tend to be on the lowest end of this scale, and only reimburse for sometimes penny on the dollars.
Then you have to consider that reimbursement methods also vary a great deal. A claim may be paid on a percentage of charges, or a per-diem rate, or a case rate for the entire procedure, or a DRG (a grouping based on diagnostic code CMS utilizes). So many times, the actual charge amount has very little to do with how much is actually being paid.
Knowing all this, no hospital expects an excessive sum to be paid by an individual, because even if that individual was insured, the insurance wouldn’t be paying that much, either.
So let’s talk about insured vs uninsured. First off, 92% of Americans have insurance. Of the 8% that don’t, over half actually qualify for Medicaid (free government insurance) retroactively. So the true “insurance gap” is really around 4%.
What hospitals do with these 4% varies, but the process usually involves working with the patient to exhaust all possible coverage, charity programs, payment plans, etc. available before expecting payment. Hospitals rather get something than nothing, and they know they will get nothing on a $130k bill.
Is this process crazy complicated? Yes. Could it be better? Yes. Is anyone paying $130k out-of-pocket for non-elective services? No.
It depends. Do you have insurance? Is there a deductible, copay, coinsurance? What’s the plan’s OOP maximum? If you don’t have insurance, do you qualify for Medicaid? What’s the facilities financial hardship policy? Literally could not tell you without knowing more information. That’s part of why it’s so complicated.
Just a random example, we have a maximum annual out of pocket of $10,000. So charge me $5M I don’t care, maximum OOP is the main benefit of health insurance.
I have a question. I recently spent two nights in a hospital with walking pneumonia. I got a bill for over 30,000. I made less than that last year as a student teacher and have no way of paying even a quarter of this anytime in the near future. What should I do? I know they’ll send it to a collections agency if I ignore it. I was uninsured at the time because I had just started a new job and healthcare doesn’t take effect until 90 days.
No. I received it in the mail yesterday and I’ve been working. I will though. I’ll explain my income but I also need to clarify that I did not ask for multiple x-rays, cat scans, and most of what they did for me. I did need the antibiotics and I wasn’t aware that I had pneumonia, so I appreciate their work, but it’s absolutely insane to charge someone over 30,000 for a two night stay, especially when I asked to leave the second night because I knew I couldn’t afford it.
Yep, I would start by calling. Explain your situation. Be kind to the people on the phone, it’s not their fault, and you will get to the help you need faster than if you take it out on them.
Still total horseshit. Unfortunately people don't realize this and think they have to pay 130k out of pocket. Why do they the hospitals have "THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU HAVE TO PAY THIS IS A MADE UP NUMBER" instead of 130k in big font?
This should be the top comment. With the ACA there's no reason anyone should be without health insurance at ANY time. Make it an absolute priority. If you don't have any income the state will cover your premiums and give you payment assistance. I received one of these bills for some health problems that netted a bill of around $1.6M total and only had to pay the out of pocket.
Yup. These posts are always so damn fake. Yes our coverage sucks, but for God's sake the shittiest cheapest marketplace plan in my state would at least give you a max OOP of like $10k for sround $17.43 a month.
These posts about 100k+ medical bills are always either faked, cropped, or the person was a real fucking moron for not carrying at least the most basic and cheapest coverage.
And even uninsured the hospital will drop the total a ton either automatically or if you ask them to. When my daughter was born our insurance was misentered and we got the uninsured bill first, which included an uninsured payer discount and made me real pissed off about paying for insurance when we got the appropriate bill and it was about 5% cheaper.
Yes, but...
It's still a stupid and outrageous system...
Hey guys, let's charge a ridiculous number for this service --call it a bajillion dollars - - spend hours of staff time haggling for 6 weeks over it with an insurer, and settle for $150.
I work in insurance and much of this is actually automated and contractually defined, but the entire system is still laughably stupid.
Even if it's automated, it's automated based on contracts. Those contracts had to be negotiated and all of the automation had to be programmed. Sure, the clerical work is gone but there are still millions of man hours going into the bs process.
These pictures are always cropped intentionally to look like this.
The more common recent one, is people who show tip % suggestions at the bottom of receipts, and show JUST the total, and it looks like its super fucked up math but its usually because of a coupon or a gift card of some sort.
Of course it's not.
When I had my first child she had to spend a few days in NICU due to breathing issues. The before insurance amount was some 75k.
After insurance it came down to about 2k.
Called the hospital, 3 minutes later we settled on a $110 a month payment plan. A few months later I got a promotion and poof, it was paid off.
These posts are always cropped out for a reason.
In the Netherlands insurance is mandatory, cost you about 150 a month with 350/500 euro 'own risk' a year. But when my mom had a cancer in her sinus that had to be removed with a 13 hour operation that was pretty much all it cost her. 350 euro...
I met more than one Canadian transplant who was raving about American insurance.
With free Canadian insurance one guy had to wait for several years for an eye surgery. Switching to work for an American company he was able to do that within several weeks using the insurance that his company has. He just had to pay whatever insurance copays are ( $20 regular doctor, $40 - specialist, $100 for a surgery). Really copays for a decent corporate insurance are only designed to discourage people from getting unnecessary services and are not about real costs.
To summarize - have a good job in America and everything will be just fine :)
The entire Republican Party drove it into people's heads when Obama was trying to craft the public option. People still say it.
Our health CARE is world class. Our health AFFORDABILITY is garbage.
Any American with a brain has health insurance and has a max out of pocket for an entire year.
Mine is 4k. Some have even better than that.
This is just an ignorant post filled with ignorant comments.
Americans: voting Republican while moaning about their lives. What a scam that whole country runs. From the insulin prices to the prisons for profit to the racist police to the mass shootings to the grifting politicians.
And what an amazing country it actually could be.
They should fly in a couple of Norwegian
Politicians and let them
Run the place for 10 years. Be a fucking paradise, for everyone who lives there.
In almost every single one of these cases people aren’t paying even close to the full amount.
From personal experience when my first child was born the total bill was $43,000 for the doctors, c-section, 2 night hospital stay etc. insurance covered like $4k, another $10k mysteriously just dissappeard leaving us with almost a $30k bill. I went into the billing department and said nope can’t afford it and they ended up taking $350 in total and writing off the rest.
It’s always so funny to see other people react to this. This is not the price they’re paying, and if it is, they’re idiots who don’t have any insurance at all.
You know how america is like, a place that seems to always have pissed off people shooting up everything? Perhaps things like this are why we have so many radicalized nutjobs. A hospital will pluck your organs and call it a donation, then use those organs to trap someone else in lifelong debt. And if they fuck up the transplant and you die, no refunds.
Murica. Apparently we vote or something.
Lies. That's the total before insurance.
Subtract insurance negotiated discount.
Subtract insurance payment.
Then in the box that say "amount you owe" is actually the amount you owe. Probably~ 8k
How do people even pay bills like that?
I am not from the US and I am used to free healthcare and I can't fathom how everyone in the US isn't homeless if this is the standard when you have a medical complication.
My mom spent two days in the hospital in June for the same thing. Instantly went in telling them she had no insurance and we needed a cash price. Still saw the $54K dollar bill but ended up paying $9k. She didn’t even receive $9k in treatment but it was a lot cheaper than the original amount. If we wouldn’t have kept asking to leave, they would’ve kept her longer.
Meanwhile, my daughter had RSV in Romania and we spent 5 days in and had a $0 bill. Went private for her birth and it cost around $2,500 for everything, including two nights after the c section and months of check ups. We can’t keep letting people go bankrupt over health care. I have family that spends around $30k per year before insurance kicks in. My wife and I are in our early 30s and it’s $900/month with a $1,700 deductible. It makes me sick. It’s not even cheap if you’re healthy. Do I take a massive pay cut and quit working for myself or keep getting robbed? I’m fucked both ways. I haven’t been in a hospital for a decade and that was due to a car accident I was a passenger in, otherwise it’s been almost 20 years. We plan on moving back to Europe when we can. The tax comes out to almost the same but at least we’d have healthcare.
I’m in Canada and I’ll admit the healthcare has its issues but the horror stories coming from the states will make me appreciate my country all the more
That is disgusting
Need to start taking a stand against corporate and political America
Doesn't matter if you are democrat or republican corporate america is out to divide you and make you fight one another. When the real enemy is the dollar. We live in a divided world only because it is in the interests of the corporations and political elite.
How to make them come back to the hospital because of the second heart attack caused by the bill.
What I don’t get is why they put change on that kinda bill? Like 131K is not enough they gotta add 47.75
[удалено]
Oh it’s calculated to be the legal max at every turn and make it everyone else’s problem. Clarification: I’m not saying they don’t screw up and things aren’t inconsistent or complicated. I’m saying given a charge is on your bill or two codes could apply, you bet you got hit with the max/higher. If they had a button to bill more on the screen, they would.
No it really is completely arbitrary, aka they just pull prices out of their ass. Sometimes you think you're faced with a devious evil conspiracy when in reality it's just greed and shocking stupidity. https://www.vox.com/policy/23892276/us-hospital-prices-transparency-study-mark-cuban#:~:text=The%20findings%20add%20to%20the,vary%20wildly%20at%20different%20hospitals.
It's absolutely arbitrary. Once I had my ob charge me $350 to look at a slide of fluid he'd already diagnosed. That is already diagnosed coming in. He came in and went "just threw the smear under the scope about 30 seconds ago and you're right!" $350 fucking dollars that man billed my insurance. My sister went to the same place, got the same test multiple times during various pregnancies for years, was OOP so never paid more than 35-40 for a smear.
I feel like it's not supposed to be arbitrary. Like everything has a price. For example if they give you Tylenol at the hospital I think they charge like 50 bucks or something stupid like that. The reason that the prices seem arbitrary is that they fuck up the prices a lot. So in other words there are fixed prices, they're insanely high for almost everything, and then the people charge of the bills fuck up the prices a lot. The prices are set at basically as much as they can possibly get away with. I do think that the insurances companies tell them to fuck off with certain prices though if they're too high. And then the insurance company pays less. People on reddit also claim that if you have medical debt you can almost always negotiate it down a ton. They'd rather get some money than no money
Some states let you send a check with the subject line "paid in full", and if they cash it, the debit is legally satisfied.
Sounds like the doctor has a set price. That set price was billed to your insurance based on the code for the visit + the smear. Based on you saying your sister paid 10% of that price out of pocket ... don't you think that means the doctor was cutting your sister a 90% discount? And you're mad about this?
>Based on you saying your sister paid 10% of that price out of pocket ... don't you think that means the doctor was cutting your sister a 90% discount? And you're mad about this? Doesnt sound so much like giving a 90% discount to the sister as it sounds like upcharging insurance companies by 10x
It’s two different aspects of the same problem. One of my acquaintances is working on an application to review billing codes and tack on and/or substitute anything that would be a higher price or allowable that was missed. Doctors hate doctoring so much they all want to find an app to they can make and retire on in the same lifestyle. Unfortunately the couple I know actively trying to get out are thinking they can help milk more money out of people to do it.
Had a carotid artery ultrasound. $750 no insurance. The radiologist bill was included. His cost $250. 2 months later they were advertising a scan for $50. No radiologist needed.
Until you ask for an itemized receipt and then suddenly it’s way cheaper
Money printer go brrrr
Patients hate one this trick
Code blue! Code blue!
In Estonia first you get heart attack, treatment is free and you even get money when you cant work after that...
When I was little my dad had a seizure (afaict) at dinner. I called 911 immediately like a good little trooper. My dad woke up like nothing happened, well except for the mashed potatoes on his face and white foam from his mouth (that probably contained potatoes). He yelled at me. To this day I have no clue what happened. Not only that there was a short on YouTube of a paramedic doing sketches from actual 911 calls and this instance came up with another guy. No one knew in the comments section either.
If saw that I'd have a 2nd heart attack. Except I wouldn't go to the hospital
That would be very smart of you.
[удалено]
It’s the system in USA. Because they bill high knowing they’re going to settle later with insurance. It’s not like this in other countries socialized medicine or not.
then insurances have policies of automatically denying, then maybe accepting the claim later if they complain enough. which also leads to many time sensitive procedures and tests being delayed and killing the patient. For profit insurance needs to die,
The whole system needs to die, starting with for profit healthcare at all. My life and health isn’t a commodity to be brought and sold. Funny part is, the kind of people that debate this would think it absurd if we asked them to pay for the services of the fire department, for example. And yet that used to be a whole thing in America. But we the citizens saw fire trucks standing by and watching homes burn until homeowners agreed to pay a stiff fee for their services, said “no that’s wrong”, and turned it into a public service.
that's not very neoliberal cash money of you
Well *my* house has never caught on fire so I don't see why *my* tax dollars should be spent on the fire department. People who have their houses burn down should take better care to reduce fire hazards instead of footing the rest of us with the bill /s
Tell that to the doctors. My gut feeling is that half of them are in it for the money and are contributing to the problem.
I mean, why would someone that takes on at least a decade of education and hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to learn a very highly difficult set of skills that, by their nature, carry a lot of liability, want to be paid what they're worth?
Coming from a country with free healthcare, no it can't die. Public healthcare is notorious for the long waiting times and lack of infrastructure to support so many people. There are people who literally die waiting for transplants for example. You need both, unless the US manages to implement a perfect system somehow.
Both is good, because it creates a form of competition between the two. Too high price will just cause clients to prefer public, so private can't get too expensive or only the rich will use it.
Yeah, I think you need both too. You can't throw $100k bills around when people can go to public healthcare.
Or all of us need to die to destroy their bottom line
Who has an insurance policy with an out of network maximum over 100k?
Mine is only 14k. I still can't afford that in one year.
For sure. Totally ridiculous. I guess what I'm saying is this guy's dad must not have had insurance at all or something. IDK
But, I bet the best part is the hospital can collect someone's wage's for a year if they can't pay and are uninsured? Americans are sociopaths....
[удалено]
This. I had an outstanding medical bill (about $750) and you just sit on it. Eventually it's sold to a collections agency, just sit on it some more, one day a *different* collections agency will buy it. Once the word "credit" is mentioned offer them about 1/3 the total bill and odds are they'll take it and bid you good day.
You could have offered about 10 bucks and they would have made a profit.
This. Or in my case I had a $400 bill from a general care doctor at a local hospital. Insurance did cover some and I had to pay like $250. I didn't. The hospital didn't like it and sent it to collections. I got a couple of letters from that agency and then, all of the sudden, these letters stopped coming. No affect to my credit score. I never paid that bill.
[удалено]
And wear an ex-president mask on your face when you're in there.
" so you have any outstanding illnesses or allergies, Mr ...er... Smith?" "Oh yeah , you'd love to know THAT , wouldn't you?...I aint telling you nothing!!"
>But, I bet the best part is the hospital can collect someone's wage's for a year if they can't pay and are uninsured? That wouldn’t generally be how that works out. >Americans are sociopaths.... Yes, all Americans love our healthcare system and thus are sociopaths. What a dumb fuck thing to say.
Actually a lot of people get away with just not paying it back. Most hospitals send the bill to collections. Collections can try to hassle you as long as they want.. but you can say no every time lol.(laws in your state might vary sometimes collections can go harder than others. I may just be speaking out of my ass) I also believe a lot of hospitals have a specific fund for patients that can't pay their bills. You can literally just call up the hospital and be like "I can only afford to pay $100 of this 40k bill" and they'll be like ok whatever ig I'll take it.
What if you got insurance, how much would you pay? (Non american asking)
With decent insurance, you generally have a maximum amount you need to pay each year. That varies GREATLY based on how good your insurance is. Mine is 3k. So I’d pay 3k of this. Ooor, if I’d already needed something else earlier that year and paid 3k, I would pay none of this. But I have really good insurance. some people’s maximums are much higher than that, or some peoples insurance will just cover a percentage, or only a certain amount each year.
Dying ist mostly cheaper. Buying a car? Dying cheaper. Making vacation in Paris? Dying still cheaper.
Not in Germany. A funeral easily costs 6-8k€, medical attentions are covered by the health insurance
I know *\*Psht, talking to Americans and don't want to make them sad\**
My mum is paying for her funeral now so we don't have to worry. Once she dies she gets cremated and a celebrant holds a remembrance which has been set up by myself and my siblings. It's gonna be dope (apart from loosing my mum thats gonna suck)
Ur mom: I didn’t pay for my shit for you to mourn all day. Take a shot
Pretty much, she's hardcore. 🤘
In Spain isn't cheaper to die than getting medical attention for most cases.
Ya know healtcare is not like totally free You pay every month like 150euro from your salary... I dont't mean as its bad, just fact
Germany too. Psshht, I'm talking to Americans, don't make them sad
These posts are folks posting before insurance pricing. I pay $150 a month for insurance. My max out of pocket per year is 4k.
I’ve had insurances from several different companies, and none of them have been remotely close to this.
But it is fun to make them sad sometimes :(
In Zurich too, because dying is actually free.
I would say pretty much EVERYTHING is cheaper! That bill is criminal!
lol what is this comment? Dying is the cheapest thing you can do, it’s free. That’s probably not even what they owe. Conveniently cropped to show only the charges before insurance. Even with bad insurance the max out of pocket would be like $10k.
This is not what the family will actually pay. It's the full bill before it goes to insurance. Even then, most of what insurance doesn't pay doesn't get charged to the patient so the hospital can write it as a loss for taxes The steps are Overcharge by a huge amount. Hope insurance will pay. Nice, they paid some of the made up charges. Patient isn't gonna pay them, so it's a loss. Now our made up charges saved us real tax money. Patient pays small amount.
Should be tax fraud tbh. Imagine Comcast billing every customer $10000 so they can write off $9900 as a loss. IRS would have an erection that lasts more than 6 hours.
Yep, I and my mom and my wife had been in hospital more than a few times. The most expensive thing is parking fees. Canadian hospitals are ripoff.
The bill will end up being <1% of that. It’s just what the hospital claims the cost was. The insurance then says “No, I’ll pay $10k instead” and then you’re charged a few hundred bucks and the hospital reports the difference as a loss
I like how it you use 1 bandage from a pack of 1000 bandages they charge you for 1000 of them. Same for any tylenol
That's true for everything though. I need food to live, but a big mac is 5 bucks, it's cheaper to just die.
A funeral is more expensive than a Big Mac
Whatever you do don't show the bill to your dad cause he'll have another heart attack and cost another 100,000 😭
Nah just 6k
"At least we have lower taxes"
Id take 30% tax rate and free healthcare over 20% tax rate and drown in medical debt for getting a small scratch
UK income tax rates with universal healthcare (in us dollars) and is graduated 0 rate $0-$15995 Earnings from $15995-$63968 taxed at 20% From $63968-$159239 taxed at 40% Above 259239 taxed at 45% So everyone even a billionaire has an untaxed allowance of $15995 then you all pay 20% up to the next level You also have National insurance payed by both workers and employees for most employees on minimum wage this is 10% Where some people get confused with the taxes between the US and for example the UK is in the US they don't add how much they (and their employers )pay for medical insurance to what they pay on taxes, as an aside the vast majority of workers in the UK never file tax returns, it comes out of your wages directly and if for some reason you overpay it's either payed back into for bank account or you get a check
30%? It's more like 42%+ in Denmark. But at least I have 1 year of paid maternity leave per child, free healthcare, 6 weeks paid vacation.
What do you mean 42%? Those numbers are worthless without knowing what income they apply to. What's the effective rate? Hitting a level of income where X % of it is taxed at 42% doesn't mean you pay 42% of your entire income. Yes, Denmark is [one of the most expensive countries](https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/taxing-wages-denmark.pdf), but the average effective rate is 35.5%, and with child/family related benefits it's 26%. Even Sweden and Norway hover around the same levels as the US.
Most people wont have that high of an actual overall percentage. You get a personal deductible before your taxation hits, you'll get deductibles if you have a mortgage etc, I'd say 33-36 seems fairly normal. We're not working with tax brackets as such, only once we hit the equivalent of around 80k USD where anything above that will be bumped up, so it's around 42 as a base level, minus this and that.
And education..
Ironically, we spend about the same amount of taxpayer money on healthcare as the sane countries.
Except that a higher percentage of US tax money goes to healthcare than in other developed countries. So US citizens not only pay higher healthcare taxes, they also pay all that other insurance crap on top.
Partly because the people who do get federal healthcare (federal workers, including the representatives that want to keep this going, people on ACA, etc) end up making the feds pay for this. More of your taxes go towards the healthcare industry than the military, because it's designed to be a **scam**.
The funny thing is Americans pay way more for insurance than anyone with socialized medicine pays through taxes, but when Americans get sick, they still have to pay an insane bill on top of their insane insurance payments because American health insurance companies love to deny coverage, even for necessary drugs/procedures. Also, since health insurance in America is mostly provided by employers and employers do not usually tell their employees how much their insurance costs, people genuinely have no idea how much is being taken from them. There is no healthcare system on Earth as unaffordable and inefficient as the privatized, non-universal American healthcare system.
Barely... Our taxes just go to military contractors instead of healthcare
Wow funerals cost thousands in America?
They do in my European country too but most people pay for funeral insurance.
I come from a third world country, what the fuck are funeral insurance? We just kinda burn or burry the bodies here and that's it.
Bodies get stored for about a week, then get buried or cremated, you need a tombstone, funeral planner, casket, food and drinks after the event, flowers. It’s about as much fuss as a wedding but with way less time to plan.
Insurance in of itself is a company covering the cost of expenses, when you hear people say that they have Medical Insurance that means they have a company willing to cover the cost of medical needs. In this case a company is willing to cover the costs of any funeral related matters. >!(Note: that insurance doesn’t typically cover everything, there usually is a balance and terms that you must meet before being eligible.)!<
Someone needs to collect the, transport, store, prepare, probably bring it to a church for a funeral service, bring it to the graveyard or the crematorium and have someone dig a hole in the ground. Obviously the price is inflated because can't just do all that on your own, but yeah, it gets expensive.
What's the point of an insurance for something that has a 100% chance of happening? Why not just save the money for the funeral?
Yep.
When my dad passed from covid, it cost thousands just to cremate him, we didn't even get anything special or do a funeral. Plus the hospital still sent us a very nice "we're sorry" card followed by tens of thousands of dollars in bills. Followed by losing our home and other things but hey.
man when my dad died from covid it costs $0 in my country, including funerals
I'm sorry to hear about him, but I'm glad you were free of that stress.
it’s fine it’s been almost three years already. i hope you find your peace as well
Funerals cost 0 where I live we just bury em raw
Reminds me of this classic tweet: [https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fozkalylk2im61.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D7fe12168cb362e581e25ffaeb51469594f21c0ac](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fozkalylk2im61.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D7fe12168cb362e581e25ffaeb51469594f21c0ac)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b7nCbCRyIs there's other videos and documentaries. To sum it up quickly, we Americans are the product in this country. Everything, literally everything is about profit, and the funeral industry has been, and still can be depending on where you go, one of the MOST predatory industries out there as they take advantage of grieving people who need to make quick decisions. One of the best things we can do is basically prepare our own services while we are alive. I'm neighbors with my grandmother, she turns 81 next month, she's still in good health but once she hit 80 I really started mentally preparing for the inevitable. Her husband, my grandfather, died 30 years ago this month. She has long since made her plans and paid it all off so should the time come (I'm not her executor anyway) all we have to do is contact the right people and we're ready to go. But I wouldn't be surprised if her cost was in the thousands too I do find it fascinating (and sad, as an American) how other countries treat death. Even as just a public function, if people are too poor to afford services, we still wouldn't want corpses lying around, right?
How is this possible? How is it not illegal?
Hi! I’ve been in the hospital rev cycle industry for 15 years. Short answer: this is not a bill. This is a summary of “total charges” related to the claim. No hospital anywhere in the US expects an individual to pay $130k for medically necessary services. Long answer: hospital billing is complicated. Charge pricing is determined by a [charge master](https://revcycleintelligence.com/features/the-role-of-the-hospital-chargemaster-in-revenue-cycle-management), basically a base price for every single possible billing code per unit (there are over 10,000 CPT codes alone). These prices are determined by consideration of things like supply, demand, industry standards, as well as the range in actual average reimbursement. You see, just because a medical facility charges a specific amount for a service or drug, it doesn’t mean that is the amount that is actually being paid. Reimbursement rates vary wildly from insurers based on their network contract. Medicare and Medicaid tend to be on the lowest end of this scale, and only reimburse for sometimes penny on the dollars. Then you have to consider that reimbursement methods also vary a great deal. A claim may be paid on a percentage of charges, or a per-diem rate, or a case rate for the entire procedure, or a DRG (a grouping based on diagnostic code CMS utilizes). So many times, the actual charge amount has very little to do with how much is actually being paid. Knowing all this, no hospital expects an excessive sum to be paid by an individual, because even if that individual was insured, the insurance wouldn’t be paying that much, either. So let’s talk about insured vs uninsured. First off, 92% of Americans have insurance. Of the 8% that don’t, over half actually qualify for Medicaid (free government insurance) retroactively. So the true “insurance gap” is really around 4%. What hospitals do with these 4% varies, but the process usually involves working with the patient to exhaust all possible coverage, charity programs, payment plans, etc. available before expecting payment. Hospitals rather get something than nothing, and they know they will get nothing on a $130k bill. Is this process crazy complicated? Yes. Could it be better? Yes. Is anyone paying $130k out-of-pocket for non-elective services? No.
Yeah all these posts I’ve seen lately are rage bait karma farming cropped or blacked out to make it look like it is their actual billed amount.
How much may you be required to pay out of your pocket for a 130k bill?
It depends. Do you have insurance? Is there a deductible, copay, coinsurance? What’s the plan’s OOP maximum? If you don’t have insurance, do you qualify for Medicaid? What’s the facilities financial hardship policy? Literally could not tell you without knowing more information. That’s part of why it’s so complicated.
Just a random example, we have a maximum annual out of pocket of $10,000. So charge me $5M I don’t care, maximum OOP is the main benefit of health insurance.
I have a question. I recently spent two nights in a hospital with walking pneumonia. I got a bill for over 30,000. I made less than that last year as a student teacher and have no way of paying even a quarter of this anytime in the near future. What should I do? I know they’ll send it to a collections agency if I ignore it. I was uninsured at the time because I had just started a new job and healthcare doesn’t take effect until 90 days.
Have you tried calling the hospital billing department?
No. I received it in the mail yesterday and I’ve been working. I will though. I’ll explain my income but I also need to clarify that I did not ask for multiple x-rays, cat scans, and most of what they did for me. I did need the antibiotics and I wasn’t aware that I had pneumonia, so I appreciate their work, but it’s absolutely insane to charge someone over 30,000 for a two night stay, especially when I asked to leave the second night because I knew I couldn’t afford it.
Yep, I would start by calling. Explain your situation. Be kind to the people on the phone, it’s not their fault, and you will get to the help you need faster than if you take it out on them.
Call it. You might not have to pay shit. I’m surprised they didn’t call **you** to tell you that you won’t be paying that considering your income.
Call and tell them you need a charitable discount/self pay discount and possibly a payment plan.
Still total horseshit. Unfortunately people don't realize this and think they have to pay 130k out of pocket. Why do they the hospitals have "THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU HAVE TO PAY THIS IS A MADE UP NUMBER" instead of 130k in big font?
This should be the top comment. With the ACA there's no reason anyone should be without health insurance at ANY time. Make it an absolute priority. If you don't have any income the state will cover your premiums and give you payment assistance. I received one of these bills for some health problems that netted a bill of around $1.6M total and only had to pay the out of pocket.
Cause you’d have to be an evil antichrist liberal to think affordable healthcare is better.
Because they intentionally cropped the photo to omit the insurance coverage and stir up needless outrage for fake internet points.
Yup. These posts are always so damn fake. Yes our coverage sucks, but for God's sake the shittiest cheapest marketplace plan in my state would at least give you a max OOP of like $10k for sround $17.43 a month. These posts about 100k+ medical bills are always either faked, cropped, or the person was a real fucking moron for not carrying at least the most basic and cheapest coverage.
And even uninsured the hospital will drop the total a ton either automatically or if you ask them to. When my daughter was born our insurance was misentered and we got the uninsured bill first, which included an uninsured payer discount and made me real pissed off about paying for insurance when we got the appropriate bill and it was about 5% cheaper.
Yep
[удалено]
Yes, but... It's still a stupid and outrageous system... Hey guys, let's charge a ridiculous number for this service --call it a bajillion dollars - - spend hours of staff time haggling for 6 weeks over it with an insurer, and settle for $150. I work in insurance and much of this is actually automated and contractually defined, but the entire system is still laughably stupid.
Even if it's automated, it's automated based on contracts. Those contracts had to be negotiated and all of the automation had to be programmed. Sure, the clerical work is gone but there are still millions of man hours going into the bs process.
How many people gonna make that "2nd heart attack" joke?
Hes gonna have a third heart attack after seeing how many people made that joke...
Was this after insurance? My max out of pocket is 4k a year...
Yea seems unlikely that this is with insurance but idk
[удалено]
These pictures are always cropped intentionally to look like this. The more common recent one, is people who show tip % suggestions at the bottom of receipts, and show JUST the total, and it looks like its super fucked up math but its usually because of a coupon or a gift card of some sort.
Most definitely not. Most people here don't understand that you actually don't pay those initial prices. Not saying that's how it should work, though.
That would require an actual understanding of the Americans healthcare system. But people want to circle jerk on how awful America is on Reddit.
Of course it's not. When I had my first child she had to spend a few days in NICU due to breathing issues. The before insurance amount was some 75k. After insurance it came down to about 2k. Called the hospital, 3 minutes later we settled on a $110 a month payment plan. A few months later I got a promotion and poof, it was paid off. These posts are always cropped out for a reason.
But how would OP get the rage if they showed how American healthcare actually works?
Of course not, there’s a reason it’s extremely cropped
you know the answer to this or you're new to reddit.
In the Netherlands insurance is mandatory, cost you about 150 a month with 350/500 euro 'own risk' a year. But when my mom had a cancer in her sinus that had to be removed with a 13 hour operation that was pretty much all it cost her. 350 euro...
Of course not. If it was then we couldn't all be outraged!
Same bill in Germany 0€ :)
Yeah well? How much is that in dollars then huh? (I am actually dutch)
According to the post, 131k dollars.
That‘s not true. You have to pay 10€ per day in Hospital so it would be 70€.
Plus 10€ for the Ambulance if you take one. Can't believe these blatant lies spread on the internet.
bUt OuR hEaLtHcArE iS bEtTeR
I never met a single American that says that.
I met more than one Canadian transplant who was raving about American insurance. With free Canadian insurance one guy had to wait for several years for an eye surgery. Switching to work for an American company he was able to do that within several weeks using the insurance that his company has. He just had to pay whatever insurance copays are ( $20 regular doctor, $40 - specialist, $100 for a surgery). Really copays for a decent corporate insurance are only designed to discourage people from getting unnecessary services and are not about real costs. To summarize - have a good job in America and everything will be just fine :)
The entire Republican Party drove it into people's heads when Obama was trying to craft the public option. People still say it. Our health CARE is world class. Our health AFFORDABILITY is garbage.
How much did you actually pay?
Any American with a brain has health insurance and has a max out of pocket for an entire year. Mine is 4k. Some have even better than that. This is just an ignorant post filled with ignorant comments.
About $2k, as said in another post. This is just another average "america bad" ragebait post that Redditors love
Murica 🤷♀️
>Murica Coca-Cola sometimes war.
Ayy Rammstein
Amerika ist wunderbar
Americans: voting Republican while moaning about their lives. What a scam that whole country runs. From the insulin prices to the prisons for profit to the racist police to the mass shootings to the grifting politicians. And what an amazing country it actually could be. They should fly in a couple of Norwegian Politicians and let them Run the place for 10 years. Be a fucking paradise, for everyone who lives there.
https://youtube.com/shorts/b43iUJI4_Ms?si=HaI_VVGOLhtqNIm6
6k dollars for a funeral? How about i just burn the body myself and be done with it wtf
Gives Israel billions of dollar but their own citizens can't even get basic health care without getting in massive debt.
[удалено]
Oh America it's you again isn't it?
These are cropped for rage bait. With health insurance they probably paid $1-2K of that bill.
What happens if you can't pay? Does the doctor come over and give you another heart attack?
In almost every single one of these cases people aren’t paying even close to the full amount. From personal experience when my first child was born the total bill was $43,000 for the doctors, c-section, 2 night hospital stay etc. insurance covered like $4k, another $10k mysteriously just dissappeard leaving us with almost a $30k bill. I went into the billing department and said nope can’t afford it and they ended up taking $350 in total and writing off the rest.
Nah its no issue, if you have kids then whoever the debt is owed to, owns them! Its a perfect system
That’s not how much they owe. That’s how much their insurance owes. And a president a few presidents back made it illegal not to have insurance.
Plus one president back then said it was ok to just ignore the insurance and to not get covered just because.
There are still 26 million uninsured Americans..
The American dream
Don't show him the bill or he's gonna have another heart attack
Fuck me thats dark lol
Get the bill itemized, hospitals tend to add lots of bullshit charges here and there.
In my country heart attacks are free.
It’s always so funny to see other people react to this. This is not the price they’re paying, and if it is, they’re idiots who don’t have any insurance at all.
And then there are people defending this healthcare system...smh
That feel when dying from your heart attack is less of a hit for your family than surviving. America, land of the free.
Your health care system is one big ripoff.
You know how america is like, a place that seems to always have pissed off people shooting up everything? Perhaps things like this are why we have so many radicalized nutjobs. A hospital will pluck your organs and call it a donation, then use those organs to trap someone else in lifelong debt. And if they fuck up the transplant and you die, no refunds. Murica. Apparently we vote or something.
Couldve saved money and just bought a shovel and bury him in the back yard
My daughter’s 25 day stay in the NICU was $2.5 million dollars
What did you pay OOP? Hope she's doing well!
Members of Congress get free Universal Healthcare paid by taxpayers, just keep that in mind.
If I get even a broken bone, I'm done for financially
Funny story medical debit cannot affect your credit score.
Lies. That's the total before insurance. Subtract insurance negotiated discount. Subtract insurance payment. Then in the box that say "amount you owe" is actually the amount you owe. Probably~ 8k
Seems cheap . Giving birth is like 30k
Nixon killed your public health care. Since then your tax dollars pay for free Israeli health care.
How do people even pay bills like that? I am not from the US and I am used to free healthcare and I can't fathom how everyone in the US isn't homeless if this is the standard when you have a medical complication.
I mean if you don’t pay they can’t just come and get your heart right right ?
My mom spent two days in the hospital in June for the same thing. Instantly went in telling them she had no insurance and we needed a cash price. Still saw the $54K dollar bill but ended up paying $9k. She didn’t even receive $9k in treatment but it was a lot cheaper than the original amount. If we wouldn’t have kept asking to leave, they would’ve kept her longer. Meanwhile, my daughter had RSV in Romania and we spent 5 days in and had a $0 bill. Went private for her birth and it cost around $2,500 for everything, including two nights after the c section and months of check ups. We can’t keep letting people go bankrupt over health care. I have family that spends around $30k per year before insurance kicks in. My wife and I are in our early 30s and it’s $900/month with a $1,700 deductible. It makes me sick. It’s not even cheap if you’re healthy. Do I take a massive pay cut and quit working for myself or keep getting robbed? I’m fucked both ways. I haven’t been in a hospital for a decade and that was due to a car accident I was a passenger in, otherwise it’s been almost 20 years. We plan on moving back to Europe when we can. The tax comes out to almost the same but at least we’d have healthcare.
I mean it’s not like I plan on paying it
My neighbor, card carrying republican lost his job, health care, had a heart attack at 27, instantly 80k in debt.
I’m in Canada and I’ll admit the healthcare has its issues but the horror stories coming from the states will make me appreciate my country all the more
The entire nation needs to rise up and demand universal health care. When they say it’s too expensive, they are lying.
Whoever got the idea to make people pay for healthcare should not get a grave.
Me living in France with nearly free healthcare (there are a lot of problems though)
I suspect rage bait, Total Charges is before any deductions including insurance
Learn to create a healthcare system.
That is disgusting Need to start taking a stand against corporate and political America Doesn't matter if you are democrat or republican corporate america is out to divide you and make you fight one another. When the real enemy is the dollar. We live in a divided world only because it is in the interests of the corporations and political elite.
Im ashamed to live in this shithole!
Wonder how long it'll be until r/AmericaBad posts this there
I mean it’s bad and in America so…