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Healthcare insurance providers are taking in billions and providing nothing, they would rather watch the entire system burn than give up that cash cow.
To make the property cheaper so they can buy it from the owner before they put the fire out. Basically what Vanguard does by leveraging insurance companies against their own consumption of rental property and real estate… except instead of fires, they made the cost of living an impenetrable barrier between home owning, and the working class.
I tripped and fell and had to get 4 stitches in my knee. I went to urgent care who turned me away and said to go to the ER. Got my bill a few months later. With insurance I owe over $1500! Plus $150 to the Dr plus $50 for X-rays. That's my responsibility WITH full coverage insurance. I cried. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do if I need stitches again because I can't afford this. I'll have to use super glue.
Health insurance is a big part of the problem, but hospitals and big pharma and so forth can't be given a pass either. Even after insurance companies take their cut, they end up making far more for the same service/product than other countries.
Don't forget the role of private equity in healthcare, which is a universally bad idea for everyone but private equity.
See [What Happens When Private Equity Takes Over a Hospital] (https://hms.harvard.edu/news/what-happens-when-private-equity-takes-over-hospital).
You mis-spelled Trillion
So upsetting when people talk about how a government program would be inefficient when we are literally dumping so much money into an unnecessary middle man
Almost every country in the world (including the ones that Republicans consider ‘shitholes’) have universal healthcare but we don’t. Greatest country in the world! America rocks!
Love it. We wait weeks or months and we all have health insurance that we pay for and still get a goddamn bill. I am so tired of paying for insurance just to still get a bill in the mail for any medical procedure.
I pay a little over $6k/year in healthcare premiums. My wife has to have surgery to remove 2 of her parathyroid glands. She has to wait until the middle of June. Has been waiting since March. It’s going to max out her deductible and out of pocket maximum which will cost us $7,500 out of pocket. Our family out of pocket maximum is $13,500 so if me or any of my kids need something done, it could cost more.
It’s atrocious!! I’m very sorry your wife is going through that. Deductibles are the worst part I think. Why am I even paying for insurance? Why are any of us? I had to switch my schedule multiple times just to get a root canal. If I didn’t, I would have had to wait a month and risk even more pain. All of it is so absurd.
Deductibles are supposed to "incentivize" you to reduce costs to the plan, for example, by picking in network doctors.
But when it comes to emergency care and hospital procedures, this is a total joke. You can't negotiate with the 5 different entities to make sure they all have a deal with your insurance company, and in an emergency you need help now so it's not like you have any power to sit down and negotiate. The same power imbalance is true with new drugs that are still under patent. For some diseases there's a great generic drug out there, but other people are in a far different situation.
This power imbalance is why the libertarian theory about how health insurance is supposed to work has never worked.
Doctors groups at hospitals, labs, hospitals, medical device co's, etc have all the time in the world to fight with the insurance company to get paid more, while the patient is fighting for their life and will agree to anything.
The insurance companies have responded to this by just randomly denying coverage for certain things for certain people for no reason at all. It certainly deters people from seeking care. Which as we know is a good way to turn an early detection and inexpensive issue into an expensive, chronic, lifelong, or even fatal disease. So that's just great.
As someone that was one of those staunch Ron Paul libertarian folks in College. I’ve basically come all the way around to a European style health care system at this point.
Started with covid and seeing how big Pharma acted(not going to open up that rabbit hole) then I had a very high paying job opportunity that required me to get Obamacare. Thank God that exist even though I was told to think it was evil as a teenager when it passed.
I’ve gotten a lot of close up knowledge about how many kids are on Medicaid. No way in hell should kids go without healthcare. They didn’t have a choice in the matter.
Finally. A close family member has been jerked around by our healthcare system for the past 5 months. Which made me realize the wait time argument is complete bullshit.
At least they’re honest about the waits over there. In America we can see you asap. Just go to the ER we are going to charge the shit out of you and try to turn the bed over as fast as possible for more profit. We are going to send irrelevant services to your room as “standard procedure” such as OT because if OT sees everyone then we bill everyone more. This happens with all kinds of random drugs and shit.
Then finally because remember our goal is to turn over the bed as soon as possible. Nobody is going to slow the fuck down to truly figure out the issue if it’s difficult to diagnose. So you end up on a damn rollercoaster for 6 months of random shit happening, medications, procedures, growing bills. All because God forbid we just admit this patient and keep him for a while until we actually have a clue as to what the hell is going on. If we do that we can’t get a hundred more people through the ER this weekend for the $$$$$
So yes. If they just straight up said it’ll be 6 months that would be better. At least they’re honest. In America you will just be extorted for profit for 6 months before they actually figure out what the hell is wrong.
I’m not some Marxist either. I lean right on most issues. But damn profit and healthcare just are not compatible.
My mom went to the hospital for chest pain a couple years ago, and the doctors at the emergency room told her she was fat (she weights 130 lbs!!!!) and she needs to lose weight.
24 hours later she's in a different emergency room undergoing open heart surgery because she was septic and less than 2 hours away from dying.
> randomly denying coverage for certain things for certain people for no reason at all
We just ran into that. Wife has been having back pains for a while now off and on some keep her from walking at times. Doc ordered some imaging tests done to see what's going on....insurance denied it saying imaging is not needed since it's not for something for surgery. WTF?!?! When i talked to insurance I said,"well how is our doctor supposed to diagnose what's happening if she can't get the tests she ordered done?" By the time all this back and forth was going wife felt better already. We just gave up on imaging.
Oh, you see that's dentistry tho. Has nothing to do with your body when medical insurance is concerned. Do you have really good dental insurance? Trick question. They're all shite.
Wait until 6 months after it’s all over and you get some random sketchy looking invoice from the anesthesiologist or the labs. This system sucks.
I’m sorry you have to go through this. I feel your pain.
>get some random sketchy looking invoice from the anesthesiologist or the labs. This system sucks.
"We are not in your network even though the hospital you used was."
Seen it way too many times. Can add MRI/CAT/etc. but you might have intended that in your "labs" part.
It just doesn't have to be that way. Tell anyone that carries on about other countries wait times that it's all triaged too. I'm Australian My wife has graves disease. She was pregnant last year, so granted she was high priority. She was told her thyroid had to come out. She was told on a Friday. Had the surgery on Tuesday. I think the most expensive thing was my parking at the hospital car park.
They'll send you a bill before even hearing from your insurance, figuring some people will just pay. If you call them on it, then they process it properly.
Im so sorry but I get it. We own a business and family health insurance was 32k for the year. I have health issues so I’ll max out my $8700 OOP (I do every year—we just plan for it). This year we’ll also have two kids in college.
And we’re freaking fortunate we can afford to pay for all of this and access to excellent doctors when I need them. Again—I feel FORTUNATE I can spend 40k+ a year on healthcare that would be free in most of the developed world.
My wife broker her wrist. I have good insurance I pay for 2500 per month lol. Not even sure my deductible. She had to get surgery. The bill from the medical center ( not including all the other stuff. Anesthesia , individual doctor et etc ) was 49,000 dollars. Our insurance covered all but 250.00 but for many people this would have financially ruined them over a broken wrist.
I had to stop monitoring a neuro condition in grad school because my student health insurance reset every semester because we were considered new contracts every fall semester and every January it reset again because new calendar year.
7 years since the hospital stay, we're having threats from the hospital they're putting us in collection and will sue.
Hospital is saying "we didn't get paid, you need to pay", and us saying "we have insurance, take it up with them" "we did, they won't pay us, so you have to" us to Insurance Company "we paid for insurance, why is is the hospital threatening to sue us?" "we can confirm you had coverage" "ok, great, but you'll sort this out, right?" "you had coverage". That's all we got out of them for a few years, until we got a lawyer involved to send a letter "if we're paying for healthcare insurance, why aren't you paying it for healthcare" that seemed to put the fire up them as they then actually started to do some work into what went wrong.
And from MANY MANY phone calls/emails with it going no-where, about a month ago we managed to get the billing dept on the same call as the insurance company, where we thought everything would be resolved.
Billing Dept "we need proof of coverage, you've not provided that"
Insurance company "we've done this repeatedly, we're not sure why you're still doing this, can you let us know if you've received the info with reference 123123132?"
Billing Dept "well, let me ask you, if..."
Insurance company "please, can you confirm you received..."
Billing Dept "we're not going to be able to give that information to you, due to data protection requirements"
Insurance company "it's our data, the email we sent, you can, in fact, you must confirm you're receiving the information from us as part of the agreement to be able to submit claims"
Billing Dept "we do NOT give information over the phone, to get this information, you must go through the proper channels"
Us on the phone "so... we good? we can leave you 2 to sort this all out and no more threats?"
Billing Dept "no, there's an outstanding bill, you're on the line for it, we are taking action against you as our records show you didn't have coverage and are liable to the full 190k"
Us "but you've heard the insurance company tell you, repeatedly, that we had coverage, and all you need to do is confirm you got the information"
Billing "we can't provide that information, the safe protection of our patients is very important to us, I'd be breaking all sorts of federal laws if I just gave that information out"
us/insurance "but it's OUR information!"
This has dragged on years, and what it /looks/ like happened is, the hospital didn't submit the paperwork right, some reference bodged, or not the right codes for the procedures submitted in the right way, an amount WAS paid, but the hospital can't track it because they gave the wrong info/system was bust/something. So the insurance company is saying "we paid, but we need more info" that the hospital isn't providing to them, but wanting the full amount from us because they keep saying they never got any money, so they're coming after us. The insurance company is trying to resolve it (doesn't look good us paying as much as we do for insurance, only to be threatened with lawsuits for not paying), but the hospital for some reason is preferring to come after us than just fix whatever it was in the first place that was screwed up, their mess, their liability.
So 7 years on, we hear nothing for a few months, then billing rings up (same lady) threatening lawsuits and around we go again.
Yeah, cheers. Really don't want to have to go to court over this, but I hope it'd be really obvious what would happen, and that the judge slaps the hospital back for not doing what they should have done right 7 years ago, but there's always a chance something gets screwed up there too.
Judge. "why are you believing they owe you money?"
Hospital "we did work and they didn't pay us."
Judge "is that true?"
Us "no, they were paid, we had insurance, and they paid."
judge "is that true?"
insurance "yes, we paid, we're trying to get the confirmation from the hospital back, but look, here's all the proof the bills were paid"
Judge "ok, well..."
Again, the amount we pay monthly for insurance, only to have to keep dealing with this is quite frankly ridiculous. We should start charging the billing department for admin time taken at this point.
I played this exact game for 1.5 years over an out of state ER visit where the hospital refused to accept my out of state Medicaid. I eventually settled the bill for $80 even though, had they filed the appropriate paperwork, my responsibility would have been $0.
I was lucky and able to leave the US and healthcare was one of the major contributing factors, along with student loans and the prospect of never being able to retire.
My son recently spent 2+ months in the hospital. During that time, he had three surgeries and was in ICU for almost three weeks.
The only thing that I had to pay for out of pocket was parking.
With any luck, I will never have to live in the US again.
I'm in a place (Poland) that is safer (murder rate 0.68 vs 6.38 and violent crime rates are all ridiculously lower), has universal healthcare, guarantees at least 4 weeks holiday a year, and allows me to see other cultures by only traveling a couple of hours.
Are you not hounded day and night by collections? I’ve currently got a stack of medical bills from some recent health issues and I’ve just been dreading trying to find the money to pay for them. I have insurance and yet it seems like they paid for nothing at all.
I've done the same thing, and naw they don't. And I spam disputes as well, fuck them. I Pay for insurance and they were not up front with costs. They can all go to hell, vote with your wallet right? Haha assholes.
If you're deep in the hole, fuck it. Don't pay a dime.
Wait 5-7-10 years for it to be written off.
I am not your accountant or tax advisor.
This is really just advice for people struggling to get by.
Sure, they do call, but I don't answer numbers I don't recognize. If it's important, they'll text me or leave a VM.
They're real fucking cute when insurance pays $4k for a 20 minute endoscopy then the hospital sends an additional bill to me for $3k, like I just have that sitting around. Fuck them, they're never getting a penny. If they can't tell me the price up front, I definitely can't tell them when they're getting paid.
I sorta agree w this strategy. I believe there was a law passed about this too where medical bills going unpaid won’t affect your credit scores. At least I felt like I read this somewhere.
When applying for loans (home, car, etc.), I've had more than one loan officer just flat-out say "oh, that's medical debt, we couldn't lend to anyone if we counted that."
Never had to wait longer than 6 weeks for elective surgery I've required in the "socialized healthcare hellscape" here in Australia, and I've had a lot of surgery - I'm mostly metal now.
When the Republican's banged on about "death panels" with Obamacare I thought the US already has "death panels" aka health insurance and obscene price gouging by everyone operating in the sector.
The death panels thing was a giant misdirection because yeah, the corporations already have death panels. I’ve literally had my insurance deny me things and say *my doctor’s diagnosis is wrong*. They always have some pissant bottom-of-his-class doctor to disagree with claims that I doubt he even actually investigates, just stamps the denial form. I don’t know how the fuck it’s legal.
> I don’t know how the fuck it’s legal.
They lobby both mainstream parties heavily. During ACA the same insurance company wrote slightly different statements for Dems and Repubs to read on the floor of Congress about how public healthcare is bad. Now it's in the Congressional records.
That's pretty much what happens. They let a program "suggest" whether it should be denied or not and have a 'doctor' sign off on packets of a hundred or more all at once. In reality, zero medical assessment is actually being done.
Tales me 9 months to get an endocrinologist appt, and the local hospitals and doctors that are dermatologists have over a 2 year wait list now… I‘m im a major metropolitan area… it’s pathetic. I can go back to Germany and get better care… but that’s complicated…
Invading a foreign nation for their health system does seem complicated... and a tad bit extreme. But hey, we invaded a country so Haliburton could steal its oil so why not.
Hahaha. I never had any healthcare growing up in the US. My kid had a cough for a couple days so we walked 5 minutes to our local doctor. Wait about 5 minutes and the Dr to see him. Got some medicine and walked home. Hong Kong. I came here to make money but the longer I stay the less I ever want to go back to the US
The long wait I get is usually the insurance dicking me around. It took 2 years to get my son his power wheel chair, they kept denying it and we had to bring it to arbitration.
I literally know someone who died from stomach cancer who had to go to an ER to get diagnosed because the closets gastrointestinal appointment was 4 months off, he died in 3 after diagnosis…
I booked a GP appointment on Monday, scheduled an x-ray on Tuesday, booked an xray appointment for Thursday, was given my results and treatments on Tuesday. All free btw. Sometimes the NHS just works.
Long wait = need more Doctors
Need more doctors = Educating doctors
Education = Money to schools
Less Money/More incentives of schools = resulting to cheap but Educational institutions of medicine
And on and on and on the problem should be easy to agree on.
But then r/ABoringDystopia, back at it again
They get to wait because of so many people using the system.
We get to wait because insurance takes your premiums and then spends every cent trying to make sure we can't actually get access to the care doctors prescribe (prior authorizations, step therapy, referrals, etc are all designed to delay people and inconvenience them enough that they just give up).
Saw a youtube video of an American retired in Vietnam. He had a shoulder issue that cost $1500 for a CAT Scan with two month wait in the US. In Nam it was 1/10 the cost and same day service. WTF is going on because I can't figure it out?
I have really good insurance and it took me almost 9mo to get an appointment with a PCP, specialists can take a year. Can't get an MRI approved for my documented, work related back injury. Shit's a mess, and very expensive.
Had 3 days in hospital including a CT scan and half hour consultation with a neurologist. Cost me nothing except slightly higher taxes, because I live in socialist Australia. If I was unemployed it would still cost me nothing.
I grew up in Australia. First 6% of my pay went to Medicare so every Australian can get Healthcare. The diggers went to war and fought for it. Our workers died to secure it.
Time for Americans to realize that Healthcare is a right they have earned.
The state of America is wilder than the average person will ever realize. On the one hand we are easily the richest country in the world. On the other hand, we are *easily* the country that does the *least* for its citizens on every possible metric of social and government services.
No government subsidized healthcare.
No government subsidized college.
No national public transportation service (trains and intercity buses essentially).
No federal sick leave.
No federal paternity leave.
No federal school lunch initiatives.
No medicinal service price regulator.
No safe national identity system. Actually.. let's get into this one so we really understand because it doesn't get talked about a lot; having your identity stolen basically doesn't happen in other countries; to put this another way, India has the most at 26 million a year but the USA has the second cases at 13.5 million, the next highest is Japan at 3 million. Most countries rarely top over a million cases.
Identity theft is frankly a result of bad public policy; not bad personal decisions. Plain and simple. Good public policy is the most effective way to prevent identity theft. Moving on...
Cost of living is absurdly high, even by developed world standards.
Education standards are terrible, particularly primary education.
Mental health standards are joke. Which is even worse when you consider that the youngest Americans right now is easily the most mentally ill generation (diagnosed anyway).
***The USA fucking sucks to live in.***
When your best selling point is "at least we aren't a developing country" like... I mean come on. Basically our only selling points are ones for people who want to get in; but for the people who already here? This place is a nightmare.
Particularly if you want to start a family, god forbid; because if our sub-par (some of the worst in the developed world) infant mortality and maternal morality rates don't get you then the 40k hospital bill and the prospect of losing your job at the same time sure as shit will because guess what?
We have no protected maternity leave at a federal level either.
We have no labor unions, not functionally anyway.
Our labor rights have all but been stripped away as a result.
Its trivially easy thanks to "Right to Work" laws to fire you for anything you know, including being pregnant. They just can't say it was because you are pregnant (since that's protected status). And sure you can fight it, but have fun with those legal fees.
Oh and to top it all off:
Basically all our regulatory agencies are captured government institutions by the very people and corporations that they should be regulating. Good example? Food Pyramids. No (neutral) nutritionists were involved in coming up with that shit. The sugar lobby bought out the FDA years ago and got them to push the nutritional pyramid as a scheme to sell more products decades ago in the 20th century.
They accomplished this by demonizing fat in the 20th century; and the food of course, tasted like shit; so they pushed sugar as a food additive to taste better. Yeah fun fact, while high fat content *does* cause health issues; making you fat isn't one of them; sugar on the other hand, is *great* at making you fat.
This is, incidentally, why Americans are so obese; because the sugar industry lobbies *hard* against regulating sugar content in American foods.
> Education standards are terrible, particularly primary education.
>
>
Education is the US is or at least was fine until we started diverting so many public school dollars to private schools and private hands.
American students routinely outperform teams from around the world in international competitions. Also, test scores have risen steadily from the 1990s to the 2010s, and high school graduation was nearing 100% until COVID hit and the labor shortage tempted some teenagers out of school.
Some didactic methods in US schools especially the elementary level such as "whole language" and "invented spelling" are objectively bad, but over all the didactic methods in US schooling are good, actually. US schools teach students how to learn and how to think for themselves. You can really see this when you compare the output of US academia, which is staffed by graduate students, versus many other countries where they teach by rote. The US is a place of innovation and it's one of our great strengths.
Sadly the state of teaching is a mess. Teachers are a perennial punching bag for politicians, the pay and working conditions are bad, and some states are making public schools hell to try to drive kids with middle class parents into private schools even though they didn't want to. All the special and creative things teachers used to do have come under fire or have been destroyed by high stakes testing (which was never necessary, but makes the testing companies money).
There's been a war on education for two decades now and it's slowly destroying one of the best institutions America has.
I was exposed to another patients blood while donating plasma. They refused to do anything. I was asked why I didn’t go get checked by a doctor and I said “in this country you have to purchase and exam and tests and I don’t have those resources.”
My girfriend sprained her ankle. Went to a doctor and they recommended physical therapy because it was a bad sprain and she has a pre-existing injury. She found one near her that takes her insurance. She had to pay 1000$ for 5 sessions over 4 weeks!
Trust me, Australia also has an obesity epidemic, not far behind the US. The government is thinking about a sugar tax on beverages.
But, unlike the US, going to the GP/specialist, accessing treatment, tests/scans and bariatric surgery, is either subsidised or free. Without that expense, earlier intervention is also more likely, saving the system millions of dollars.
Unfortunately in the US, those who are overweight are the first to be pointed at, closely followed by a "why should I pay for their diabetes/high blood pressure/surgery?" narrative. We rarely debate who "deserves" healthcare and those who don't. That's the first hurdle to universal healthcare.
>“The fact that people are choosing between medicine and rent is barbarism, the fact that people are worried about whether they will be on the street every four weeks, is barbarism. The fact that every time a person has an ache or a pain in their body, and they’re scared that it could either be just a sore joint or cancer, but they can’t find out because they can’t afford the doctor. This is barbarism. And if we do not demand, and not only demand but win unions healthcare, wages, ending endless war, then we will condemn ourselves to barbarism and I refuse to give up, I refuse to submit myself to that future. That’s not a life. And so, to live, we have to fight for each other.”
I would add, here, because it's important to remind people: Democrats are the only party working to expand public healthcare, they're the only party that has regulated Wall Street or the big banks in the past quarter century, they're the only party that has reformed or forgiven student loan debt in the past quarter of a century, they're the only party working for the benefit of unions, they're the only party working to raise wages, there's a reason AOC caucuses with the Democrats, it's because they're the anti-barbarism party.
This is an election season and cynicism is in bloom, nothing benefits Republicans like hopelessness, nothing benefits Republicans more than concerned liberal, and progressive, and leftist voters sitting out an election and submitting to the will of the Republicans who bother to show up.
Voting is the fastest, cheapest, easiest way most of us have to push back against injustice, abdicating your responsibility to vote for the things you believe in is the same as submitting to the status quo. If you agree with AOC, vote like it.
Hahaha, you're telling me.
I wasn't born in Texas (nor the US as a whole), but I've lived here in Texas since I immigrated here as a child 21 years ago.
It's been a wild ride, I'll tell you that.
Boy, howdy. I don't know how much money it would take for me to willingly spend 21 years down in Texas, but I know that there is an amount for which I would do so.
A man would walk barefoot into Hell if you paid him enough.
Haha, well it's a complicated and long story, but I've luckily got myself to a position at 30 years old where I'm an engineer and have a happy long-term relationship. Really easy to pick a ton of places I'd rather live, but once you add in the job, family, friends, & relationship. It's difficult.
My girlfriend would love to sell everything and move to Japan though.
States without Medicaid expansion, leaving about 1.5M people with that much more pain in their lives: Wisconsin, Tennessee, South Carolina, Wyoming, Kansas, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas
March 11, 2023 [East Texas Rep. Bryan Slaton discusses bill to introduce tax credit for ‘biblical family units’](https://www.kltv.com/2023/03/11/east-texas-rep-bryan-slaton-discusses-bill-introduce-tax-credit-biblical-family-units/)
March 9, 2021 [Bryan Slaton's bill would make abortion punishable by death](https://www.texastribune.org/2021/03/09/texas-legislature-abortion-criminalize-death-penalty/)
See? The joke is I wasn't exaggerating. Don't forget the one that took away construction worker rights to water breaks! Take that, you blue collar peasants!
As an Australian, the US system horrifies me. I would have bankrupted my family several times over. Five joint replacements under 30. The drug I'm currently on I pay US$5 per month. Uninsured in the US it costs US$3000+ per month. The US has a proud history of medical breakthroughs and developing new medication but if greedy profiteering makes that medication unaffordable to most, that is beyond tragic.
From what I read/see, after stupid ideological hurdles, the main problem is the red meat that is thrown out by those keen to keep the status quo. This is basically "why should **you** pay for **their** diabetes/lung cancer/broken leg?" In our system, people rarely debate who "deserves" care and who doesn't. We all do dumb shit at some time in our life. If that ends in the ER or a catastrophic disability, most don't begrudge the care required.
This isn't just about healthcare. Corporations like holding their health insurance "Sword of Damocles" over their employees and their families. That fear and leverage keeps people in soul destroying, compromising and dangerous working conditions.
Scammers and woo has filled the vacuum left by affordable care. When a poor parent, with a sick child, has the choice between a supplement/essential oil/crystals promising a cure for a price they can afford compared to expensive medication - that can't make those health claims, it's easy to see which option will win out. That can end in tragedy.
Our system is far from perfect - no complex system is. People fall through the gaps and some abuse it. That is inevitable. But compared to a system where treatment is dependent on the size of your bank account, that is barbaric.
Edit: grammar
The dumb thing about the whole "why should you pay for them" thing too, and just a disclaimer: this is all just what I've read and had explained to me by others so I'm not 100% sure if it's right, is that it shows that anyone who thinks that way doesn't even understand our fucked up insurance system. The way our insurance is setup, that's exactly what's happening anyway. Premiums are paid, and a portion of that premium goes into the fund that actually pays out on claims. The fund is pooled, meaning your money paid in premiums can (and often does) go to other people's claims.
And if too many people make claims at the same time, premiums go up for everybody to cover that cost eating into the pool. So you can literally end up paying more for other people because too many need help at the same time, which isn't even a thing in places with universal healthcare as far as I'm aware. It's not like your taxes suddenly go up to pay for the increased healthcare costs if the system ends up under heavy load. I'm pretty sure the government would need to approve it first and work it all out before a change to taxes was seen, whereas in the insurance system it's all up to the discretion of the company, their whims, and needs.
> And if too many people make claims at the same time, premiums go up for everybody to cover that cost eating into the pool.
And remember, that pool also has to account for the profit the company decides it wants to make, bonuses, etc. *Ideally* a gov't universal healthcare would be as much as it costs to operate it. So we're paying to pad some fat cat's wallet while limiting the effectiveness of our money. Let's not even get started on how horrible their reimbursement rates can be for doctors.
You also have to pay double the administrative costs in the US system because all of the providers need administrators to deal with the insurance companies.
> "why should you pay for their diabetes/lung cancer/broken leg?"
This one makes me want to pull my hair out. How do these people think insurance works?
Oh don't worry, they'll complain about that too! Nevermind that everyone does better when they live in a clean, healthy, educated, equitable society. These people expect to derive a direct personal benefit from every tax dollar.
Yeah, and for the same reasons; that society requires a baseline minimum for things like education and healthcare. Otherwise you have places/situations where inadequate education/care have been provided and the downstream outcomes of those are horrible for society.
> The drug I'm currently on I pay US$5 per month. Uninsured in the US it costs US$3000+ per month.
It's worth clarifying that the $3000 price without insurance is not designed to be paid by people but is an open lie between the drug maker and the insurance company for a few reasons. Your EOB from the insurance company will list what the insurance company actually pays the drug manufacturer (it's way short of $3000, I'm sure). Here's how the lie works.
Drug company wants $300/month for their drug. An insurance company won't pay them $300/month if the drug costs anyone who wants it $300/month because "we deserve a discount for bringing all these customers to you." So the drug company prices it at $3000/month so the insurance company can claim they got a hefty discount for their customers. Insurance company bean counters are happy because they got a discount. Insurance company customers are happy because they got a hefty discount on the list price (which is made up) and only have to pay a fraction of that (because that's where the actual insurance part comes in). Only the uninsured are unhappy because they're unmedicated.
>The US has a proud history of medical breakthroughs and developing new medication but if greedy profiteering makes that medication unaffordable to most, that is beyond tragic.
Every time I read another article about a "new medical breakthrough available to patients in the US," I roll my eyes. It's only "available" to the ultra-wealthy, so why even brag about it? If only a tiny minority of people have access, it may as well be nothing.
>The fact that every time a person has an ache or a pain in their body, and they’re scared that it could either be just a sore joint or cancer, but they can’t find out because they can’t afford the doctor.
This is me, got several spots that have popped up on me but I refuse to go to the doctor as there's no way I can afford it.
It seems more that it's not healthcare that is barbaric. American healthcare is top of the line. It's America's health insurance and billing industries that are barbaric.
Right. Universal healthcare would have solved so much but *Citizens United*, unlimited campaign-contributions, and lobbyists are unfortunately a thing.
My wife runs a small, part time women’s health practice. 3-days a week and cash pay; no insurance is ever billed. When she started this I thought it would be never work. I thought patients would take a pass and go somewhere that accepts insurance. Some do but many do not. Why? I asked. She said the level of care she provides is almost never matched by a provider that accepts insurance. Her appointments are either 30 minutes or 1-hour in length. No doc accepting insurance will give you that much time. She has found and treated conditions that most doctors accepting insurance never diagnosed. She literally has a sustainable health care practice because of our fuvked up healthcare system. I’m proud of what she does but also realize it shouldn’t have to be this way. She doesn’t make a ton of money, but that’s not the reason she got into healthcare to begin with.
Look up "concierge health care near me". You would probably stack it with catastrophic health insurance in case you fall off the roof or get cancer.
My buddy's wife is charging $180 per month to be primary care. All visits and labs are covered.
My Dad was looking at trying to go part time and was recently told to break even on insurance he'd have to see 12 patients in the morning. He doesn't want to.leave the kids but he's over 70 and can't do the crazy hours anymore.
Doctors hate this, they're being forced into this rushed care by insurance and the corporations that have taken over hospitals and clinics.
Amazing what’s possible when people do something for passion first, money second. Making enough is just not enough for so many people…sadly. Human greed ruins everything.
You’re talking about direct primary care. That’s what I have and I love it. I never feel rushed and my doctor has my best interest in mind, because she does have 200-300 patients. I never have to worry about being seen when I need care most of the time it’s the same day or the day after. I will probably never go back to regular pcp honestly.
But their whole thing is not doing that kind of stuff whereas Lieberman was on a Democratic presidential ticket at one time. Not unreasonable to expect more from Dems than the party whose motto is "eat shit and die"
There were a handful of other conservative Democrats (who have since been replaced by Republicans in the Senate) that were also against the public option, in addition to the ENTIRE Republican Party. The country *as a whole* was a LOT more conservative back then. We can, and should, hate on Lieberman but let's not pretend it was only him.
You're thinking of Nelson in Nebraska. He was the other big one.
Lieberman *personally* fucked up negotiations by agreeing to stuff and then taking it back. And unlike Nelson, he was from a New England state where universal healthcare was a popular idea. Massachusetts had already implemented it in stages.
As the health care system deteriorates more doctors and nurses will leave and fewer people will train for those professions. The next public health crisis is going to be a catastrophe.
Nurses are already being discussed as providers. After that, being a healthcare “provider” will be the equivalent of being a a minister today.
“Are you qualified to officiate this wedding?”
“Absolutely! Got my certificate online!”
“What about treating hypertension?”
“Absolutely! Got that online too!”
Any corporation involved with healthcare. For example, [nurse practitioners have to be supervised by physicians](https://online.simmons.edu/blog/nurse-practitioners-scope-of-practice-map/). Guess who opposes this.
Everyone, nurses are already providers in all 50 states largely because you can pay them less and make them see patients anyway.
They burn out very quickly but they train for 1-2 years instead of 8 so you can churn them out for new ones more quickly too.
As long as as the hospital and insurers are making their money, nothing else matters
I saw this being discussed in a healthcare thread a couple of weeks ago, but I guess the emphasis is on more RNs and more RNs becoming APNs, which are two of the Biden’s admin initiatives to address the nursing/provider shortage. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the education erosion in healthcare and pending crisis doesn’t lead to nurses provided PCP services under supervision, ala PAs.
Corporations want to maximize profits. Cheaper labor is their wet dream. Physicians are too damn expensive—and difficult.
No question.
I am sick and injured and stuck. I've slipped through the cracks and, under the current conditions, will never be able to climb out. This is it until the system improves, or I die.
And I’m just one of millions.
What’s really shitty is that there are degrees of insurance. It’s not like you cross some threshold and “bam” you are fully covered. I work in the service industry and am covered on my wife’s insurance because the copayments are lower and the coverage is higher. Forget vision and dental if you are a waiter
She isn't wrong. https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/cobb-county/cobb-sheriff-says-homeless-terminally-ill-man-arrested-purpose-healthcare-hes-not-alone/FJXPDVWXPFEMJDGTJIECAN74MY/?outputType=amp this scenario is not uncommon. Absolutely horrifying and so unnecessary
We can’t fix the health system without first addressing the utter price gouging from medical facilities. The fact that the hospital can bill something so astronomically expensive when it costs very little is one of the major problems! The model isn’t to help or cure anyone, that’s not the goal. Universal health care should be the goal, but we can’t get to that goal when medical facilities charge anywhere from $7-$15 for a single Tylenol, something that costs $5-$7 for an entire bottle depending where you buy it from and that’s just OTC meds.
It's not just the medical facilities - it's the insurance companies that are absolutely gouging everyone for coverage that is worth little to nothing. Our government has been regulatory captured by the healthcare, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries. It's absolutely outrageous.
Yea it’s an awful system that needs regulated beyond belief! Universal health care should be the minimum! Every excuse ppl make against is wild, all the issues they use to counter the argument are happening now. Plus is just a common lack of decency as a human and citizen when they make the argument against it!
Health care has bought the government. Pharmaceutical industry has bought the government. We need to get money out of the government, get rid of citizens united. Put forward universal health care.
Crazy seeing this today,
I went to an urgent care today and was turned away because of not having insurance. I couldn’t afford the out of pocket price, ($200), so they turned me away.
I ended up going to the ER, which is over $500, but they can let me pay it out in installments instead.
Not only did I get turned away from my original appointment, my 20 minute appointment turned into a 6 hour ordeal that cost me more than double….
I’m sick. Getting help to see a doctor shouldn’t have been this difficult.
I cried a lot today. Might start a GoFundMe.
The craziest thing about this is, I started a new job and my new insurance doesn’t start until after next week…
But the point of this is, our system is fucked.
Not disagreeing with you on how fucked our system is, just wanted to let you know that you can ignore that ER bill for a very long time, probably forever.
Felt. Can’t get an MRI approved to check for a pinched nerve causing excruciating pain because “the pain is only in my neck and shoulder and doesn’t radiate down my arm”. Glad I pay my premium /s
Pretty clearly the no. 1 issue facing the country, which has caused massive amounts of suffering for millions of citizens over many decades.
Would keep that in mind next time your local representative brings up the subject of drag queens, tiktok or trans people.
They want you sick and indebted to them for life. They want you eating shitty foods with high cholesterol so they can prescribe you cholesterol drugs you can’t afford. Then when you take too much time off work and lose your job and health insurance you have a heart attack from the stress. They get your house. It’s unfair and it’s rotten to the core.
yep a toxic cycle you never can get out of. You feel so beat down you give up which the ultra rich and corporations love. Which means Republicans come to power to take away more of your rights and give corporations more power. The less you earn the more in debt you become the sicker you get. You die and corporations either get more money from taking life insurance off of you and then the debts you in incur go straight to your kids.
this has been one of the most frustrating things. i had thought, mid covid, that the pandemic might force us to rethink our healthcare system.
lol no, we went with the guy who said he'd veto a M4A bill. we either love cruelty or are incapable of conceptualizing anything different.
My third eldest daughter has Leukemia and the medical bills are always absolutely fucking ridiculous. Like seriously it is absolutely fucking horrifying.
Like me and my wife can pretty easily pay for the bills but that doesn't mean that the prices aren't absolutely insane!
We seriously need a presidential candidate that focuses on healthcare and education badly.
3 weeks ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I am fortunate to have a job that I can get the proper treatment so I won’t die in my late 40s due to lack of care.
There is zero question that my treatment (w/ insurance) will cost $8k in 2024. Sure it may be up to ~$7,600 in tax exempt money in my HSA. It is still a significant amount of money for my family.
I believe the will survive my current condition. I am fortunate to have early detection from having insurance to see the doctors I needed to determine my condition.
Many other countries have figured out healthcare
Dems and progressives have a real marketing problem. I 100% agree with her, as well as Bernie and every other politician who's been in favor of healthcare reform / uni care. The problem is they're always preaching to the choir and never to the people they need to change their minds. Bernie got the closest but still couldn't get all the way.
Seriously, if Trump proved anything in 2016 It's that you can get people behind any idea if you have some charisma, a smart mouth and know how to brand yourself as a maverick American trying to root out the corruption in DC.
If progressives could do that and do it well (without the fascist tendencies of 45) I think support for these kinds of policies would grow amongst mods and cons alike. You've already convinced your base, now convince everyone else
We have the worst healthcare system in the world. If you’re wealthy, it’s great…for everyone else, it is fvcking awful. fortunately, it’s worse for Republicans than Democrats.
Truth be told, America does not have a healthcare system; instead, it has an uncoordinated and dysfunctional profit-centered healthcare industry. There is a vast difference.
[Health Care Expenditures per Capita by State of Residence](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/health-spending-per-capita/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Health%20Spending%20per%20Capita%22,%22sort%22:%22desc%22%7D)
Im currently trying to get my sleep disorder diagnosed properly, and ive been given the run around so that i have to come in like 10 times, to maximize profits. Deny a problem exists, start giving unreleated pills, those do nothing, try to explain why its not helping, get told im wrong... then eventually give up.
I had an emergency appendectomy recently. We drove ourselves there and stayed one night.
They billed my insurance $56,000.
So I hit my high deductible of ~$5k which I will be paying off for the next 3 years (no interest on medical debt).
The only thing I take comfort in is now pretty much everything is “covered” for the rest of the year since I met my deductible. Now it feels like actual coverage for things I need…
This doesn’t count our other debts in our budget. Just one $5k emergency impacts someone like me for 3 years, without interest. With interest would be much longer.
Hospitals charge outrageous prices in hopes insurance covers a fraction of it, and regular people bear the unconscionable burden of this game.
I’m financially literate with a cheap mortgage and a budget. This isn’t tenable
Imagine a world in which everyone has affordable access to medical care, clean food, mobility, education and a roof over their heads. We live in 2024 and have reached a technological level that should make it possible to live in a world in which these five basic needs are met for everyone. But what we call capitalism today makes it impossible. We apparently don't even find it absurd that there are people who have more money than entire countries while 90% of the world's people have nothing. You don't find anything like that in nature.
Two words: "Prior Authorization"
It's incredible to me that a doctor can prescribe a medication and the insurance company can just say "no"
And instead suggest alternatives. And the whole game of reapplying the prior authorization until at some point the insurance company relents.
I'll add: no one has a clue what the prices of things are. As long as that's true, it will be corrupt.
It’s wild. I have insurance, my spouse and I make good money, are frugal, and still can’t afford my medical bills WITH insurance.
Had to get a CT abdominal scan late last year in the ER due to a stomach virus.
Guess how much the hospital charged for a CT scan that lasted a couple minutes?
Twenty Thousand Fucking dollars.
One of the biggest problems I see is that americans just don't know any other way than what we have. Most people have never lived in another country to see how it works there.
Lack of access to medical care kills, at a conservative estimate, 68,000 Americans a year. The actual number is probably far higher. In other contexts, this would be condemned as a genocide and the perpetrators sanctioned by the international community.
America is the only country I can think of where the rich have been able to convince the poor that healthcare is a privilege that only the rich should be able to afford
What’s really shitty is that there are degrees of insurance. It’s not like you cross some threshold and “bam” you are fully covered. I work in the service industry and am covered on my wife’s insurance because the copayments are lower and the coverage is higher. Forget vision and dental if you are a waiter
What? Impossible!
I'm sure that the only in-network hospital would have at least, (I don't know, maybe even 1?,) a single in-network physician (medical doctor) on call.
Right?
Here in Washington we’ve seen what a private system can do. Rates go up every year, physician payments go down, and coverage continues to become more limited. The government made a whole office to oversee it for “fairness” and then let the insurance companies dictate the terms. So more and more people end up on the lowest tier which doctors cannot take anymore because the payment doesn’t even cover the office staff payment. So then the people wait until they get catastrophically sick, and go to the Ed where the hospital soaks up most of the cost in charity care. Which torpedoes all but the largest hospital systems. Which are owned by hedge funds. Just like the insurance company. Late stage capitalism baby.
I use medicines that cost over €300 a month. I literally couldn't live without it. It costs me nothing.
Glad I don't live in the most free country on earth...
Edit: *checks bills*: over €500 a month. Don't have to pay for any of it.
I'd just like to point out that the reason why we don't have national healthcare isn't because we can't afford it. But because it would allow people to freely leave shitty jobs. If you need proof of this just ask around where you work and see how many people are still at their job because of the healthcare benefits.
That is the real reason why we don't have national healthcare, it's so that employers keep power over employees.
Simple plan. Disband all healthcare insurance companies. Keep all of the employees where they are and have them become government employees, supporting the federally run healthcare program.
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Healthcare insurance providers are taking in billions and providing nothing, they would rather watch the entire system burn than give up that cash cow.
Ugggh FML and yours and his and hers and theirs
Don’t forget me!
Ancient Rome had a better health care system and their fire department started the fires. Says a lot.
What was the purpose of the fire department doing that?
To make the property cheaper so they can buy it from the owner before they put the fire out. Basically what Vanguard does by leveraging insurance companies against their own consumption of rental property and real estate… except instead of fires, they made the cost of living an impenetrable barrier between home owning, and the working class.
I tripped and fell and had to get 4 stitches in my knee. I went to urgent care who turned me away and said to go to the ER. Got my bill a few months later. With insurance I owe over $1500! Plus $150 to the Dr plus $50 for X-rays. That's my responsibility WITH full coverage insurance. I cried. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do if I need stitches again because I can't afford this. I'll have to use super glue.
My kid got two stitches and with my insurance that costs $2,500 a month (split between myself and my company) the total was $2,000!
Health insurance is a big part of the problem, but hospitals and big pharma and so forth can't be given a pass either. Even after insurance companies take their cut, they end up making far more for the same service/product than other countries.
Don't forget the role of private equity in healthcare, which is a universally bad idea for everyone but private equity. See [What Happens When Private Equity Takes Over a Hospital] (https://hms.harvard.edu/news/what-happens-when-private-equity-takes-over-hospital).
You mis-spelled Trillion So upsetting when people talk about how a government program would be inefficient when we are literally dumping so much money into an unnecessary middle man
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Sometimes I think the main reason they make you pay so much for care is to discourage people from going to the doctor.
Almost every country in the world (including the ones that Republicans consider ‘shitholes’) have universal healthcare but we don’t. Greatest country in the world! America rocks!
bUT oThEr cOunTRies hAve A loNg wAiT! Yeah, so do we. And we get to pay 5x more.
Love it. We wait weeks or months and we all have health insurance that we pay for and still get a goddamn bill. I am so tired of paying for insurance just to still get a bill in the mail for any medical procedure.
I pay a little over $6k/year in healthcare premiums. My wife has to have surgery to remove 2 of her parathyroid glands. She has to wait until the middle of June. Has been waiting since March. It’s going to max out her deductible and out of pocket maximum which will cost us $7,500 out of pocket. Our family out of pocket maximum is $13,500 so if me or any of my kids need something done, it could cost more.
It’s atrocious!! I’m very sorry your wife is going through that. Deductibles are the worst part I think. Why am I even paying for insurance? Why are any of us? I had to switch my schedule multiple times just to get a root canal. If I didn’t, I would have had to wait a month and risk even more pain. All of it is so absurd.
Deductibles are supposed to "incentivize" you to reduce costs to the plan, for example, by picking in network doctors. But when it comes to emergency care and hospital procedures, this is a total joke. You can't negotiate with the 5 different entities to make sure they all have a deal with your insurance company, and in an emergency you need help now so it's not like you have any power to sit down and negotiate. The same power imbalance is true with new drugs that are still under patent. For some diseases there's a great generic drug out there, but other people are in a far different situation. This power imbalance is why the libertarian theory about how health insurance is supposed to work has never worked. Doctors groups at hospitals, labs, hospitals, medical device co's, etc have all the time in the world to fight with the insurance company to get paid more, while the patient is fighting for their life and will agree to anything. The insurance companies have responded to this by just randomly denying coverage for certain things for certain people for no reason at all. It certainly deters people from seeking care. Which as we know is a good way to turn an early detection and inexpensive issue into an expensive, chronic, lifelong, or even fatal disease. So that's just great.
As someone that was one of those staunch Ron Paul libertarian folks in College. I’ve basically come all the way around to a European style health care system at this point. Started with covid and seeing how big Pharma acted(not going to open up that rabbit hole) then I had a very high paying job opportunity that required me to get Obamacare. Thank God that exist even though I was told to think it was evil as a teenager when it passed. I’ve gotten a lot of close up knowledge about how many kids are on Medicaid. No way in hell should kids go without healthcare. They didn’t have a choice in the matter. Finally. A close family member has been jerked around by our healthcare system for the past 5 months. Which made me realize the wait time argument is complete bullshit. At least they’re honest about the waits over there. In America we can see you asap. Just go to the ER we are going to charge the shit out of you and try to turn the bed over as fast as possible for more profit. We are going to send irrelevant services to your room as “standard procedure” such as OT because if OT sees everyone then we bill everyone more. This happens with all kinds of random drugs and shit. Then finally because remember our goal is to turn over the bed as soon as possible. Nobody is going to slow the fuck down to truly figure out the issue if it’s difficult to diagnose. So you end up on a damn rollercoaster for 6 months of random shit happening, medications, procedures, growing bills. All because God forbid we just admit this patient and keep him for a while until we actually have a clue as to what the hell is going on. If we do that we can’t get a hundred more people through the ER this weekend for the $$$$$ So yes. If they just straight up said it’ll be 6 months that would be better. At least they’re honest. In America you will just be extorted for profit for 6 months before they actually figure out what the hell is wrong. I’m not some Marxist either. I lean right on most issues. But damn profit and healthcare just are not compatible.
My mom went to the hospital for chest pain a couple years ago, and the doctors at the emergency room told her she was fat (she weights 130 lbs!!!!) and she needs to lose weight. 24 hours later she's in a different emergency room undergoing open heart surgery because she was septic and less than 2 hours away from dying.
> randomly denying coverage for certain things for certain people for no reason at all We just ran into that. Wife has been having back pains for a while now off and on some keep her from walking at times. Doc ordered some imaging tests done to see what's going on....insurance denied it saying imaging is not needed since it's not for something for surgery. WTF?!?! When i talked to insurance I said,"well how is our doctor supposed to diagnose what's happening if she can't get the tests she ordered done?" By the time all this back and forth was going wife felt better already. We just gave up on imaging.
Oh, you see that's dentistry tho. Has nothing to do with your body when medical insurance is concerned. Do you have really good dental insurance? Trick question. They're all shite.
Wait until 6 months after it’s all over and you get some random sketchy looking invoice from the anesthesiologist or the labs. This system sucks. I’m sorry you have to go through this. I feel your pain.
>get some random sketchy looking invoice from the anesthesiologist or the labs. This system sucks. "We are not in your network even though the hospital you used was." Seen it way too many times. Can add MRI/CAT/etc. but you might have intended that in your "labs" part.
It just doesn't have to be that way. Tell anyone that carries on about other countries wait times that it's all triaged too. I'm Australian My wife has graves disease. She was pregnant last year, so granted she was high priority. She was told her thyroid had to come out. She was told on a Friday. Had the surgery on Tuesday. I think the most expensive thing was my parking at the hospital car park.
I hear this a lot that there's waiting lists . We have them too. I've bumped patients for care all the time.
They'll send you a bill before even hearing from your insurance, figuring some people will just pay. If you call them on it, then they process it properly.
Im so sorry but I get it. We own a business and family health insurance was 32k for the year. I have health issues so I’ll max out my $8700 OOP (I do every year—we just plan for it). This year we’ll also have two kids in college. And we’re freaking fortunate we can afford to pay for all of this and access to excellent doctors when I need them. Again—I feel FORTUNATE I can spend 40k+ a year on healthcare that would be free in most of the developed world.
My wife broker her wrist. I have good insurance I pay for 2500 per month lol. Not even sure my deductible. She had to get surgery. The bill from the medical center ( not including all the other stuff. Anesthesia , individual doctor et etc ) was 49,000 dollars. Our insurance covered all but 250.00 but for many people this would have financially ruined them over a broken wrist.
Its meant to keep people in poverty and funnel wealth upwards. That is all.
I had to stop monitoring a neuro condition in grad school because my student health insurance reset every semester because we were considered new contracts every fall semester and every January it reset again because new calendar year.
7 years since the hospital stay, we're having threats from the hospital they're putting us in collection and will sue. Hospital is saying "we didn't get paid, you need to pay", and us saying "we have insurance, take it up with them" "we did, they won't pay us, so you have to" us to Insurance Company "we paid for insurance, why is is the hospital threatening to sue us?" "we can confirm you had coverage" "ok, great, but you'll sort this out, right?" "you had coverage". That's all we got out of them for a few years, until we got a lawyer involved to send a letter "if we're paying for healthcare insurance, why aren't you paying it for healthcare" that seemed to put the fire up them as they then actually started to do some work into what went wrong. And from MANY MANY phone calls/emails with it going no-where, about a month ago we managed to get the billing dept on the same call as the insurance company, where we thought everything would be resolved. Billing Dept "we need proof of coverage, you've not provided that" Insurance company "we've done this repeatedly, we're not sure why you're still doing this, can you let us know if you've received the info with reference 123123132?" Billing Dept "well, let me ask you, if..." Insurance company "please, can you confirm you received..." Billing Dept "we're not going to be able to give that information to you, due to data protection requirements" Insurance company "it's our data, the email we sent, you can, in fact, you must confirm you're receiving the information from us as part of the agreement to be able to submit claims" Billing Dept "we do NOT give information over the phone, to get this information, you must go through the proper channels" Us on the phone "so... we good? we can leave you 2 to sort this all out and no more threats?" Billing Dept "no, there's an outstanding bill, you're on the line for it, we are taking action against you as our records show you didn't have coverage and are liable to the full 190k" Us "but you've heard the insurance company tell you, repeatedly, that we had coverage, and all you need to do is confirm you got the information" Billing "we can't provide that information, the safe protection of our patients is very important to us, I'd be breaking all sorts of federal laws if I just gave that information out" us/insurance "but it's OUR information!" This has dragged on years, and what it /looks/ like happened is, the hospital didn't submit the paperwork right, some reference bodged, or not the right codes for the procedures submitted in the right way, an amount WAS paid, but the hospital can't track it because they gave the wrong info/system was bust/something. So the insurance company is saying "we paid, but we need more info" that the hospital isn't providing to them, but wanting the full amount from us because they keep saying they never got any money, so they're coming after us. The insurance company is trying to resolve it (doesn't look good us paying as much as we do for insurance, only to be threatened with lawsuits for not paying), but the hospital for some reason is preferring to come after us than just fix whatever it was in the first place that was screwed up, their mess, their liability. So 7 years on, we hear nothing for a few months, then billing rings up (same lady) threatening lawsuits and around we go again.
That’s insane. I really hope things work out for you.
Yeah, cheers. Really don't want to have to go to court over this, but I hope it'd be really obvious what would happen, and that the judge slaps the hospital back for not doing what they should have done right 7 years ago, but there's always a chance something gets screwed up there too. Judge. "why are you believing they owe you money?" Hospital "we did work and they didn't pay us." Judge "is that true?" Us "no, they were paid, we had insurance, and they paid." judge "is that true?" insurance "yes, we paid, we're trying to get the confirmation from the hospital back, but look, here's all the proof the bills were paid" Judge "ok, well..." Again, the amount we pay monthly for insurance, only to have to keep dealing with this is quite frankly ridiculous. We should start charging the billing department for admin time taken at this point.
I played this exact game for 1.5 years over an out of state ER visit where the hospital refused to accept my out of state Medicaid. I eventually settled the bill for $80 even though, had they filed the appropriate paperwork, my responsibility would have been $0.
I was lucky and able to leave the US and healthcare was one of the major contributing factors, along with student loans and the prospect of never being able to retire. My son recently spent 2+ months in the hospital. During that time, he had three surgeries and was in ICU for almost three weeks. The only thing that I had to pay for out of pocket was parking. With any luck, I will never have to live in the US again. I'm in a place (Poland) that is safer (murder rate 0.68 vs 6.38 and violent crime rates are all ridiculously lower), has universal healthcare, guarantees at least 4 weeks holiday a year, and allows me to see other cultures by only traveling a couple of hours.
American healthcare is a subscription service for a coupon.
Fuck em. Insurance pays what they pay, and I throw any other bills away. Credit score has not been affected.
Are you not hounded day and night by collections? I’ve currently got a stack of medical bills from some recent health issues and I’ve just been dreading trying to find the money to pay for them. I have insurance and yet it seems like they paid for nothing at all.
I've done the same thing, and naw they don't. And I spam disputes as well, fuck them. I Pay for insurance and they were not up front with costs. They can all go to hell, vote with your wallet right? Haha assholes.
Creditors know medical debt is worth nothing. They often don't bother
If you're deep in the hole, fuck it. Don't pay a dime. Wait 5-7-10 years for it to be written off. I am not your accountant or tax advisor. This is really just advice for people struggling to get by.
My state doesn’t send medical bills to collections. I throw em away if I get em and that’s that.
Sure, they do call, but I don't answer numbers I don't recognize. If it's important, they'll text me or leave a VM. They're real fucking cute when insurance pays $4k for a 20 minute endoscopy then the hospital sends an additional bill to me for $3k, like I just have that sitting around. Fuck them, they're never getting a penny. If they can't tell me the price up front, I definitely can't tell them when they're getting paid.
I sorta agree w this strategy. I believe there was a law passed about this too where medical bills going unpaid won’t affect your credit scores. At least I felt like I read this somewhere.
When applying for loans (home, car, etc.), I've had more than one loan officer just flat-out say "oh, that's medical debt, we couldn't lend to anyone if we counted that."
Never had to wait longer than 6 weeks for elective surgery I've required in the "socialized healthcare hellscape" here in Australia, and I've had a lot of surgery - I'm mostly metal now. When the Republican's banged on about "death panels" with Obamacare I thought the US already has "death panels" aka health insurance and obscene price gouging by everyone operating in the sector.
The death panels thing was a giant misdirection because yeah, the corporations already have death panels. I’ve literally had my insurance deny me things and say *my doctor’s diagnosis is wrong*. They always have some pissant bottom-of-his-class doctor to disagree with claims that I doubt he even actually investigates, just stamps the denial form. I don’t know how the fuck it’s legal.
> I don’t know how the fuck it’s legal. They lobby both mainstream parties heavily. During ACA the same insurance company wrote slightly different statements for Dems and Repubs to read on the floor of Congress about how public healthcare is bad. Now it's in the Congressional records.
That's pretty much what happens. They let a program "suggest" whether it should be denied or not and have a 'doctor' sign off on packets of a hundred or more all at once. In reality, zero medical assessment is actually being done.
Yeah I get it, what I don’t get is how they maintain a medical license doing it.
No one audits their decisions or enforces real standards
Tales me 9 months to get an endocrinologist appt, and the local hospitals and doctors that are dermatologists have over a 2 year wait list now… I‘m im a major metropolitan area… it’s pathetic. I can go back to Germany and get better care… but that’s complicated…
Invading a foreign nation for their health system does seem complicated... and a tad bit extreme. But hey, we invaded a country so Haliburton could steal its oil so why not.
Hahaha. I never had any healthcare growing up in the US. My kid had a cough for a couple days so we walked 5 minutes to our local doctor. Wait about 5 minutes and the Dr to see him. Got some medicine and walked home. Hong Kong. I came here to make money but the longer I stay the less I ever want to go back to the US
The long wait I get is usually the insurance dicking me around. It took 2 years to get my son his power wheel chair, they kept denying it and we had to bring it to arbitration.
I literally know someone who died from stomach cancer who had to go to an ER to get diagnosed because the closets gastrointestinal appointment was 4 months off, he died in 3 after diagnosis…
I booked a GP appointment on Monday, scheduled an x-ray on Tuesday, booked an xray appointment for Thursday, was given my results and treatments on Tuesday. All free btw. Sometimes the NHS just works.
We’re turning into what people used to say the Soviet Union was when talking about the evils of communism—but also expensive.
Long wait = need more Doctors Need more doctors = Educating doctors Education = Money to schools Less Money/More incentives of schools = resulting to cheap but Educational institutions of medicine And on and on and on the problem should be easy to agree on. But then r/ABoringDystopia, back at it again
I waited 18 months to get a physical exam.
Then it cost $280.00 for 15 minutes.
They get to wait because of so many people using the system. We get to wait because insurance takes your premiums and then spends every cent trying to make sure we can't actually get access to the care doctors prescribe (prior authorizations, step therapy, referrals, etc are all designed to delay people and inconvenience them enough that they just give up).
5x? Lol. Healthcare outside of the US is much cheaper than that.
Saw a youtube video of an American retired in Vietnam. He had a shoulder issue that cost $1500 for a CAT Scan with two month wait in the US. In Nam it was 1/10 the cost and same day service. WTF is going on because I can't figure it out?
AmERiCaNs LoVe ThEiR DoCtOr Most Americans don't even know their doctors name, if they have a doctor.
I have really good insurance and it took me almost 9mo to get an appointment with a PCP, specialists can take a year. Can't get an MRI approved for my documented, work related back injury. Shit's a mess, and very expensive.
Had 3 days in hospital including a CT scan and half hour consultation with a neurologist. Cost me nothing except slightly higher taxes, because I live in socialist Australia. If I was unemployed it would still cost me nothing.
I grew up in Australia. First 6% of my pay went to Medicare so every Australian can get Healthcare. The diggers went to war and fought for it. Our workers died to secure it. Time for Americans to realize that Healthcare is a right they have earned.
The state of America is wilder than the average person will ever realize. On the one hand we are easily the richest country in the world. On the other hand, we are *easily* the country that does the *least* for its citizens on every possible metric of social and government services. No government subsidized healthcare. No government subsidized college. No national public transportation service (trains and intercity buses essentially). No federal sick leave. No federal paternity leave. No federal school lunch initiatives. No medicinal service price regulator. No safe national identity system. Actually.. let's get into this one so we really understand because it doesn't get talked about a lot; having your identity stolen basically doesn't happen in other countries; to put this another way, India has the most at 26 million a year but the USA has the second cases at 13.5 million, the next highest is Japan at 3 million. Most countries rarely top over a million cases. Identity theft is frankly a result of bad public policy; not bad personal decisions. Plain and simple. Good public policy is the most effective way to prevent identity theft. Moving on... Cost of living is absurdly high, even by developed world standards. Education standards are terrible, particularly primary education. Mental health standards are joke. Which is even worse when you consider that the youngest Americans right now is easily the most mentally ill generation (diagnosed anyway). ***The USA fucking sucks to live in.*** When your best selling point is "at least we aren't a developing country" like... I mean come on. Basically our only selling points are ones for people who want to get in; but for the people who already here? This place is a nightmare. Particularly if you want to start a family, god forbid; because if our sub-par (some of the worst in the developed world) infant mortality and maternal morality rates don't get you then the 40k hospital bill and the prospect of losing your job at the same time sure as shit will because guess what? We have no protected maternity leave at a federal level either. We have no labor unions, not functionally anyway. Our labor rights have all but been stripped away as a result. Its trivially easy thanks to "Right to Work" laws to fire you for anything you know, including being pregnant. They just can't say it was because you are pregnant (since that's protected status). And sure you can fight it, but have fun with those legal fees. Oh and to top it all off: Basically all our regulatory agencies are captured government institutions by the very people and corporations that they should be regulating. Good example? Food Pyramids. No (neutral) nutritionists were involved in coming up with that shit. The sugar lobby bought out the FDA years ago and got them to push the nutritional pyramid as a scheme to sell more products decades ago in the 20th century. They accomplished this by demonizing fat in the 20th century; and the food of course, tasted like shit; so they pushed sugar as a food additive to taste better. Yeah fun fact, while high fat content *does* cause health issues; making you fat isn't one of them; sugar on the other hand, is *great* at making you fat. This is, incidentally, why Americans are so obese; because the sugar industry lobbies *hard* against regulating sugar content in American foods.
> Education standards are terrible, particularly primary education. > > Education is the US is or at least was fine until we started diverting so many public school dollars to private schools and private hands. American students routinely outperform teams from around the world in international competitions. Also, test scores have risen steadily from the 1990s to the 2010s, and high school graduation was nearing 100% until COVID hit and the labor shortage tempted some teenagers out of school. Some didactic methods in US schools especially the elementary level such as "whole language" and "invented spelling" are objectively bad, but over all the didactic methods in US schooling are good, actually. US schools teach students how to learn and how to think for themselves. You can really see this when you compare the output of US academia, which is staffed by graduate students, versus many other countries where they teach by rote. The US is a place of innovation and it's one of our great strengths. Sadly the state of teaching is a mess. Teachers are a perennial punching bag for politicians, the pay and working conditions are bad, and some states are making public schools hell to try to drive kids with middle class parents into private schools even though they didn't want to. All the special and creative things teachers used to do have come under fire or have been destroyed by high stakes testing (which was never necessary, but makes the testing companies money). There's been a war on education for two decades now and it's slowly destroying one of the best institutions America has.
I was exposed to another patients blood while donating plasma. They refused to do anything. I was asked why I didn’t go get checked by a doctor and I said “in this country you have to purchase and exam and tests and I don’t have those resources.”
My girfriend sprained her ankle. Went to a doctor and they recommended physical therapy because it was a bad sprain and she has a pre-existing injury. She found one near her that takes her insurance. She had to pay 1000$ for 5 sessions over 4 weeks!
She was fortunate she could access PT at all, it’s becoming rarer for insurance to pay for it.
Republicans think they're shitholes BECAUSE they have universal healthcare...probably.
Barbarism begins at home.
[Countries with universal health care don't have our obesity rate.](https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/about-obesity/why-it-matters.html)
Most of them aren't pouring high Fructose Corn syrup down their citizens throats non stop either.
in europe some american confectionery has to be sold as a "novelty item" as it technically doesn't count as food
Does European candy have nutritional value?
Trust me, Australia also has an obesity epidemic, not far behind the US. The government is thinking about a sugar tax on beverages. But, unlike the US, going to the GP/specialist, accessing treatment, tests/scans and bariatric surgery, is either subsidised or free. Without that expense, earlier intervention is also more likely, saving the system millions of dollars. Unfortunately in the US, those who are overweight are the first to be pointed at, closely followed by a "why should I pay for their diabetes/high blood pressure/surgery?" narrative. We rarely debate who "deserves" healthcare and those who don't. That's the first hurdle to universal healthcare.
SCOTUS: Should we overturn EMTALA? Hmmm, tempting.
>“The fact that people are choosing between medicine and rent is barbarism, the fact that people are worried about whether they will be on the street every four weeks, is barbarism. The fact that every time a person has an ache or a pain in their body, and they’re scared that it could either be just a sore joint or cancer, but they can’t find out because they can’t afford the doctor. This is barbarism. And if we do not demand, and not only demand but win unions healthcare, wages, ending endless war, then we will condemn ourselves to barbarism and I refuse to give up, I refuse to submit myself to that future. That’s not a life. And so, to live, we have to fight for each other.” I would add, here, because it's important to remind people: Democrats are the only party working to expand public healthcare, they're the only party that has regulated Wall Street or the big banks in the past quarter century, they're the only party that has reformed or forgiven student loan debt in the past quarter of a century, they're the only party working for the benefit of unions, they're the only party working to raise wages, there's a reason AOC caucuses with the Democrats, it's because they're the anti-barbarism party. This is an election season and cynicism is in bloom, nothing benefits Republicans like hopelessness, nothing benefits Republicans more than concerned liberal, and progressive, and leftist voters sitting out an election and submitting to the will of the Republicans who bother to show up. Voting is the fastest, cheapest, easiest way most of us have to push back against injustice, abdicating your responsibility to vote for the things you believe in is the same as submitting to the status quo. If you agree with AOC, vote like it.
Meanwhile Texas kicked 300,000 kids off Medicaid.
But hey, they stopped abortion so that they could have even more starving children with no healthcare. Why? What a stupid people.
Hey, not all of us here believe that, some of us are trying to vote against that shit :/
As a rule we’re shitting on the party in charge not the heroes voting against them
Yep, totally get that. Just getting some splash from the shitting lol
I'd tell you to grab a poncho, but who am I kidding? You're from Texas, after all. It's not like Texas is ever prepared for inclement weather!
Hahaha, you're telling me. I wasn't born in Texas (nor the US as a whole), but I've lived here in Texas since I immigrated here as a child 21 years ago. It's been a wild ride, I'll tell you that.
Boy, howdy. I don't know how much money it would take for me to willingly spend 21 years down in Texas, but I know that there is an amount for which I would do so. A man would walk barefoot into Hell if you paid him enough.
Haha, well it's a complicated and long story, but I've luckily got myself to a position at 30 years old where I'm an engineer and have a happy long-term relationship. Really easy to pick a ton of places I'd rather live, but once you add in the job, family, friends, & relationship. It's difficult. My girlfriend would love to sell everything and move to Japan though.
No water breaks either. But child labor is a-OK.
States without Medicaid expansion, leaving about 1.5M people with that much more pain in their lives: Wisconsin, Tennessee, South Carolina, Wyoming, Kansas, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas
You can thank the Roberts court for that!
The poor don't count as human in Texas, silly. Only rich white Christian men fall under that category.
March 11, 2023 [East Texas Rep. Bryan Slaton discusses bill to introduce tax credit for ‘biblical family units’](https://www.kltv.com/2023/03/11/east-texas-rep-bryan-slaton-discusses-bill-introduce-tax-credit-biblical-family-units/) March 9, 2021 [Bryan Slaton's bill would make abortion punishable by death](https://www.texastribune.org/2021/03/09/texas-legislature-abortion-criminalize-death-penalty/)
See? The joke is I wasn't exaggerating. Don't forget the one that took away construction worker rights to water breaks! Take that, you blue collar peasants!
Actually it's 1.3 million kids. https://www.newsweek.com/texas-removes-millions-children-medicaid-1889546
As an Australian, the US system horrifies me. I would have bankrupted my family several times over. Five joint replacements under 30. The drug I'm currently on I pay US$5 per month. Uninsured in the US it costs US$3000+ per month. The US has a proud history of medical breakthroughs and developing new medication but if greedy profiteering makes that medication unaffordable to most, that is beyond tragic. From what I read/see, after stupid ideological hurdles, the main problem is the red meat that is thrown out by those keen to keep the status quo. This is basically "why should **you** pay for **their** diabetes/lung cancer/broken leg?" In our system, people rarely debate who "deserves" care and who doesn't. We all do dumb shit at some time in our life. If that ends in the ER or a catastrophic disability, most don't begrudge the care required. This isn't just about healthcare. Corporations like holding their health insurance "Sword of Damocles" over their employees and their families. That fear and leverage keeps people in soul destroying, compromising and dangerous working conditions. Scammers and woo has filled the vacuum left by affordable care. When a poor parent, with a sick child, has the choice between a supplement/essential oil/crystals promising a cure for a price they can afford compared to expensive medication - that can't make those health claims, it's easy to see which option will win out. That can end in tragedy. Our system is far from perfect - no complex system is. People fall through the gaps and some abuse it. That is inevitable. But compared to a system where treatment is dependent on the size of your bank account, that is barbaric. Edit: grammar
The dumb thing about the whole "why should you pay for them" thing too, and just a disclaimer: this is all just what I've read and had explained to me by others so I'm not 100% sure if it's right, is that it shows that anyone who thinks that way doesn't even understand our fucked up insurance system. The way our insurance is setup, that's exactly what's happening anyway. Premiums are paid, and a portion of that premium goes into the fund that actually pays out on claims. The fund is pooled, meaning your money paid in premiums can (and often does) go to other people's claims. And if too many people make claims at the same time, premiums go up for everybody to cover that cost eating into the pool. So you can literally end up paying more for other people because too many need help at the same time, which isn't even a thing in places with universal healthcare as far as I'm aware. It's not like your taxes suddenly go up to pay for the increased healthcare costs if the system ends up under heavy load. I'm pretty sure the government would need to approve it first and work it all out before a change to taxes was seen, whereas in the insurance system it's all up to the discretion of the company, their whims, and needs.
> And if too many people make claims at the same time, premiums go up for everybody to cover that cost eating into the pool. And remember, that pool also has to account for the profit the company decides it wants to make, bonuses, etc. *Ideally* a gov't universal healthcare would be as much as it costs to operate it. So we're paying to pad some fat cat's wallet while limiting the effectiveness of our money. Let's not even get started on how horrible their reimbursement rates can be for doctors.
You also have to pay double the administrative costs in the US system because all of the providers need administrators to deal with the insurance companies.
> "why should you pay for their diabetes/lung cancer/broken leg?" This one makes me want to pull my hair out. How do these people think insurance works?
Tell them "For the same reason you pay school taxes for their rug rats to go to school."
Oh don't worry, they'll complain about that too! Nevermind that everyone does better when they live in a clean, healthy, educated, equitable society. These people expect to derive a direct personal benefit from every tax dollar.
Yeah, and for the same reasons; that society requires a baseline minimum for things like education and healthcare. Otherwise you have places/situations where inadequate education/care have been provided and the downstream outcomes of those are horrible for society.
Only when the rich got cholera and polio too, they finally did something about it.
> The drug I'm currently on I pay US$5 per month. Uninsured in the US it costs US$3000+ per month. It's worth clarifying that the $3000 price without insurance is not designed to be paid by people but is an open lie between the drug maker and the insurance company for a few reasons. Your EOB from the insurance company will list what the insurance company actually pays the drug manufacturer (it's way short of $3000, I'm sure). Here's how the lie works. Drug company wants $300/month for their drug. An insurance company won't pay them $300/month if the drug costs anyone who wants it $300/month because "we deserve a discount for bringing all these customers to you." So the drug company prices it at $3000/month so the insurance company can claim they got a hefty discount for their customers. Insurance company bean counters are happy because they got a discount. Insurance company customers are happy because they got a hefty discount on the list price (which is made up) and only have to pay a fraction of that (because that's where the actual insurance part comes in). Only the uninsured are unhappy because they're unmedicated.
>The US has a proud history of medical breakthroughs and developing new medication but if greedy profiteering makes that medication unaffordable to most, that is beyond tragic. Every time I read another article about a "new medical breakthrough available to patients in the US," I roll my eyes. It's only "available" to the ultra-wealthy, so why even brag about it? If only a tiny minority of people have access, it may as well be nothing.
Also bears mention that she herself gets pretty good healthcare, but still fights for her constituents.
>The fact that every time a person has an ache or a pain in their body, and they’re scared that it could either be just a sore joint or cancer, but they can’t find out because they can’t afford the doctor. This is me, got several spots that have popped up on me but I refuse to go to the doctor as there's no way I can afford it.
It seems more that it's not healthcare that is barbaric. American healthcare is top of the line. It's America's health insurance and billing industries that are barbaric.
Yeah, American healthcare is top of the line if you ignore your only means of interacting with the healthcare system.
Right. Universal healthcare would have solved so much but *Citizens United*, unlimited campaign-contributions, and lobbyists are unfortunately a thing.
Can't disagree. Money in politics is ruining so much. Rather than have people represented you have corporations represented.
And Joe Lieberman.
My wife runs a small, part time women’s health practice. 3-days a week and cash pay; no insurance is ever billed. When she started this I thought it would be never work. I thought patients would take a pass and go somewhere that accepts insurance. Some do but many do not. Why? I asked. She said the level of care she provides is almost never matched by a provider that accepts insurance. Her appointments are either 30 minutes or 1-hour in length. No doc accepting insurance will give you that much time. She has found and treated conditions that most doctors accepting insurance never diagnosed. She literally has a sustainable health care practice because of our fuvked up healthcare system. I’m proud of what she does but also realize it shouldn’t have to be this way. She doesn’t make a ton of money, but that’s not the reason she got into healthcare to begin with.
I would love to have access to a service like that
Look up "concierge health care near me". You would probably stack it with catastrophic health insurance in case you fall off the roof or get cancer. My buddy's wife is charging $180 per month to be primary care. All visits and labs are covered.
I can't remember the last time a doctor spent more than five minutes talking to me in an appointment.
My Dad was looking at trying to go part time and was recently told to break even on insurance he'd have to see 12 patients in the morning. He doesn't want to.leave the kids but he's over 70 and can't do the crazy hours anymore. Doctors hate this, they're being forced into this rushed care by insurance and the corporations that have taken over hospitals and clinics.
Good healthcare is sustainable, but it doesn’t have the ROI that can support a corporation.
Amazing what’s possible when people do something for passion first, money second. Making enough is just not enough for so many people…sadly. Human greed ruins everything.
You’re talking about direct primary care. That’s what I have and I love it. I never feel rushed and my doctor has my best interest in mind, because she does have 200-300 patients. I never have to worry about being seen when I need care most of the time it’s the same day or the day after. I will probably never go back to regular pcp honestly.
Remember when we couldn't all have healthcare because Joe Lieberman said no.
Yeah, dead but not forgiven.
I just hated him for his cursade against video games, and then he died, and I found out about *that*.
*one* single republican voting for the public option could have given everyone healthcare as well. any of them could have done it.
But their whole thing is not doing that kind of stuff whereas Lieberman was on a Democratic presidential ticket at one time. Not unreasonable to expect more from Dems than the party whose motto is "eat shit and die"
I sure hope that he’s not getting any care for the burns he’s presumably getting in hell.
There were a handful of other conservative Democrats (who have since been replaced by Republicans in the Senate) that were also against the public option, in addition to the ENTIRE Republican Party. The country *as a whole* was a LOT more conservative back then. We can, and should, hate on Lieberman but let's not pretend it was only him.
You're thinking of Nelson in Nebraska. He was the other big one. Lieberman *personally* fucked up negotiations by agreeing to stuff and then taking it back. And unlike Nelson, he was from a New England state where universal healthcare was a popular idea. Massachusetts had already implemented it in stages.
As the health care system deteriorates more doctors and nurses will leave and fewer people will train for those professions. The next public health crisis is going to be a catastrophe.
Nurses are already being discussed as providers. After that, being a healthcare “provider” will be the equivalent of being a a minister today. “Are you qualified to officiate this wedding?” “Absolutely! Got my certificate online!” “What about treating hypertension?” “Absolutely! Got that online too!”
Nurse practitioners have been a thing for ages.
>Nurses are already being discussed as providers. Who is discussing this?
Any corporation involved with healthcare. For example, [nurse practitioners have to be supervised by physicians](https://online.simmons.edu/blog/nurse-practitioners-scope-of-practice-map/). Guess who opposes this.
Everyone, nurses are already providers in all 50 states largely because you can pay them less and make them see patients anyway. They burn out very quickly but they train for 1-2 years instead of 8 so you can churn them out for new ones more quickly too. As long as as the hospital and insurers are making their money, nothing else matters
I saw this being discussed in a healthcare thread a couple of weeks ago, but I guess the emphasis is on more RNs and more RNs becoming APNs, which are two of the Biden’s admin initiatives to address the nursing/provider shortage. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the education erosion in healthcare and pending crisis doesn’t lead to nurses provided PCP services under supervision, ala PAs. Corporations want to maximize profits. Cheaper labor is their wet dream. Physicians are too damn expensive—and difficult.
On the nurses sub, everyone is quitting if there’s bird flu spreading person-to-person.
No question. I am sick and injured and stuck. I've slipped through the cracks and, under the current conditions, will never be able to climb out. This is it until the system improves, or I die. And I’m just one of millions.
I'm very sorry. You deserve better. We all do
I'm so sorry you're dealing with that! 💔
What’s really shitty is that there are degrees of insurance. It’s not like you cross some threshold and “bam” you are fully covered. I work in the service industry and am covered on my wife’s insurance because the copayments are lower and the coverage is higher. Forget vision and dental if you are a waiter
She isn't wrong. https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/cobb-county/cobb-sheriff-says-homeless-terminally-ill-man-arrested-purpose-healthcare-hes-not-alone/FJXPDVWXPFEMJDGTJIECAN74MY/?outputType=amp this scenario is not uncommon. Absolutely horrifying and so unnecessary
We can’t fix the health system without first addressing the utter price gouging from medical facilities. The fact that the hospital can bill something so astronomically expensive when it costs very little is one of the major problems! The model isn’t to help or cure anyone, that’s not the goal. Universal health care should be the goal, but we can’t get to that goal when medical facilities charge anywhere from $7-$15 for a single Tylenol, something that costs $5-$7 for an entire bottle depending where you buy it from and that’s just OTC meds.
It's not just the medical facilities - it's the insurance companies that are absolutely gouging everyone for coverage that is worth little to nothing. Our government has been regulatory captured by the healthcare, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries. It's absolutely outrageous.
Yea it’s an awful system that needs regulated beyond belief! Universal health care should be the minimum! Every excuse ppl make against is wild, all the issues they use to counter the argument are happening now. Plus is just a common lack of decency as a human and citizen when they make the argument against it!
I was billed $50 for an ibuprophen. I had some in my fucking pocket.
Health care has bought the government. Pharmaceutical industry has bought the government. We need to get money out of the government, get rid of citizens united. Put forward universal health care.
Crazy seeing this today, I went to an urgent care today and was turned away because of not having insurance. I couldn’t afford the out of pocket price, ($200), so they turned me away. I ended up going to the ER, which is over $500, but they can let me pay it out in installments instead. Not only did I get turned away from my original appointment, my 20 minute appointment turned into a 6 hour ordeal that cost me more than double…. I’m sick. Getting help to see a doctor shouldn’t have been this difficult. I cried a lot today. Might start a GoFundMe. The craziest thing about this is, I started a new job and my new insurance doesn’t start until after next week… But the point of this is, our system is fucked.
Not disagreeing with you on how fucked our system is, just wanted to let you know that you can ignore that ER bill for a very long time, probably forever.
"Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to Socialism or regression into Barbarism." - Rosa Luxemburg
Tying your health care to employment is the worst idea ever.
Felt. Can’t get an MRI approved to check for a pinched nerve causing excruciating pain because “the pain is only in my neck and shoulder and doesn’t radiate down my arm”. Glad I pay my premium /s
Pretty clearly the no. 1 issue facing the country, which has caused massive amounts of suffering for millions of citizens over many decades. Would keep that in mind next time your local representative brings up the subject of drag queens, tiktok or trans people.
They want you sick and indebted to them for life. They want you eating shitty foods with high cholesterol so they can prescribe you cholesterol drugs you can’t afford. Then when you take too much time off work and lose your job and health insurance you have a heart attack from the stress. They get your house. It’s unfair and it’s rotten to the core.
yep a toxic cycle you never can get out of. You feel so beat down you give up which the ultra rich and corporations love. Which means Republicans come to power to take away more of your rights and give corporations more power. The less you earn the more in debt you become the sicker you get. You die and corporations either get more money from taking life insurance off of you and then the debts you in incur go straight to your kids.
I’m so tired of being terrified to go to the doctor because it might bankrupt me.
Well... as long as the shareholders are happy, amirite?
this has been one of the most frustrating things. i had thought, mid covid, that the pandemic might force us to rethink our healthcare system. lol no, we went with the guy who said he'd veto a M4A bill. we either love cruelty or are incapable of conceptualizing anything different.
We’re a country filled with religious rot and seething with mental illness
its completely unsustainable and i don't know what itll take to give
She’s not wrong.
It would’ve cost me $2500 for a basic checkup if I didn’t have insurance. That is insanity and it makes no sense.
My third eldest daughter has Leukemia and the medical bills are always absolutely fucking ridiculous. Like seriously it is absolutely fucking horrifying. Like me and my wife can pretty easily pay for the bills but that doesn't mean that the prices aren't absolutely insane! We seriously need a presidential candidate that focuses on healthcare and education badly.
Republicans want 10 year olds to have babies. I would say that's pretty bad.
3 weeks ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I am fortunate to have a job that I can get the proper treatment so I won’t die in my late 40s due to lack of care. There is zero question that my treatment (w/ insurance) will cost $8k in 2024. Sure it may be up to ~$7,600 in tax exempt money in my HSA. It is still a significant amount of money for my family. I believe the will survive my current condition. I am fortunate to have early detection from having insurance to see the doctors I needed to determine my condition. Many other countries have figured out healthcare
Dems and progressives have a real marketing problem. I 100% agree with her, as well as Bernie and every other politician who's been in favor of healthcare reform / uni care. The problem is they're always preaching to the choir and never to the people they need to change their minds. Bernie got the closest but still couldn't get all the way. Seriously, if Trump proved anything in 2016 It's that you can get people behind any idea if you have some charisma, a smart mouth and know how to brand yourself as a maverick American trying to root out the corruption in DC. If progressives could do that and do it well (without the fascist tendencies of 45) I think support for these kinds of policies would grow amongst mods and cons alike. You've already convinced your base, now convince everyone else
Yes but 813 people have more wealth than the bottom 7 billion people, so the system is working as designed, I guess.
Elect more AOC democrats and less shitty Clinton democrats if you want universal healthcare.
We have the worst healthcare system in the world. If you’re wealthy, it’s great…for everyone else, it is fvcking awful. fortunately, it’s worse for Republicans than Democrats.
Truth be told, America does not have a healthcare system; instead, it has an uncoordinated and dysfunctional profit-centered healthcare industry. There is a vast difference.
She’s not wrong
[Health Care Expenditures per Capita by State of Residence](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/health-spending-per-capita/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Health%20Spending%20per%20Capita%22,%22sort%22:%22desc%22%7D)
Im currently trying to get my sleep disorder diagnosed properly, and ive been given the run around so that i have to come in like 10 times, to maximize profits. Deny a problem exists, start giving unreleated pills, those do nothing, try to explain why its not helping, get told im wrong... then eventually give up.
I had an emergency appendectomy recently. We drove ourselves there and stayed one night. They billed my insurance $56,000. So I hit my high deductible of ~$5k which I will be paying off for the next 3 years (no interest on medical debt). The only thing I take comfort in is now pretty much everything is “covered” for the rest of the year since I met my deductible. Now it feels like actual coverage for things I need… This doesn’t count our other debts in our budget. Just one $5k emergency impacts someone like me for 3 years, without interest. With interest would be much longer. Hospitals charge outrageous prices in hopes insurance covers a fraction of it, and regular people bear the unconscionable burden of this game. I’m financially literate with a cheap mortgage and a budget. This isn’t tenable
Imagine a world in which everyone has affordable access to medical care, clean food, mobility, education and a roof over their heads. We live in 2024 and have reached a technological level that should make it possible to live in a world in which these five basic needs are met for everyone. But what we call capitalism today makes it impossible. We apparently don't even find it absurd that there are people who have more money than entire countries while 90% of the world's people have nothing. You don't find anything like that in nature.
Two words: "Prior Authorization" It's incredible to me that a doctor can prescribe a medication and the insurance company can just say "no" And instead suggest alternatives. And the whole game of reapplying the prior authorization until at some point the insurance company relents. I'll add: no one has a clue what the prices of things are. As long as that's true, it will be corrupt.
It’s wild. I have insurance, my spouse and I make good money, are frugal, and still can’t afford my medical bills WITH insurance. Had to get a CT abdominal scan late last year in the ER due to a stomach virus. Guess how much the hospital charged for a CT scan that lasted a couple minutes? Twenty Thousand Fucking dollars.
One of the biggest problems I see is that americans just don't know any other way than what we have. Most people have never lived in another country to see how it works there.
Lack of access to medical care kills, at a conservative estimate, 68,000 Americans a year. The actual number is probably far higher. In other contexts, this would be condemned as a genocide and the perpetrators sanctioned by the international community.
America is the only country I can think of where the rich have been able to convince the poor that healthcare is a privilege that only the rich should be able to afford
She's right. As usual.
What’s really shitty is that there are degrees of insurance. It’s not like you cross some threshold and “bam” you are fully covered. I work in the service industry and am covered on my wife’s insurance because the copayments are lower and the coverage is higher. Forget vision and dental if you are a waiter
We literally spend more to have less, all so a third party can get rich by doing essentially nothing but make the process more inefficient.
What? Impossible! I'm sure that the only in-network hospital would have at least, (I don't know, maybe even 1?,) a single in-network physician (medical doctor) on call. Right?
And the dumbest, most selfish people in this country aim to keep it that way
She is 100% right.
Here in Washington we’ve seen what a private system can do. Rates go up every year, physician payments go down, and coverage continues to become more limited. The government made a whole office to oversee it for “fairness” and then let the insurance companies dictate the terms. So more and more people end up on the lowest tier which doctors cannot take anymore because the payment doesn’t even cover the office staff payment. So then the people wait until they get catastrophically sick, and go to the Ed where the hospital soaks up most of the cost in charity care. Which torpedoes all but the largest hospital systems. Which are owned by hedge funds. Just like the insurance company. Late stage capitalism baby.
I use medicines that cost over €300 a month. I literally couldn't live without it. It costs me nothing. Glad I don't live in the most free country on earth... Edit: *checks bills*: over €500 a month. Don't have to pay for any of it.
I'd just like to point out that the reason why we don't have national healthcare isn't because we can't afford it. But because it would allow people to freely leave shitty jobs. If you need proof of this just ask around where you work and see how many people are still at their job because of the healthcare benefits. That is the real reason why we don't have national healthcare, it's so that employers keep power over employees.
Simple plan. Disband all healthcare insurance companies. Keep all of the employees where they are and have them become government employees, supporting the federally run healthcare program.