The USA is a dozen people standing in a fully stocked supermarket with one guy saying, “I guess there’s nothing left- we’ll have to kill and eat each other,” while the other 11 quietly grumble about it but don’t dare do anything that might appear threatening. Someone will be along to save them, surely.
I went to the urgent care (and was unfortunately referred to emergency care in the same building) for some chest pain a few weeks ago. Here’s some of my bill (luckily most should be covered by insurance, we’ll see if they give me trouble)
Blood draw/lab test: $446.63
Plasma test: $158.07
Chest x-ray: $664.66
“Emergency services” or in other words, the bill for getting transfered from urgent care to emergency: $3,987.00
ECG: $1,024.94
All of that, just for them to tell me that I was fine and to just rest. $6,295.29 for an hour long visit. If I didn’t have insurance, I wouldn’t be able to afford that and would have just preferred whatever was going to happen to me.
Meanwhile the fucking shitty human beings in Congress get free universal healthcare.
What in the everloving fuck. I had some kinda specific symptoms one weekend, I called the doc on Monday, he said come in this afternoon (must’ve been a bit worried, getting an appointment normally takes longer, I don’t want to misrepresent this).
I went in, we had a chat, he said come back tomorrow for a blood test. I dutifully went in for the test and went home. 8PM that night I got a call from an out of hours doctor, they said get yourself to A&E (emergency room). More bloods taken, I was triaged and admitted (which took about 36hrs - was a heavy time, I wasn’t super urgent).
Spent the next 5 weeks in hospital, I now have a life long condition which necessitates a lot of pills that I’ve been taking for a few years now.
Total out of pocket cost £0.
People still try to claim the US system is superior.
I was in an accident a few years back and broke my orbital floor, sphenoid, and ended up with pneumocephalus. I was there for about 32 hours total and ended up with a 150k bill. 65k of that was imaging.
this country is so fucking broken. imagine even being able to go to the hospital for “flu like symptoms”, most of us would never do that cause we know it’d be a 10k bill.
Let say there is a doctor that charges $100 for a visit. They come too then and say “we have large network, we can provide many patients for you, but we will pay 20% of your price”.
The doctor still needs to get $100, because also needs to pay the staff and other expenses, so s/he raises their price to $500.
Now someone without insurance comes. The doctor doesn’t need $500, and is ok charging just $100. But if s/he does the insurance might sure them that the doctor lied to them and they only supposed to pay $20. So they are forced to charge $500.
In summary, that $500 is never paid by anyone unless they don’t have insurance.
You can check how much discount insurance pays by looking for “adjustment” column on your bill.
They purposefully use that name and posting the difference instead of price to obfuscate this.
What insurance is paying is the billed amount minus adjustment minus your copay and deductible.
There are other things contributing to high prices, but this is the biggest one IMO. If we didn’t have insurance meddling with the prices, the prices would be much lower. Still high, but at least something someone could be able to pay.
The markups on labs are even more ridiculous, unless it is some highly specialized test they are actually cheap to the point that some insurances don’t even require copays.
Yeah, I have labs I’ve been putting off for like 6 months because I know it’s going to end up being like a $400-600 bill. They’re just standard labs, CMP, CBC, lft
The fuck it costs 1000 dollars to get some blood drawn? What the fuck is happening in America.
True Cost of US Healthcare Shocks the British Public:
https://youtu.be/Kll-yYQwmuM
The USA is a dozen people standing in a fully stocked supermarket with one guy saying, “I guess there’s nothing left- we’ll have to kill and eat each other,” while the other 11 quietly grumble about it but don’t dare do anything that might appear threatening. Someone will be along to save them, surely.
I went to the urgent care (and was unfortunately referred to emergency care in the same building) for some chest pain a few weeks ago. Here’s some of my bill (luckily most should be covered by insurance, we’ll see if they give me trouble)
All of that, just for them to tell me that I was fine and to just rest. $6,295.29 for an hour long visit. If I didn’t have insurance, I wouldn’t be able to afford that and would have just preferred whatever was going to happen to me.
Meanwhile the fucking shitty human beings in Congress get free universal healthcare.
What in the everloving fuck. I had some kinda specific symptoms one weekend, I called the doc on Monday, he said come in this afternoon (must’ve been a bit worried, getting an appointment normally takes longer, I don’t want to misrepresent this).
I went in, we had a chat, he said come back tomorrow for a blood test. I dutifully went in for the test and went home. 8PM that night I got a call from an out of hours doctor, they said get yourself to A&E (emergency room). More bloods taken, I was triaged and admitted (which took about 36hrs - was a heavy time, I wasn’t super urgent).
Spent the next 5 weeks in hospital, I now have a life long condition which necessitates a lot of pills that I’ve been taking for a few years now.
Total out of pocket cost £0.
People still try to claim the US system is superior.
I was in an accident a few years back and broke my orbital floor, sphenoid, and ended up with pneumocephalus. I was there for about 32 hours total and ended up with a 150k bill. 65k of that was imaging.
this country is so fucking broken. imagine even being able to go to the hospital for “flu like symptoms”, most of us would never do that cause we know it’d be a 10k bill.
I can tell you to rest for, I dunno, $500?
(Jokes aside, that’s shitty and I’ve been there)
It is a scam pulled by insurance companies.
Let say there is a doctor that charges $100 for a visit. They come too then and say “we have large network, we can provide many patients for you, but we will pay 20% of your price”.
The doctor still needs to get $100, because also needs to pay the staff and other expenses, so s/he raises their price to $500.
Now someone without insurance comes. The doctor doesn’t need $500, and is ok charging just $100. But if s/he does the insurance might sure them that the doctor lied to them and they only supposed to pay $20. So they are forced to charge $500.
In summary, that $500 is never paid by anyone unless they don’t have insurance.
You can check how much discount insurance pays by looking for “adjustment” column on your bill.
They purposefully use that name and posting the difference instead of price to obfuscate this.
What insurance is paying is the billed amount minus adjustment minus your copay and deductible.
There are other things contributing to high prices, but this is the biggest one IMO. If we didn’t have insurance meddling with the prices, the prices would be much lower. Still high, but at least something someone could be able to pay.
The markups on labs are even more ridiculous, unless it is some highly specialized test they are actually cheap to the point that some insurances don’t even require copays.
No, it’s cowardice on the part of the American people who refuse to throw a punch
Yeah, I have labs I’ve been putting off for like 6 months because I know it’s going to end up being like a $400-600 bill. They’re just standard labs, CMP, CBC, lft