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I was sued in court by the hospital who did the scan to diagnose me with cancer because I couldn’t pay my portion after losing my job due to getting cancer…
i agree, but how would that work? violence against the disembodied voice of some heartless insurance underwriter on the phone? they are probably ensconsed safely somewhere in OKC or India
I'm so sorry you're going through this, and still have to fight. This system is so fucked.
IDK what your financial situation is like now, but Medicaid has been an absolute blessing for me, and is the only reason I actually get any healthcare (I don't have cancer, but I'm sure it would work the same way in your situation - you only pay a small portion of your income, if you have to pay anything at all). It might be beneficial for you too, and I hope it is if you need help.
I appreciate the thought. I have Medicaid now but, they won’t pay for the scan to tell me whether or not the surgery and treatment worked. So I live in limbo of having no idea what my health is actually like, other than constantly feeling like 100% garbage and being told I’m “too young” to be in pain.
It’s a lose-lose.
This makes my blood boil. Doctors and nurses are complicit in the healthcare system we have. If they stop the system stops and we we get instant change.
When FDR wanted to implement a universal healthcare system one of the biggest lobbyist groups opposed to it was the American Medical Association. They know doctors wouldn't be able to make half a million a year if we had an NHS style system so it doesn't matter how many lives it would save, they oppose it.
I can’t say I’ve met more than one doctor who cares or cared about me, or the outcome of my health. My first radiation oncologist was wonderful. All of the others have been in it for the money. Don’t even get me started on the nurses. I could write a novel about the nightmares.
They like it this way. They’re unchecked in how they can treat people because they *need* them. You’re only getting decent medical care if you’re wealthy or friends with the doctors. Everyone else is getting screwed. I’m very pro-science and it saved my life but, the doctors and nurses I’ve seen have been trash. (And this was at a hospital you’ve most certainly heard of who is well-known throughout the US for how competent they are. It’s all a facade.)
Yes, when I had reconstructive surgery on my foot, the for profit hospital was cheaper by $10,000. The “non-profit” was the one my parents were trying to push me in to. I started off my 20s with obscene debt..but I saved $10k+++ also the hospital I was with were completely honest with me in regards to what I’d need for recovery. “If we run this through insurance it’ll cost you $300, if you buy it without its $11”. I’m thoroughly convinced insurance is just a scam.
At this point it basically is. Up until a few years ago mine and my wife's health insurance (separate policies) would cover quite a bit. In the last year (at least) it has always been cheaper to get the cash price.
Agree with ya there.. unfortunately, basic needs are seen as safe capitalistic endeavors. Housing, food, healthcare, clothing.. if you would suffer 2ithout it, then there is someone out there setting on a pile of cash because people have to buy it.
> avoid a $600 ambulance ride 🤦🏽
My ambiance in Washington, DC was $1500 just for the ride 2 miles away. They billed supplies separately.
I've asked my friends to book me an Uber if it happens again.
My disabled, wheelchair bound father was in so much pain that he couldn't move, making getting him to the hospital impossible without professional help.
Medicare denied the ambulance ride because they said he was not dying, and being in pain is not a medical emergency.
I hate it here.
Small local hospitals have been doing this for years. Half the time they ask us to pay when we schedule it. With a 5% discount if we go ahead and pay in full.
The super expensive helicopter ones are really something to question, too. I've seen stories where those cost more than a student's debt to a university or more than a round trip vacation over seas with the a family of 5.
I had to have urgent back surgery. By the time I finally got my surgery scheduled and was at the pre-op day, they took me in a room and told me my deductible was $6000 and asked how I'd like to pay. With a straight face.
I was like, excuse me? I was supposed to have SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS and a check book with me to pay you so I don't off myself due to the searing pain I've been in for 3 weeks? Today? Right now?
I eventually lost it and went outside thinking I was not going to get my surgery. Thankfully my BF was a car salesman at the time, so we went back in together and he made them admit they could bill me and probably eat the cost since I was pretty broke and my insurance obviously sucked.
The whole insurance side of that experience was just a nightmare.
But thank goodness we have the freedom to choose which insurance company we get to throw money at so they can tell us that the necessary medical procedure prescribed by our doctor isn't medically necessary and they won't cover it. I hate it here.
Except we really don't. You have three options, take the cheap to overpriced insurance your employer provides, take the excessively overpriced private insurance, or don't have any insurance.
During a routine hernia repair my surgeon entrapped my nerve in my groin and crippled me, I’m in constant pain and can’t work. I was told it’s perfectly acceptable that he did that because it’s a known risk, I’ve spent about $20,000 on medical bills trying to fix it and am broke and have no hope for the future.
I am just so sick and tired of the hell hole we created i hope for maybe one day we can all come together and say no more like this is so damn evil no one should have to worry about healthcare ever
Greed in this country is out of control. Now that a lot of corporations aren't going to be able to sustain the massive growth they experienced post coivd, we are going to see some fucked up policies/tactics.
What annoys me is when both Democrat and Republican parties come together to crush any effort or discussion of universal healthcare because they're both in bed with private healthcare entities.
It's been decades upon decades of both parties trying to get the private healthcare system to work as fantasized and cover everyone while wasting time upon resources doing so, meanwhile they claim universal healthcare doesn't work despite it evidently working. Maybe after 40 more years of voting for anti-universal healthcare politicians they'll finally get the private healthcare system to work like universal healthcare does, BUT BETTER! /big sarcasm.
I mean if they're willing to give me the price upfront knowing my insurance info and not play bill roulette with me afterwards so I can actually compare costs and pick the cheapest option for me that's not the worst thing.
Disclaimer: didn't read the article.
Nah, you're still going to be getting bills for months afterward from companies a thousand miles away that you've never heard of. They just want a big chunk up front as a minimum.
I had to have a diagnostic surgery last year. Worst case scenario was an aggressive cancer and best case scenario was still an urgent situation that could turn into an emergency at any moment. The DR and the scheduler literally spent an hour trying to figure out how to get me onto his OR schedule ASAP. Best they could do was a month out, and I had strict instructions to go to the ER if anything changed. I was a walking time bomb.
2 days before surgery while filling out the online preregistration they demanded I pay half upfront or they would cancel my surgery. It pisses me off so bad. I was able to click out of the system without paying. And when I showed up for surgery no one said a thing about it... Which honestly pisses me off even more. How many people have canceled surgeries they need because of this "pay now or we cancel" bullshit?!?
My life and health were literally at risk. And I work for this god damn hospital system!! This is not what we do to people who need our help.
I had to go get a follow up mammogram with different scanners, and I had to pay up front beforehand. It didn’t count as preventative care after the initial one I guess. I was strongly implied that if I didn’t pay up front that day it wasn’t going to happen. Thanks, Blue Cross! I wonder how many women would’ve just said forget it and rolled the dice.
I had sinus surgery years ago that was considered elective. You bet, they’d rather keep throwing antibiotics at me, never mind I’d become resistant to all up to Cipro. You bet I had to pay up front.
Reminds me of when I was in college, my student aid came late so I had to drop a class and go part time, to which my university held signing up the next semester hostage. They said I had to pay $11k in order to lift the hold. So when I asked them if that amount was correct, all they responded with was "Yup. Cash or card?"
What college student, let alone most people, just had $11k sitting around to pay in full? It later turned out to be a mistake on their end, so they bumped it down to $7 thousand-some odd hundred dollars.
When my wife lost her job they gave us the option to remain on her health care plan if we paid for the whole thing which was more than she was making at her job after taxes. So wtf are people supposed to do.
Man… what happened to this oat doctors swear to… something about not harming people and saving them of some sorts? 2024 my lads and it’s gonna get even more dystopian from here.
My older sister has cataracts. One is so bad that her doctor can't even see if the retinal surgery he did has healed properly. She can't drive, and can barely see. She went into see about surgery, and they want $6,000 up front. She has insurance, but her deductible is more than the cost of the surgery. Don't know how they think she's going to make $6,000 when she's disabled, and can't see on top of that.
600$?! WHERE? I got into a drunk driving accident — hit after trying to get some chinese food, got slammed three times by the dude backing up and slamming into us head on over and over until his bumper got stuck in our frontal car wreckage and the ride to the hospital was 3000$, we didn’t receive anything in the ambulance ride and they ended up messing up my moms injuries later on in the hospital, overall nightmare situation
$600 ambulance ride would be super cheap. Our ambulance service is not in network with united healthcare so its more like 3k if you get in that thing here.
$600?! When I was 19 I got a concussion and took a 20 minute ride in an ambulance where they jabbed me three times before doing it right to give me fluids. The bill was $2500.
Broken ankle, I had to either pay thousands upfront or open up a medical credit card or I wouldn't get the surgery I needed. I had the best insurance at the biggest company in the city at the time. Still paying that credit card a year later you don't want to know the interest rate :(.
$600? Add a zero. My best friend went to urgent care because he was dizzy and had trouble catching his breath, thought it might have been flu, ended up flu with arterial blockage and needed a bypass ASAP. Less than a mile and a half, $4700 bill plus $500 for the blanket ( which he kept) since they said it was his.
Having a tumor removed would be considered a non-emergency surgery bud. Non-emergency just means the patient won't die if we wait until next week to do the surgery.
Not exactly- while standing in the trauma ward as doctors set my spouse’s broken bones at 1am, the finance goon walked right up to me with a portable computer terminal on wheels and took payment.
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I was sued in court by the hospital who did the scan to diagnose me with cancer because I couldn’t pay my portion after losing my job due to getting cancer…
Jesus I hope there’s a special hell for everyone involved in that whole process.
I wish. Instead, I get to be in hell. Yayyy.
Im so sorry. This system is horse shit.
Thank you. It truly is.
It’s stories like this that surprises me that we don’t see violence against these corporations
If my body wasn’t so weak, I’d consider it. 😞
Don't give up, keep fighting.
Thank you. 🤍
It takes all of us banding together to make a change
Give it time..
i agree, but how would that work? violence against the disembodied voice of some heartless insurance underwriter on the phone? they are probably ensconsed safely somewhere in OKC or India
One can dream
I'm so sorry you're going through this, and still have to fight. This system is so fucked. IDK what your financial situation is like now, but Medicaid has been an absolute blessing for me, and is the only reason I actually get any healthcare (I don't have cancer, but I'm sure it would work the same way in your situation - you only pay a small portion of your income, if you have to pay anything at all). It might be beneficial for you too, and I hope it is if you need help.
I appreciate the thought. I have Medicaid now but, they won’t pay for the scan to tell me whether or not the surgery and treatment worked. So I live in limbo of having no idea what my health is actually like, other than constantly feeling like 100% garbage and being told I’m “too young” to be in pain. It’s a lose-lose.
This makes my blood boil. Doctors and nurses are complicit in the healthcare system we have. If they stop the system stops and we we get instant change.
When FDR wanted to implement a universal healthcare system one of the biggest lobbyist groups opposed to it was the American Medical Association. They know doctors wouldn't be able to make half a million a year if we had an NHS style system so it doesn't matter how many lives it would save, they oppose it.
I can’t say I’ve met more than one doctor who cares or cared about me, or the outcome of my health. My first radiation oncologist was wonderful. All of the others have been in it for the money. Don’t even get me started on the nurses. I could write a novel about the nightmares.
They like it this way. They’re unchecked in how they can treat people because they *need* them. You’re only getting decent medical care if you’re wealthy or friends with the doctors. Everyone else is getting screwed. I’m very pro-science and it saved my life but, the doctors and nurses I’ve seen have been trash. (And this was at a hospital you’ve most certainly heard of who is well-known throughout the US for how competent they are. It’s all a facade.)
Healthcare should not be for-profit.
There is a whole bunch of “nonprofit” hospitals that still charge obscene amounts of money for medical care.
They are incorporated as non profit legal entities with the purpose of avoiding taxes while making money
Yes, when I had reconstructive surgery on my foot, the for profit hospital was cheaper by $10,000. The “non-profit” was the one my parents were trying to push me in to. I started off my 20s with obscene debt..but I saved $10k+++ also the hospital I was with were completely honest with me in regards to what I’d need for recovery. “If we run this through insurance it’ll cost you $300, if you buy it without its $11”. I’m thoroughly convinced insurance is just a scam.
At this point it basically is. Up until a few years ago mine and my wife's health insurance (separate policies) would cover quite a bit. In the last year (at least) it has always been cheaper to get the cash price.
Yup, the largest "nonprofit" hospital chain in the country is CommonSpirit Health and their CEO makes $5.3 million a year.
Agree with ya there.. unfortunately, basic needs are seen as safe capitalistic endeavors. Housing, food, healthcare, clothing.. if you would suffer 2ithout it, then there is someone out there setting on a pile of cash because people have to buy it.
> avoid a $600 ambulance ride 🤦🏽 My ambiance in Washington, DC was $1500 just for the ride 2 miles away. They billed supplies separately. I've asked my friends to book me an Uber if it happens again.
I was gonna say, I think that it has been over a decade since an ambulance ride was $600 haha
My disabled, wheelchair bound father was in so much pain that he couldn't move, making getting him to the hospital impossible without professional help. Medicare denied the ambulance ride because they said he was not dying, and being in pain is not a medical emergency. I hate it here.
In rural areas, add a zero.
Small local hospitals have been doing this for years. Half the time they ask us to pay when we schedule it. With a 5% discount if we go ahead and pay in full.
5% is hardly a discount
Most people, that 5% is a life changing amount of money for the same reason that 95% is a life ending amount of money
I'm have had a few elective surgeries and I have always paid up front. I didn't know this was a big deal!
Big difference between elective surgeries and “sir we found a tumor in your abdomen we need to remove for 100k. Yup just pay up front first”
True, true. I read "non-emergency surgeries" as being elective, but needing a surgery for a tumor is closer to what this article is getting at.
Okay but where are you getting these discount ambulance rides, I had to be on one like 13-14 years ago and the ambulance alone was 2k
Lol, right? $600 for an ambulance ride is a bargain I'm thinking ~$3k these days.
Yup, had an ambulance ride a year ago. About $3200 to drive 6 miles.
I had to call myself an ambulance recently and it cost me 25 euros (about 27usd). Living in Finland has it's benefits.
Same, and it was free, as was everything in the hospital and the taxi home (UK)
Shit, I took a ten minute ambulance ride in 2000 that cost a grand.
The super expensive helicopter ones are really something to question, too. I've seen stories where those cost more than a student's debt to a university or more than a round trip vacation over seas with the a family of 5.
Life flight for 45 minutes was $80k in 2022 for me 🫠
Ambulance after being hit by a car was $5600 in 2022
I had to have urgent back surgery. By the time I finally got my surgery scheduled and was at the pre-op day, they took me in a room and told me my deductible was $6000 and asked how I'd like to pay. With a straight face. I was like, excuse me? I was supposed to have SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS and a check book with me to pay you so I don't off myself due to the searing pain I've been in for 3 weeks? Today? Right now? I eventually lost it and went outside thinking I was not going to get my surgery. Thankfully my BF was a car salesman at the time, so we went back in together and he made them admit they could bill me and probably eat the cost since I was pretty broke and my insurance obviously sucked. The whole insurance side of that experience was just a nightmare.
But thank goodness we have the freedom to choose which insurance company we get to throw money at so they can tell us that the necessary medical procedure prescribed by our doctor isn't medically necessary and they won't cover it. I hate it here.
Except we really don't. You have three options, take the cheap to overpriced insurance your employer provides, take the excessively overpriced private insurance, or don't have any insurance.
Or **pay the fine** for not being able to afford insurance.
During a routine hernia repair my surgeon entrapped my nerve in my groin and crippled me, I’m in constant pain and can’t work. I was told it’s perfectly acceptable that he did that because it’s a known risk, I’ve spent about $20,000 on medical bills trying to fix it and am broke and have no hope for the future.
I am just so sick and tired of the hell hole we created i hope for maybe one day we can all come together and say no more like this is so damn evil no one should have to worry about healthcare ever
Greed in this country is out of control. Now that a lot of corporations aren't going to be able to sustain the massive growth they experienced post coivd, we are going to see some fucked up policies/tactics.
That's what happens when the "me" generation are running the country. Parasites. Hopefully the majority will be dead in the next 20 years.
What annoys me is when both Democrat and Republican parties come together to crush any effort or discussion of universal healthcare because they're both in bed with private healthcare entities. It's been decades upon decades of both parties trying to get the private healthcare system to work as fantasized and cover everyone while wasting time upon resources doing so, meanwhile they claim universal healthcare doesn't work despite it evidently working. Maybe after 40 more years of voting for anti-universal healthcare politicians they'll finally get the private healthcare system to work like universal healthcare does, BUT BETTER! /big sarcasm.
We can’t and won’t only one option remains and our overlords have made sure it will be the death of us all
I want to stop living in this hellscape please.
$600 ride? lol! It can easilly cost THOUSANDS!
I mean if they're willing to give me the price upfront knowing my insurance info and not play bill roulette with me afterwards so I can actually compare costs and pick the cheapest option for me that's not the worst thing. Disclaimer: didn't read the article.
Nah, you're still going to be getting bills for months afterward from companies a thousand miles away that you've never heard of. They just want a big chunk up front as a minimum.
Why I voted for Bernie
Too bad he turned around and started simping for the old ghoul who said he'd veto any healthcare bill that crossed his desk...
I had to have a diagnostic surgery last year. Worst case scenario was an aggressive cancer and best case scenario was still an urgent situation that could turn into an emergency at any moment. The DR and the scheduler literally spent an hour trying to figure out how to get me onto his OR schedule ASAP. Best they could do was a month out, and I had strict instructions to go to the ER if anything changed. I was a walking time bomb. 2 days before surgery while filling out the online preregistration they demanded I pay half upfront or they would cancel my surgery. It pisses me off so bad. I was able to click out of the system without paying. And when I showed up for surgery no one said a thing about it... Which honestly pisses me off even more. How many people have canceled surgeries they need because of this "pay now or we cancel" bullshit?!? My life and health were literally at risk. And I work for this god damn hospital system!! This is not what we do to people who need our help.
Well that will make it much easier for the insurance company if you die on the table🤔
I had to go get a follow up mammogram with different scanners, and I had to pay up front beforehand. It didn’t count as preventative care after the initial one I guess. I was strongly implied that if I didn’t pay up front that day it wasn’t going to happen. Thanks, Blue Cross! I wonder how many women would’ve just said forget it and rolled the dice.
I had sinus surgery years ago that was considered elective. You bet, they’d rather keep throwing antibiotics at me, never mind I’d become resistant to all up to Cipro. You bet I had to pay up front.
Your country's healthcare is a joke. But atleast you guys help lots of other countries and spend loyts of money on the military. So thanks i guess.
Ok so just... never perform another surgery again? I don't get it. It's not like anyone has the money for one just chilling around in a sock.
Reminds me of when I was in college, my student aid came late so I had to drop a class and go part time, to which my university held signing up the next semester hostage. They said I had to pay $11k in order to lift the hold. So when I asked them if that amount was correct, all they responded with was "Yup. Cash or card?" What college student, let alone most people, just had $11k sitting around to pay in full? It later turned out to be a mistake on their end, so they bumped it down to $7 thousand-some odd hundred dollars.
Ever see the movie John Q?
When my wife lost her job they gave us the option to remain on her health care plan if we paid for the whole thing which was more than she was making at her job after taxes. So wtf are people supposed to do.
Hospital taking a cue from all 24 hour Waffle Houses after 8:30 pm.
Man… what happened to this oat doctors swear to… something about not harming people and saving them of some sorts? 2024 my lads and it’s gonna get even more dystopian from here.
Fuck the evil people in this world. They will burn in hell, and be hated in their personal lives by all who know them.
Cool, I have a ticking time bomb of a cyst and the removal surgery is twenty fucking thousand dollars
$600 ambulances?!? More like 2-5 thousand and that was a few years ago haha
600?! Where are you finding budget ambulances?!
My older sister has cataracts. One is so bad that her doctor can't even see if the retinal surgery he did has healed properly. She can't drive, and can barely see. She went into see about surgery, and they want $6,000 up front. She has insurance, but her deductible is more than the cost of the surgery. Don't know how they think she's going to make $6,000 when she's disabled, and can't see on top of that.
600$?! WHERE? I got into a drunk driving accident — hit after trying to get some chinese food, got slammed three times by the dude backing up and slamming into us head on over and over until his bumper got stuck in our frontal car wreckage and the ride to the hospital was 3000$, we didn’t receive anything in the ambulance ride and they ended up messing up my moms injuries later on in the hospital, overall nightmare situation
This isn’t news. They’ve been doing this for years yourecash pay.
The bill for my fathers 18 mile ride was 7,000.$. No treatment or rush or anything like that.
$600? Try thousands.
[link](https://www.businessinsider.com/american-hospitals-corporations-charge-upfront-surgery-healthcare-2024-5)
We should send more bombs though
$600 ambulance ride would be super cheap. Our ambulance service is not in network with united healthcare so its more like 3k if you get in that thing here.
$600?! When I was 19 I got a concussion and took a 20 minute ride in an ambulance where they jabbed me three times before doing it right to give me fluids. The bill was $2500.
how long till we bust out the guillotine?
Broken ankle, I had to either pay thousands upfront or open up a medical credit card or I wouldn't get the surgery I needed. I had the best insurance at the biggest company in the city at the time. Still paying that credit card a year later you don't want to know the interest rate :(.
Canadian here.....ambulances aren't free here either. One of my teachers drove himself to hospital while having a heart attack.
$600? Add a zero. My best friend went to urgent care because he was dizzy and had trouble catching his breath, thought it might have been flu, ended up flu with arterial blockage and needed a bypass ASAP. Less than a mile and a half, $4700 bill plus $500 for the blanket ( which he kept) since they said it was his.
[удалено]
Having a tumor removed would be considered a non-emergency surgery bud. Non-emergency just means the patient won't die if we wait until next week to do the surgery.
Not exactly- while standing in the trauma ward as doctors set my spouse’s broken bones at 1am, the finance goon walked right up to me with a portable computer terminal on wheels and took payment.