You Should Know

And some 3rd world countries. Let that sink in.

Here it is normal. Most of us do recognize that it shouldn't be though.

We're a heavily propagandized nation.

A lot of people know our healthcare is fucked, but many have accepted it because they think the alternative is worse. Because they've been told so by healthcare lobbyists.

I don't know if it's changed, but hospitals use to hang up on you if you ask for a quote on an operation. They don't want you shopping around.

we don't. we know it's insanity.

i personally have been trying to change it for 25 years. i'm tired.

Because the word tax is a Boogeyman. Paying 2x as much for half the value is a good thing because the cheaper version is called a tax ...

Before I moved all I had to pay for was the parking if I parked at a hospital. Now I don't even have to do that.

Here in Canada, I recently took a big stumble while snowboarding, and my ankle hurt a lot. I went to the emergency room at the nearest hospital, got X-rays, and they confirmed I had broken my left inner malleolus. They referred me to the specialist clinic, and sent me home with a boot and crutches.

Next Monday, the specialist clinic tell me to show up the next morning (so on Tuesday). I waited pretty much the whole morning for the specialist to see me, he confirmed he needed to operate and put 2 screws in my ankle. The surgery happened later that evening.

Got a follow up 2 weeks later to remove the cast / surgery bandages, more X-rays and they put me back in the boot until the next follow-up a month later, after which I'll probably start physiotherapy.

All of this cost me about 4$ in EV charging while I was at the ER, and maybe 20$ in medication (painkillers and Tylenol)? And I don't think it could've been any faster. People love to shit on our healthcare system here, but in my experience it's been amazing.

Australia is some weird kind of limbo in between.
An electrophysiology study, cardiac ablation and a couple of carioversions cost $0 as a public patient but I could have gone private (I pay for private insurance) and it would have cost something.

That shit would bankrupt you here in the US.

Was it testing for something specific or was it just the standard panel you get with a physical? I only ask as that would be absurd unless it was specialized (like screening for a specific type of cancer), even for the US.

If it was just a regular blood panel, that is shady as hell and needs to be questioned.

To give reference, I just had my yearly and the three that they did would've been ~$200 without insurance; in the SF bay area, at that.

And here we complain that a GP appointment with full blood panel and whatever is needed is closing €30.

You guys need to start voting towards civilisation instead of against it.

Funny for me too. I've never received a bill from a hospital visit.

I have, or well from other doctors at least. Our universal healthcare doesn't pay things they don't consider important. Paying everything would undermine their bargaining power.

But those bills are always itemized.

I had a spontaenous pneumothorax in my late 20s, only reason I had insurance was because it was the year of the Obamacare mandate. I was unemployed so the state I was in gave me free insurance. I had about $330k worth of surgeries and paid ... $19 for an optional medication.

Would have definitely bankrupted me.

And my mother, who is buried under her own medical bills, told me "you should have been bankrupted."

She apologized later but that's the mentality. We don't speak anymore.

It's still true in that the bill can go back and forth between the hospital and insurance and change.

I had a surgery about 5 years ago that started at about $45k, and every couple of days got the bill would change as things started getting picked up by insurance. Eventually it got down to just over $4k. I waited about a month and then still had to call insurance because my annual out of pocket was capped at $2k and they didn't take that into account. Eventually it ended right around $1500.

This was all through the MyChart app, so it more it less does live updating after the initial bill is sent, opposed to a paper bill. Now I always wait about a month to pay any medical bills just to be sure, because if you over pay, you have to fight to get it back from insurance.

the number that the computer spits out is literally a spreadsheet sum of all the line items.

Yes a spreadsheet sum of potentially incorrect items, which the only way you’d know about is if you see the items, not the summary. Hence OPs post.

The games that hospitals and medical providers play with bills is unreal.

As a medical provider at a hospital I can attest that we really have little to no control over any of your medical billing. Not saying that mistakes don't happen, we are dealing with tens of thousands of people and billing departments usually have a lot of employee turnaround.

That being said, the vast majority of things like duplicate bills, incorrect bills, and redundant documentation is a byproduct of dealing with private insurance companies.

Even if we've already done a prior authorization the insurance company can suddenly decide that we didn't provide the exact right information, or that we didn't have the right type of referral, or even used the wrong color of ink pen..... They can deny a claim, which usually will prompt the billing department to automatically send you guys a bill. At which point you guys call us understandably upset, which prompts us to start the whole authorization process over again.

Dealing with Medicare and especially Medicaid is so easy compared to private insurance, as they have a very clear motive to erect as many reasons to deny or delay coverage as possible. The entire reason the American healthcare system is so archaic and management heavy is because we have to deal with private insurance.

I can guarantee the medical providers hate the situation more than anyone. The day after the United ceo got assassinated was one of the more jolly days I've seen at the hospital for years. It was almost unreal to hear my older and very uptight professional colleagues crack jokes about a man being murdered in provider meetings.

nonprofit hospitals

Jesus Christ...

Breaking Bad started out about that. Was the whole reason he broke bad in the first place!

American here.

I pay dearly for my health care and I still had to wait 6 months for an appointment with a specialist only to find out immediately after sitting down with him that I had been sent to the wrong place AND charged extra for it.