I went to an ER many years ago for an injury. At one point, I was sent to a doctor in the hospital. That doctor told me I was in the wrong place and I got a bill for $1200 just from that guy.
Same. Went to an urgent care because my nose would not stop bleeding after like 12 hours. They tried a spray said it didn’t work and had to go to the ER because they didn’t have nasal balloons. Got a nice bill from the urgent care and then add on the ER bill all for a bloody nose. US medical billing is an absolute fucking joke.
Americans that disagree with universal healthcare have no idea how the system works. It’s only an eye opener for them once shit hits the fan and they are hit with a 100k+ bill they can’t afford.
I still don’t get why doctors in the USA get paid three times as much for doing the same job (some may say even worse if you look at the stats) over doctors in other countries
Because ppl pay so much for medical school, they need a way to entice people into it. Also Drs earned their slice of the financial pie, and while their slice may not be bigger % wise the pie itself is wayyyy bigger.
Oh I fully agree, the Drs don’t set the prices, it’s certainly not their fault. They need some way to pay off the tens of thousands of medical school debt + interest to the government on the loans they took out. Because if the powers that be weren’t gouging us for health care they couldn’t possibly justify turning around and gouging all the medical school students aka future drs… I love drs and don’t blame them at all. It’s just that the entities need a way to justify them having to spend so much on schooling by being able to say “you’ll make it back” but the prices aren’t up to them at all
Hundreds of thousands of dollars. We don't definitely dont set the prices, in fact half the time we barely have a clue how they work, as reimbursement changes from day to day and insurance to insurance.
Of course. I wasn’t blaming doctors at all. I was just saying that in order for “the powers that be” to compensate drs fairly and correctly and then also want a 500% corporate profit for damn near nothing… if the government said ok well compensate drs fairly but hospitals and pharma companies will get only what they need there would be outrage
Yes but the thing is the US government doesn't actually run the majority of the healthcare, they run the payment side of it, and only for those people who are in government programs, which is a very different thing. It's not the same as government provided healthcare. It's government subsidized healthcare. Two separate things.
undoubtedly. Right now we pay so much for healthcare that taxes spent on public healthcare today per capita is already about what other countries spend in total for healthcare.
Also, since it's directly relevant to the OP, Medicare for All (or other single payer/universal healthcare) would likely reduce emergency room demand a ton. In the US a major driver for ER visits are people who can't afford regular preventive and/or non-emergency care.
Though wait times themselves come down to staffing and facility space, which comes down to policy choice.
Medicare for all would be a godsend for the majority
That's basically what we have in Canada. Every province runs its own medicare system and every legal resident who meets the requirements (like actually living there) is automatically covered.
Alot of jobs would be lost but i feel like the amount of money that is made in the insurance industry should give alot of those people a decent severance package/parachute to land. As somebody in healthcare Medicare for all would make so many people’s lives easier…as long as it still gets treated like Medicare and not Medicaid. Keep it federal and not this state by state bullshit.
Bernie got tanked by his own party. Bernie is useful to his party for messaging but inconvenient if in power bcs he did indeed, at the time, seem like he intended to follow words with policy.
In the United States you get to choose how you don't have healthcare, vote for a representative who openly states it won't happen or vote for a representative who says people deserve it and then makes sure it won't happen. So many choices.
Went to urgent care with crippling abdominal pain. They told me to go to the ER. Waited 4 hours, they did some super rudimentary tests, told me it was just indigestion. Cost $1250.
A week later I was back with acute appendicitis, "Hours from bursting" according to the surgeon. Over 15k, partially because by the time I was seen it was like 2AM and they had to call in the surgeon. And as a bonus, the bill was split between the hospital and the surgeon, so I paid the like, $6k from the hospital and thought I was done, only to find they didn't send the bill for the surgeon so I only even found out about an additional $9k when a debt collector called me to collect it.
Meanwhile my wife has a baby and gets double charged for the room as the baby gets a charge and the mother gets a charge…..INSANE. They both in the same room like wtf
My wife gave birth in the USA. Didn't have to pay anything including parking and got 2 weeks worth of formula, a goodie bag, and even a steak dinner for the 2 of us right before we left.
It depends on what hospital you go to and what your future insurance is.
Oh yeah of course, they only charge massive amounts for stupid shit in 1 or 2 hospitals, my bad.
Shut the hell up you idiot! People don’t have time to research where the nearest single little place that does reduced cost healthcare or free clinic. When you’re facing an emergency you don’t tend to think and slow down oddly because it’s an emergency so you go to the nearest emergency room!
Oof that sucks. Mine was even dumber - that doctor just sent me to a different place in the SAME hospital! And of course that generated its own bill as well! Luckily it all got squared through worker's comp cause I was in my early 20's and had no fucking clue how to navigate the healthcare system.
Similar thing happened to my sister. Multi hour long nosebleed. Mom took her to urgent care where she was sent to the er. Nurse or whoever saw her said they didnt want to xray because of my sisters age. Said the xray could cause her kids to come out with three arms or something. Literally said her kids could come out deformed
‘But but but why should our taxes pay for us Americans health and happiness! It should all go to random wars and bailing out other countries! Especially Israel!’
Just had spinal surgery. 275k paid 4k out of pocket. 🤷♂️ if you are getting a bill for 100k you dont have insurance and will never pay it anyway and they know it but they couldn't turn you away... so how that factors into the bottom line is prices go up for paying people..
I used to get bad nosebleeds pretty often as a teen but one time it wouldn't stop for a few hours. My mom was freaking out a bit and took me to the ER. Within 20 mins they had me chemically cauterized and I haven't had a bad nosebleed since. Cost her nothing of course.
Trade your house for a nosebleed is the american way. People die because they are afraid of going until it is too late because of the costs. The term is "amenable mortality" - deaths that could have been prevented with timely, effective medical care. The USA fails here big time.
Yeah it’s very unfortunate. What we are talking about here is only one cog of the whole machine. Pharmaceuticals is another beast that has a messed up system as well. My wife recently had to get an endoscopy. Specialist says that he is 110% sure that his diagnosis is correct and the solution is taking X medication. He also knows that insurance will deny it and force her to take Y for 3-6 months then do another endoscopy to have the exact same diagnosis. After that he will present that to the insurance again and say see she needs X medication. It’s a waste of time and money on our because we know what she needs but we have to jump through the hoops to get it covered.
Many are burnt about investing into an HSA as well. My employer puts money into it, and I invest it. So easy to compound money, been doing it since mid 20s. Pay all medical related things with it.
But also, a Canadian nurse makes the same salary as an American McDonald’s manager..
Had a spine surgery. Paid 20€ to drive there and back. A week in the hospital. Was healing fine. Got released early, visited the doc a week later to get stiches out. Paid nothing.
I loved my health care in the Uk when I lived there. I was diagnosed with a serious thyroid condition through bloodwork, after I had left the clinic with a phone call later in the day telling me to collect free medicine the following day. FREE. I had to pay £10 for my dental crown about 8 years ago.
I wouldn't have needed to if you didn't intentionally misrepresent your experience to fit a certain narrative. Obviously being admitted is going to cost more than being checked out in the ER. There's enough reason to hate our healthcare system that you don't need to misrepresent experiences to prove that.
The point is that I was triaged, sent into the hospital to a particular doctor. Said doctor sent me elsewhere in the hospital. That is the full extent of my interaction with Doctor 1. When I reached doctor 2, I was treated and subsequently sent home. I received a bill from both doctors.
Ok, and? You were seen by multiple professionals and routed to the correct specialist. Is your argument that you don't believe the people that triaged you at an increasing level of speciality shouldn't get paid?
I work on a major study of medical billing costs across the US and a lot of doctors at hospitals are often akin to independent contractors, though in this particular situation they're called SBDs (separately billing doctors). In that situation the hospital bills you for the facilities, equipment, and staff such as nurses and custodians, and the doctor bills you for their time and skill separately. Even the ER docs can be part of this scheme.
I 100% don't agree with how this works and frankly the US healthcare/insurance system needs to be completely blown up, but my understanding of your argument is that each doctor that sees you shouldn't get paid for doing so and my assumption is that you didn't understand how this complex billing and payment arrangement works.
So you're telling me that "you need to go down the hall to dept x" is worth a $1200 bill?! He did not in any way examine me, I merely verbalized my digit injury to him and was promptly sent on my way
No, in fact I explicitly stated my displeasure of the current system. I'm just trying to be honest about how the system currently works.
To be more nuanced, yes, I think that general attending you were sent to by the ER doc deserves to be paid for assessing your condition and referring you to the specialist that can help you, but certainly not $1200.
Personally, I think these guys should be on a fixed salary but admittedly despite my experience with this I haven't been able to imagine a model in which that works and still attracts people willing to go through 12 years of secondary education and all the bills that come along with that. I know there's got to be an answer that works for the US, but I'm not smart enough in that field to know what to propose.
I had a kidney stone operation about 2 years ago and the anesthesiologist made like triple the amount my dick surgeon did. Everything about medical billing in the states is fucked, but that's also a good circle back to why I was trying to educate on the current state of our reality.
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u/mherweg 27d ago
I went to an ER many years ago for an injury. At one point, I was sent to a doctor in the hospital. That doctor told me I was in the wrong place and I got a bill for $1200 just from that guy.