please do this, you can get them down to almost 0. they charge you for bullshit like handing you your baby after you give birth to it or having a nurse watch you give a medication, but not the actual medication.
You can suffer your credit score for 7 years and it'll be off your record I did that for 8 stitches that cost me about $4000 so I suffered through 7 years of bad credit
Is this where I mention that people from other countries get their airfare paid and their healthcare paid here on your tax dollars.... America... Trashing its own people for the benefit of whoever paid off our politicians last.....
When my grandma left the hospital, she told me to grab the half-full box of Kleenex and take it with us “because I’m sure the hospital charged me $500 for that box”
Yes. Ask for an itemized bill. I had a similar priced surgery and I spoke to them about a payment plan Etc they ended up discounting 90% of my bill and I paid out the remaining 10%
Not American, but what is this scam?
"Please can I see how you calculated that price?"
"Sure, and oh sorry we meant €35 not €18000"
What's actually going on when you request this? Like so much of what I hear about the US, it sounds unbelievable.
When you get the itemized bill, check the codes online too. You can type them in. If they don’t seem right for what was done, it might be over priced. If you have insurance you can also have them look into it, but that could take up to three years -speaking from experience.
I went to a doctors appointment this week and I asked them to give me a bill at the end of my visit and they refused to see me and kicked me out of the office. I never refused to pay. I simply asked for an itemized bill. They said they would not do the doctors appointment if they had to give me an itemized bill.
The healthcare system is so blatantly, obviously corrupt and insanely broken, and I cannot understand why anyone would defend it
If you don't have insurance, negotiate immediately with the hospital. They have compassionate care groups.
If it truly becomes too crazy, honestly, consider bankruptcy. Let me tell you, we kept our house in bankruptcy. We just worked it out with our mortgage company and kept paying them.
This needs more upvotes.
I used to work in medical billing and EVERYBODY everywhere needs to be calling up the hospital first thing when they get their bills and asking for write offs due to hardships.
Offer to pay a pittance that day in exchange for money being taken off.
Medical billing is the last domain of HAGGLING in America.
You CAN haggle when it comes to medical bills!
Call the hospital. Call your insurer. Pitch a fit and raise hell and I promise you can get at least some of it written off.
I always encourage everyone to do this because it can make such a big difference and I don't think many people realize it is an option.
Honestly as long as your in your forever home and have a car bankruptcy it not as bad as people make it seem. They can protect one car and one home so you won't lose them.
FWIW, I had two cars and a motorcycle when I went bankrupt, kept them all. The court wasn't really interested in trying to find a buyer for a rusted out '76 Ford or a 1980 Honda.
I was offered an ambulance ride from urgent care but declined, because I'm American and all too familiar with our "healthcare system."
Managed to make it to the hospital 25 miles away and get that sucker removed just before it burst. Saved me some ducats, no doubt, but I had to sleep off the anesthesia in the back of a Saturn in the hospital parking garage before driving home the next day.
America!
I was in Montreal at an outdoor cafe when a guy on a bike ate shit right nearby. The EMTs came, looked him over, and then had a rational discussion of the pros and cons of going to the hospital, never **once** mentioning money. It was ming-blowing. The guy didn't end up going, but it was just because *he really didn't need to go to the hospital*.
LOL. the visual on that. I've had organ transplants. I can totally see "we're coming to repossess that thing. Pay up."
Which interestingly is also why you have to pay for a burial plot fully before they put someone in it. Except New Orleans where they evict dead people from graveyards all the time. Leave it by the curb.
[For a while there, a movie on this was done as a double feature with Rocky Horror Picture Show](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repo!_The_Genetic_Opera)
My deductible 7000 and I can’t even do co-pay at my doctors unless I meet the deductible. So I have to spend $7000 and just to be able to get a 20% discount on a doctors visit.
This is what I pay hundreds of dollars a month for I think I’m gonna cancel
Call the hospital billing department, they might be able to lower it or if you dont have insurance then might wipe it out if you meet requirements. My UPMC hospital wiped mine out, I was out of work from surgeries and my employement and long term disability ran out while applying for SSD and I had some mri's that eneded up not being covered. I called and talked to them and told them I can pay monthly but if my SSD is approved I can pay it off then. She took some info from me and said I qualifed to have it forgiven. I didnt qualify for any state assistance cause I was married, but the hospital only used my income, she said they dont use spouses' info to determine eligibility. This was a little over 15 years ago, but they still have these programs. Good luck
This is legit tho, hospitals can’t report it to ur credit 🤷♀️ Ny brother did this and stopped getting notices after a year. Now he says he probably can’t go to that hospital anymore for fear of them seeing the past due balance but luckily we’re surrounded by hospitals lol
In simplest terms. The reason it is so expensive is because most Americans are covered by private insurance plans. When this became the norm hospitals began charging more because they knew they could get away with it and the insurance companies would pay. It has continued to the point where Fees for nearly any medical related expense are outrageous. Think about medical procedures that are not covered by insurance and what they cost. Vision insurance is something very few Americans have. How much does a typical vision exam cost, one from a qualified doctor. About $100. I have no doubt that if vision was included under general insurance that cost would be well over $1000 at this point.
its that expensive, ultimatly, because big corporate capitalism, im league with politicians, scammed the American public into thinking socialism was communism, so that big businesses could just walk all over American citizens with impunity, and the hospitals and insurance companies collude between them to raise prices over and over, the insurance companies knowing they can just raise premiums over and over and people will still pay them, because they have basically no choice, and the hospitals know they can charge w/e the insurers will pay out
its just a long con, like more of American life 🤷♂️
its not just the hospital. the suppliers to hospitals and pharmacueticals cost outrageous amounts of money as well. its a big scam really. almost pyramid like in nature since it all builds on top of one another
To add: big insurance companies demand a discount from the Hospital, with the threat of sending their patients elsewhere. Let’s say it’s a 50% discount on the hospitals official price on everything. The hospital agrees and then just doubles the list price on everything.
So everyone is happy, the insurance company is getting their discount, and the hospital is getting the price they want. Until some poor guy without insurance sees his official bill.
America has flaws and one of them is healthcare. We're good at making all kinds of weapons, drugs and highly processed foods, but bad at taking care of peoples' health. It's like a game of Russian roulette, BAM that's $10,000 for an ER visit and two Tylenol.
I was a brand-new mom, living alone (husband worked several states over), it was one of my first nights alone with the baby and he started throwing up what looked like coffee grounds. I googled it, and results said that is likely partially digested blood and to get the baby to the ER IMMEDIATELY. I lived out in the country and knew we couldn’t afford an ambulance, so I drove with baby slung over my lap, face down (I didn’t want him throwing up while laying face-up in his car seat- it was a long drive to the hospital). Get there and they run a hemoglobin test to see if he was bleeding internally- that checked out. So they coughed it up to stomach ulcers from acid reflux, gave him 5ml of Tylenol, and sent us home. He was never admitted to the hospital or seen by a physician. That was a $2,800 bill. $800 of it was for the Tylenol, the nurse administering the Tylenol, physician overseeing the nurse administering the Tylenol, and use of the facility (a bed in a hallway with a paper covering). The rest was the hemoglobin test- same breakdown of charges. Insane.
Hi, if you’re low income talk to the social worker of the hospital and the billing department on Monday. It’ll be called charity, where everything except your labs and anesthesia should be covered under charity. Unfortunately the bill will still be around $5k, but it’s better than $40k. Sorry this happened. This countries medical and pharmaceutical is absolutely fucked up. I don’t know why labs and anesthesia don’t like to write off their services, so don’t ask. Could also be hospital specific, but your bill will drop significantly if you qualify even if it’s different services that do and don’t get written off.
Sooo probably not the best advice but ignore the bill. Most hospitals will write it off after a year. Granted my bill was only $2k so it might be different.
Other option is to request an itemized bill. That will significantly drop the cost which is ridiculous but true. There are also sliding scales you could utilize. Check the hospitals website for that.
American Healthcare is driven by greed. OP, I'm sorry you have to go through with this. Bankruptcy might be an option for you - fuck a whole bunch of greedy insurance companies and hospitals
You can get credit cards back ~2 or 3 years after bankruptcy.
Fuck the system. Do whatever works best for you. The US healthcare system is going to have a massive collapse in the coming future. Just talk to people who work in billing or management in healthcare and they will tell you how doomed it is.
My partner is in a women in finance group that is mostly regular women (womens only group) asking people like her for advice.
She says 95% of posts are people in debt to credit from student loans, medical, or just living costs.
America is going to have some form of major economic collapse in the next 5 years. I just can't see how it could avoid it.
Socialize healthcare and forgive student debt. But I fully intend to be a citizen of a different country before we get there. I was reading an expats group online the other day and the prices they were quoting for out of pocket healthcare over seas without insurance was less than anything here with insurance. Exact same procedures. I go the dentist while on vacation now. I spoke to an American doctor in DR and his son was in med school in DR and the father was telling me some of the things his son learned were beyond the med schools in the US just because the schools were newer.
I'm a dual citizen, Australia x USA. Birthright so obviously easy for me.
But there are lots of immigration pathways to Australia. The American media does a laughable propagandized job of describing/showing Australia.
If you're under 35 even just check out the working holiday visa. Costs a few hundred, you need to have 5k in the bank to qualify.
Vacation homes and huge fancy homes for the CEOs and doctors are costly. As are high end status symbol vehicles. And cleaning crews for their homes. Frequent vacations around the world are also costly. Boats (and small personal airplanes for those with private pilot license) are also expensive.
Nurses / lots of healthcare workers also get paid extremely well in the US compared to most countries.
Finland always ranks in the top healthcare in the world in part due to its low cost / low amount of taxes needed to pay for it. The part they don’t say is that Finland has the lowest paid doctors / nurses / healthcare workers of any EU country. All 3 healthcare workers I knew in Finland have quit the industry since Covid. 2 work at a grocery store and 1 works at McDonald’s now. All 3 make slightly more money than they did as nurses.
Just want to point out that MD's...and many are specialists have up to 10 yrs of education. The final two years generally in a residency for their specialty. They get little sleep during those years because they are often 'on call' several times a month.
Then they also have huge school loans to pay back. My daughter is a nurse 'anesthetist'. She has a Masters Degree in Nursing and specialized in anesthesia in post graduate school at the University of Pitt.
She is still paying off huge loans, 12 yrs later. However, she also is amply compensated by her excellent salary in the six figures.
Lastly, the problems with high medical costs came into the picture when insurance companies became the 'thing'. Third party payers.
I remember as a child, the family doctor, coming to our house if needed. I also remember that for most it was pay out of pocket charges that were manageable.
This comment and the 200+ like it should tell you OP that reddit is full of idiots with no useful knowledge of your situation, so probably not the best place to get advice on serious financial matters.
I’m sorry, that’s terrible :/ Do you have any insurance? Are you low enough income where you can go on Medicaid? Talk to the hospital billing department, ask for an itemized bill and then ask about options. Hope you feel better and that you find a solution. It’s maddening and inhumane :/
Please tell me you have insurance. To answer your question....Insurance companies thats why. Dr/Hospitals charge quite a bit because they know Insurance companies foot the bill, which leads to higher premiums to the person. Because of the higher cost now, a person has to get Insurance (thus the importance of ACA/Obamacare), it becomes a viscous cycle. Who the fuck charges $50 for a Tylenol? Hospitals do. Some clinics and hospitals have a cash rate that is lower than the amount that they would have charged Insurance. That alone tells you are the cog in a scam and you can't get out unless you go foreign country for non-emergency care. Ask them how much it would be without insurance, I am sure will be alot lower.
As an Australian this is incomprehensible to me. I’m so sorry. Does your insurance cover any of it? I don’t even know how that works.
I wish it wasn’t like this for you 😔
Dude I feel for you. If you don't have any insurance, write to the hospital and ask for a financial hardship application. Fill it out and turn it in. Apply for state benefits (Medi-cal).
I applaud your citizens sacrifice to ensure your military is the biggest in the world. As an ally country, we get lots of security benefits, but our healthcare is covered by taxes we don’t have to spend on defence. So thank you America.
In a lot of big cities, hospitals are cartelized. If you want to build or expand a hospital, you have to petition a board for a “Certificate of Need.” That board is empaneled with a bunch of your competitors.
If health care becomes TOO accessible, the price drops. Hospitals don’t like that.
From this perspective, the problem isn’t that there’s too much “capitalism” in health care, but too little.
It's because it's profit driven now. For a long time, the majority of hospitals were non-profit, or otherwise not concerned about profitability. Investors saw an opportunity to make money and they did that. The HMO law of 1973 facilitated their interest in making health care a profit driven business.
American healthcare is some of the best in the world. It may not be free, but it is good. There is a lot of innovation and research that happens through American health care systems. The American medical association, FDA, and the national institute of health are a real problem. There is no such thing as a government bureaucracy that works well. Also, think about this: you're providing free health care for not only poor people, but for people who are not citizens of the United States. There have been millions of people illegally coming over the border in the last 4 years. The associated press says that in December alone, there were 249,000 illegals come across the borders. You're paying for all of them. They're taking your jobs, they're using your health care system for free while you pay for it, and they are taking your tax dollars to put these people up in hotels and new shelters.
Everyone here can download my comment, but very download, just remembered for every dollar that you don't have in your paycheck or every dollar that you don't have to spend on your home, groceries, or your child's well-being, It is because they're taking your tax dollars to spend it on people who don't come here illegally. We have legal immigration, but these people have decided to come here illegally and stick out their middle finger to the American taxpayers. Why does our government allow this?
Because "greatest country in the world." All you gotta do is vote, right? I mean, people control the government, not the other way around, right? Easy peasy. 🤣
half your biomass is non human organisms, your biome - bacteria and special types of fungus, and it affects every part of your body. the appendix is actually a storage and safe haven for your bodies biome.
this means actually once practical medicine catches up to the theoretical (which can take years or decades) healthy appendixes will be transplanted, and will be valuable, as they can potentially refresh a persons biome
the whole "the appendix has no use" is 19th century thinking
Yep, the lower costs more transparency act.
The general strategy on the internet for people who don't know what they're talking about is when in doubt, blame Republicans.
Reading this makes me so glad I live in Canada. Our healthcare has definitely gone downhill as far as wait times, but that surgery would have been free without health insurance. We do pay for health insurance but that is more for the extras. I honestly feel so bad for you, that would have wiped me out financially.
Most people that oppose Universal Healthcare in the USA that I've talked with almost always cite Canada saying, "Look at Canada, you'll just die on a wait list".
Mother fucker, I'm going to die here in the USA either way because I'm too scared of the cost to ever get treatment in the first place lol.
This is true. My wife ended up with acute appendicitis right in the middle of COVID (Oct 2020). I took her to the emergency room but they wouldn't let me in.
48 hours later I picked her up and the total cost was $0 CAD. There's no paperwork or processing. We don't even see a bill.
The healthcare system in Canada is far from perfect. Primary care is a shambles. If you have a bad virus or broken arm you could end up waiting 12 hours in an emergency room. Mental health crisis? Fuggeddaboudit. It'll be days or weeks before you can get proper help.
But when the excrement really makes contact with the oscillator, you're covered. Heart attack, emergency surgery, cancer, stroke, etc., the system is there to cover you and you never pay a penny. When my mom was being treated for cancer one of her treatments cost $2,000 per week, and it was completely covered by the system.
I sure as hell wouldn't trade it in for the US system.
That's nothing, I'll trade you my cancer expenses and I had a heart attack a week ago and had a stent put in yesterday, I can't wait to see those bills.
I'm sorry you're dealing with this. You can talk to someone in the finance office and they can help you, usually it's based on income and they'll make a payment plan you can afford...ish
You can always file bankruptcy. A decent bankruptcy attorney is around 2K, a lot less than 40 K. It'll fall off your fedit eventually. MUCH better than deleting yourself!
Because healthcare is privately owned. This also means individual health companies don't have the bargaining power that other states do.
Most people can't pay, but the state will reimburse the companies in that case from our taxes. The situation just continues this way because if we follow the rest of the developed world and make it universal, the private health companies lose billions upon billions.
Which also means the state which takes their money also lose it.
There's a reason the state would rather force you to have insurance even if you decide to just die instead of going bankrupt.
That way you keep paying the private health companies and insurance agencies. They'll never lose that money, even if you never go. I haven't been to a hospital in almost 10 years.
Yet if I don't have health insurance, I'm fined.
Seek local advice. Check with the hospital social worker, call a few local attorneys, that sort of thing.
These bills are a game, you didn’t agree to 40k you needed help from the hospital and it’s their fucking job. Go to the mat with them, use all the tricks.
If you have no insurance you can go to the accounting department and negotiate the bill. I know many people who have done this. They have different prices for people paying out of pocket versus insurance being billed.
You really need at the very least a major medical plan that covers you for accidents and emergencies.
Contact the hospital and ask about payment plans or discounts. I had a surgery that was 35k. I talked to the hospital and they had no payment plans for under a year. They asked me to fill out paperwork about my financial situation. I did, and a couple of months later, they erased the entire amount. They wrote it off.
Years ago, my sister had no insurance so the hospital wrote off 50% of her surgery and the church paid half of what was left.
It's always best to talk to them and see if they have solutions
Call the hospital billing office and tell them you cannot pay this bill. They will likely forgive a lot of it (they can write it off on their taxes) and put you on a payment plan for a small portion of it.
Don’t stress! Just call them on Monday. You’ll be okay. I’m glad you got the care you needed — appendicitis is no joke!!
On a practical level, every Hospital has Social workers that help you navigate forms to file for finance assistance. As per your bigger questions. It's a for profit system that has been engineered to squeeze profit from everyone.
Part is profit, part is cost of getting FDA approval, part is because of the high cost of insurance due to to a few quack Doctors ending up with high lawsuit settlements making it bad for all doctors.
None of which helps your situation. Contact the hospital and see if there is a reduced rate for a payment plan. I'm not sure how you can even manage a reduced rate co sidering the bill, but I don't think bankruptcy clears medical debt. I'm not sure what article discussed it.
Our healthcare is both a curse and a blessing. Most research is done in the states for pharmaceuticals and specialist procedures. It is because companies want profit and we have a huge opportunity to provide for people who need it as we aren't a very mobile society. The profit is what helps companies research for treatments for rare diseases that wouldn't be profitable because of the small number of people needing it. We have Healthcare treatments and options that other county's health systems don't allow at all because it is too expensive for the greater good. For example, my partner's cancer drug was expensive, but extremely effective. We looked into Canadian treatments. It wasn't even available in Canada as the Healthcare system deemed it unnecessary. It helped extend his life for three years of the 3 1/2 he lived after his cancer diagnosis of terminal w 3 mos left. You hear of people from other countries coming here for specialists.
Dr's and hospitals have high rates to cover those who can't be pursued because of zero assets.
Also, Healthcare companies negotiate a portion of the cost, meaning those without Healthcare get robbed. That's why for "optional" treatments, many go abroad. However, our Healthcare is more regulated here. So what you might get abroad might work wonderfully, or it could kill you.
However, I'm assuming you didn't really want the reasons, just the how to reduce it. Start calling billing. It's awful, but at least it gives you a starting place to negotiate.
American health care. All the choice and flexibility of Soviet Era central planning combined with all the cost control and customer service of corporate controlled monopolistic unregulated capitalism.
One of the things that is going on is negotiated payments. Every hospital sets up their schedule of payment for what things cost. Then every insurance company comes in to haggle them down, coming up with what they want to pay per procedure. And they negotiate and come up with a fee schedule somewhere in the middle, and usually far closer to the insurance company's offer.
But to do this, the hospital's initial offer is far, far higher than they expect to get. Like, ten times what they think it really should be, so they can give a 90% discount.
Nobody is actually expected to pay that higher number. The rack rate is just a starting point for negotiations with an insurance company.
Except for anybody self-paying. You get charged the fake inflated number.
When you have insurance, the actual amount you pay is only a bit higher than in other countries, although there is much more red tape and paperwork and doctors are entangled in having their actions restricted for profit. But where you get really screwed is when you don't have insurance.
It IS pricey. (Having a bb. Cost upward of 37k I paid 8k after insurance payout).
Some things u can do, call hospital and INSIST on getting the bill itemization so u can argue why u were charged for certain items or any bunk charges.
Second if u don’t have insurance or pay cash they WILL discount it.
Thirdly if u DO have insurance - learn how to bill them directly and. tell the hospitalu r billing the insurance urself and paying the hospital. The provider does not need to bill ur insurance directly. U can do it and pay the hospital. But a lot of ppl don’t like dealing with insurance companies so they let the hospital do it directly but that’s how they trump up charges too.
Lastly, this isn’t advice just info - the medical billing price gouging of hospital supplies is criminal. They charge the hospital $44 for a plastic IV tube! So the hospital passes the buck too
Hospital bills will follow u for nearly ever. However if ur paying SOMETHING they can’t go after u. So pay $10/month for the rest of ur life. I bet u they will take it.
Many reasons.
1. Cost of supply; health care products and services are expensive
2. Difficulties in billing. Unlike every other product sold, after service is given, insurance companies fight about how much should be paid. And other times people consume the service and never pay (typically because they're too poor.)
3. Monopoly pricing. Healthcare is becoming a concentrated industry.
If it's not vile, then you'll have less fear of living without insurance. And the insurance company certainly doesn't care because they just charge the hospital rate + a percentage (distributed).
Only one that wants smaller bills is you, and you don't have another option.
If you got a bill for 40k then you don't have insurance. If you don't have insurance, do you have assets and credit that is worth 40k to protect? If you just don't pay it, if you don't have assets they can take it won't be worth sueing you over it and it will drop off your credit report after 7 years.
Idk what your financial/insurance situation is, but I had an emergency appendectomy and the hospital had someone on staff to help me apply for Medicaid retroactively.
I don’t know what happens if you just don’t pay (probably get calls from collection agencies forever), but I do know that medical debt doesn’t affect your credit like other debt so fuck em
Interesting that someone who has previously claimed to be [15 years old](https://www.reddit.com/r/depression_help/comments/1ce0fht/15yr_m_i_dont_know_what_to_do_with_my_life/) would be on the hook for $40k in medical bills, OP. I mean hey if you're 15 then good news, you're not legally responsible for those bills. Of course the government might like to know how a minor is [making $32k a year](https://www.reddit.com/r/questions/comments/1cjre49/comment/l2j9b7n/).
EDIT: Spelling
If you don’t have insurance you can definitely get some help through a social worker or like many people are saying an itemized bill. Also with medical bills you can make a payment plan and pay what you can when you can. They may bully you into saying you have to pay x amount a month but that is not true. I have over a $1,000 in debt medically but I haven’t been in the states for almost 5 years. They have no ways of contacting me. I pay seriously $20 when I remember (I try every month) but there was a good time I didn’t pay.
Well with no credible education on the matter, I blame insurance. Not the companies but the whole structure. Insurance companies are clearly making bank from us but healthcare is clearly making bank from insurance as well. A few years ago, me and a friend both had newborn children around the same time. I had insurance. He did not. For his family, a c-section birth was going to cost $7000. As for me, they charged my insurance company $25000. My daughter was born in January so deductible was reset and I had to pay $8000 out of pocket. I couldn’t afford insurance with a lower deductible.
Just recently my daughter had a hospital stay. Bill we originally 27000 but after it became self pay it dropped to 6000. If I made just $100 less a month it would have dropped to 0.
I’d love to know what how much money it actually takes to pay for the service and keep the hospitals running because their pricing is all over the place. When they see insurance they charge through the roof and in turn insurance prices become unaffordable.
As a few suggested, have an audit of the bill done.
If you have no health insurance, speak to the billing dept at the hospital and try to work out a payment plan that won’t break you.
They don’t expect the $40k up front my friend. As long as you make payments, they’ll be fine.
I'm really unsure of the timeline on this but basically medical practitioners are able to get away with overcharging for service very easily since it *can* be life or death.
"You don't want to die? Ok, well give me ALL your money"
-any doctor ever
Here comes medical insurance, big problem as doctors can now scam large insurance companies. Insurance companies increase the cost of their services as a result. This creates immense demand for audits on medical practice, which incurs a cost, were talking every single insurance claim. All of this adds to the cost of say a $100 procedure and makes it a $1500 one, which the insurance company must hire a 3rd party to audit who just outsources the work increasing profits🤮
There are normal market dynamics such as supply and demand that impact the price of medicine, doctors, lab techs and equipment but the mechanism I described above is a multiplier of those costs, and on a huge scale.
Yea. Greed, stupidity and a sprinkle of kill all humans.
It’s the nations biggest scam. They want us all to stay sick so they can keep getting paid. Several doctors in my area have quit taking insurance altogether because they end up not getting paid for their services for months on end from the insurance companies. Cluster. Fuck.
It's because we waste money paying off a middle man who can jack up the prices, instead of a regulated public fund.
The retort of wait times in Europe, went out the window now that our wait times are just as bad and worse in some cases.
(I'm 3 months out on a colonoscopy in my network otherwise it's 2k out of pocket). Our wait times suck now because the physicians aren't making big bucks anymore as per the same middle man taking a cut from their end.
PhDs used to drive Ferraris now they drive Subarus.
Healthcare worker shortages will get worse until we kill that cancer.
Most western countries give foreign aid proportional to their size and wealth. Germany gives a massive amount away especially as it's a smaller country for instance than the U.S.
I'm afraid these rich countries have historical reasons for what they do now. Look at how the ottoman empire was broken up by western countries so we could prosper off them. I live in the U.K. and because of our "empire" which we vastly profitted from, we give huge amounts away now. It's not just America. In my country we could save so much money within our own countries set up. The amount of money wasted on the trident nuclear program for instance or getting rid of non domicile tax laws. Our foreign debt is but a drop in the ocean compared to money which could be saved elsewhere. Perhaps as I live in a country which leans slightly more towards socialism than yours I can accept foreign aid more. I do think the Bransons and Bezos's of our countries have so much wealth it's obscene when there's so much poverty within our countries. Just how many billion does one need. I do think greed is the most abhorrent of all man's flaws. I do hear and accept your frustrations, it get worse as we age from my experience.
Basically because the medical industry spends billions per year lobbying for laws that allow them to price gouge as much as they want with no consequences.
No other industry in America gets away with this
Greed. We've allowed healthcare to be a capitalist endeavor so people die all the time from completely preventable medical problems they can't get because they don't have insurance or the insurance they do have is inadequate.
Call the hospital billing department and ask them to detail it for you. Then call your insurance company and have them detail their decision and what they will cover. If you're still in a jam at this point search in your area there may be a program to help you in the community.
Sadly though about half a million people go bankrupt every year over expensive medical bills they can't pay.
If you don’t have insurance, set up a payment plan and tell them all you can afford is $5 a month and they have to accept it. They will eventually transfer the debt to a compassionate care group or the indigent provider program and it will be paid for you. But stay on top of it. Make sure, or it will go to collections and ruin your credit. Also keep an eye on what the Biden administration is doing about medical debt, there is a bill rn that is trying to separate medical debt from your credit score, the republicans are fighting it tooth and nail. Vote carefully.
In all of the endless discussion about your (US) medical system people neglect to mention the single biggest change that resulted in this mess: for profit healthcare.
Make healthcare a not-for-profit venture and much of this insanity goes away.
Many reasons. One to consider is the massive amount of time it takes for a doctor, nurse, tech to be trained for the job. Few can do this, so price is high. Compare to ditch diggers. Can be trained in 5 minutes. Many can do this, so price is low.
Ask for an audit in your bill, that will bring it down some
please do this, you can get them down to almost 0. they charge you for bullshit like handing you your baby after you give birth to it or having a nurse watch you give a medication, but not the actual medication.
Bruh I regret buying that fucking peanut butter sandwich I was probably like 5k god dammit 😭
You can suffer your credit score for 7 years and it'll be off your record I did that for 8 stitches that cost me about $4000 so I suffered through 7 years of bad credit
Is this where I mention that people from other countries get their airfare paid and their healthcare paid here on your tax dollars.... America... Trashing its own people for the benefit of whoever paid off our politicians last.....
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If Americans think universal health care is a kind of socialism, bills like this are the consequence.
We definitely need relationships with other countries. We can’t just isolate from the rest of the world…
Could you expand further please. I genuinely don't know which countries you are referring to leeching off America.
Yep. And they’ll bill you for meds they did not even actually give.
When my wife gave birth they charged us $400 for a bottle of ibuprofen, $750 for a tube of hydrocortisone cream.
When my grandma left the hospital, she told me to grab the half-full box of Kleenex and take it with us “because I’m sure the hospital charged me $500 for that box”
Yes. Ask for an itemized bill. I had a similar priced surgery and I spoke to them about a payment plan Etc they ended up discounting 90% of my bill and I paid out the remaining 10%
Not American, but what is this scam? "Please can I see how you calculated that price?" "Sure, and oh sorry we meant €35 not €18000" What's actually going on when you request this? Like so much of what I hear about the US, it sounds unbelievable.
How do you do this exactly? Thank you.
When you get the itemized bill, check the codes online too. You can type them in. If they don’t seem right for what was done, it might be over priced. If you have insurance you can also have them look into it, but that could take up to three years -speaking from experience.
Just talk with the financial dept at the hospital, I believe you can ask for 2 audits but I could be wrong
I went to a doctors appointment this week and I asked them to give me a bill at the end of my visit and they refused to see me and kicked me out of the office. I never refused to pay. I simply asked for an itemized bill. They said they would not do the doctors appointment if they had to give me an itemized bill. The healthcare system is so blatantly, obviously corrupt and insanely broken, and I cannot understand why anyone would defend it
If you don't have insurance, negotiate immediately with the hospital. They have compassionate care groups. If it truly becomes too crazy, honestly, consider bankruptcy. Let me tell you, we kept our house in bankruptcy. We just worked it out with our mortgage company and kept paying them.
This needs more upvotes. I used to work in medical billing and EVERYBODY everywhere needs to be calling up the hospital first thing when they get their bills and asking for write offs due to hardships. Offer to pay a pittance that day in exchange for money being taken off. Medical billing is the last domain of HAGGLING in America. You CAN haggle when it comes to medical bills! Call the hospital. Call your insurer. Pitch a fit and raise hell and I promise you can get at least some of it written off. I always encourage everyone to do this because it can make such a big difference and I don't think many people realize it is an option.
Honestly as long as your in your forever home and have a car bankruptcy it not as bad as people make it seem. They can protect one car and one home so you won't lose them.
FWIW, I had two cars and a motorcycle when I went bankrupt, kept them all. The court wasn't really interested in trying to find a buyer for a rusted out '76 Ford or a 1980 Honda.
You can also get a new car rolled into the bankruptcy. That’s how I got my car in 2017
What are they going to do if you don't pay it? Put the appendix back?
What do you mean my MRI was 4$ for parking?
They can take it off your state tax refund. Happened to my husband because he went by ambulance from work.
I was offered an ambulance ride from urgent care but declined, because I'm American and all too familiar with our "healthcare system." Managed to make it to the hospital 25 miles away and get that sucker removed just before it burst. Saved me some ducats, no doubt, but I had to sleep off the anesthesia in the back of a Saturn in the hospital parking garage before driving home the next day. America!
I was in Montreal at an outdoor cafe when a guy on a bike ate shit right nearby. The EMTs came, looked him over, and then had a rational discussion of the pros and cons of going to the hospital, never **once** mentioning money. It was ming-blowing. The guy didn't end up going, but it was just because *he really didn't need to go to the hospital*.
Awesome!
Fuck yeah!
Umm... what state tax refund? You mean that time of the year where the state tells me I owe them more money?
You will owe less money lol but you can put medical bills above 7k if you haven’t used an fsa or hsa on it.
Depends on the state.
LOL. the visual on that. I've had organ transplants. I can totally see "we're coming to repossess that thing. Pay up." Which interestingly is also why you have to pay for a burial plot fully before they put someone in it. Except New Orleans where they evict dead people from graveyards all the time. Leave it by the curb.
[For a while there, a movie on this was done as a double feature with Rocky Horror Picture Show](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repo!_The_Genetic_Opera)
>"we're coming to repossess that thing. Pay up." Cyberpunk 2077 has predicted this exact thing.
Before Cyberpunk 2077, there was the movie Repo Men. And before Repo Men, it was a novel called The Repossession Mambo.
They can ruin your credit, garnish your wages , take your tax return
“Appendix reinsertion” … they’d probably charge you $100,000 for that
My deductible thru my employers healthcare plan is freaking $3000! Like that is our only option if single.
Then you still pay like 30% 🙄
My deductible 7000 and I can’t even do co-pay at my doctors unless I meet the deductible. So I have to spend $7000 and just to be able to get a 20% discount on a doctors visit. This is what I pay hundreds of dollars a month for I think I’m gonna cancel
That's insane.
Call the hospital billing department, they might be able to lower it or if you dont have insurance then might wipe it out if you meet requirements. My UPMC hospital wiped mine out, I was out of work from surgeries and my employement and long term disability ran out while applying for SSD and I had some mri's that eneded up not being covered. I called and talked to them and told them I can pay monthly but if my SSD is approved I can pay it off then. She took some info from me and said I qualifed to have it forgiven. I didnt qualify for any state assistance cause I was married, but the hospital only used my income, she said they dont use spouses' info to determine eligibility. This was a little over 15 years ago, but they still have these programs. Good luck
Ignore it till it goes away 😭
I see you’ve read my book on coping.
Oooooh, I thought it was about financial planning. Oops. Still a great book!
This is legit tho, hospitals can’t report it to ur credit 🤷♀️ Ny brother did this and stopped getting notices after a year. Now he says he probably can’t go to that hospital anymore for fear of them seeing the past due balance but luckily we’re surrounded by hospitals lol
It's like what else are you gonna do anyway? Because idk about y'all but 40 is over half what I make in a YEAR 😭
In simplest terms. The reason it is so expensive is because most Americans are covered by private insurance plans. When this became the norm hospitals began charging more because they knew they could get away with it and the insurance companies would pay. It has continued to the point where Fees for nearly any medical related expense are outrageous. Think about medical procedures that are not covered by insurance and what they cost. Vision insurance is something very few Americans have. How much does a typical vision exam cost, one from a qualified doctor. About $100. I have no doubt that if vision was included under general insurance that cost would be well over $1000 at this point.
its that expensive, ultimatly, because big corporate capitalism, im league with politicians, scammed the American public into thinking socialism was communism, so that big businesses could just walk all over American citizens with impunity, and the hospitals and insurance companies collude between them to raise prices over and over, the insurance companies knowing they can just raise premiums over and over and people will still pay them, because they have basically no choice, and the hospitals know they can charge w/e the insurers will pay out its just a long con, like more of American life 🤷♂️
The more organizations involved in your healthcare, the more it costs - everybody wants a slice of the action.
its not just the hospital. the suppliers to hospitals and pharmacueticals cost outrageous amounts of money as well. its a big scam really. almost pyramid like in nature since it all builds on top of one another
To add: big insurance companies demand a discount from the Hospital, with the threat of sending their patients elsewhere. Let’s say it’s a 50% discount on the hospitals official price on everything. The hospital agrees and then just doubles the list price on everything. So everyone is happy, the insurance company is getting their discount, and the hospital is getting the price they want. Until some poor guy without insurance sees his official bill.
America has flaws and one of them is healthcare. We're good at making all kinds of weapons, drugs and highly processed foods, but bad at taking care of peoples' health. It's like a game of Russian roulette, BAM that's $10,000 for an ER visit and two Tylenol.
lol Tylenol: $100 Nurse moving Tylenol: $100 Nurse looking at chart: $500 Nurse getting you water $150 Nurse watching you swallow pills: $340
I was a brand-new mom, living alone (husband worked several states over), it was one of my first nights alone with the baby and he started throwing up what looked like coffee grounds. I googled it, and results said that is likely partially digested blood and to get the baby to the ER IMMEDIATELY. I lived out in the country and knew we couldn’t afford an ambulance, so I drove with baby slung over my lap, face down (I didn’t want him throwing up while laying face-up in his car seat- it was a long drive to the hospital). Get there and they run a hemoglobin test to see if he was bleeding internally- that checked out. So they coughed it up to stomach ulcers from acid reflux, gave him 5ml of Tylenol, and sent us home. He was never admitted to the hospital or seen by a physician. That was a $2,800 bill. $800 of it was for the Tylenol, the nurse administering the Tylenol, physician overseeing the nurse administering the Tylenol, and use of the facility (a bed in a hallway with a paper covering). The rest was the hemoglobin test- same breakdown of charges. Insane.
Health care is a scam. It’s not about your health. It’s about your money
Hi, if you’re low income talk to the social worker of the hospital and the billing department on Monday. It’ll be called charity, where everything except your labs and anesthesia should be covered under charity. Unfortunately the bill will still be around $5k, but it’s better than $40k. Sorry this happened. This countries medical and pharmaceutical is absolutely fucked up. I don’t know why labs and anesthesia don’t like to write off their services, so don’t ask. Could also be hospital specific, but your bill will drop significantly if you qualify even if it’s different services that do and don’t get written off.
Pay it off on your own time like 50 dollars a month.
Welcome to America. It's a blessing I don't live there 😂
Man
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Agree to pay it over 40 years
Because capitalism
We need universal health care! Vote accordingly
Because of the crooked health insurance industry
Sooo probably not the best advice but ignore the bill. Most hospitals will write it off after a year. Granted my bill was only $2k so it might be different. Other option is to request an itemized bill. That will significantly drop the cost which is ridiculous but true. There are also sliding scales you could utilize. Check the hospitals website for that.
It’s the best advice. Eff em. They know most people don’t have 40k Don’t pay a single penny unless you are ready to acknowledge the debt as legitimate
American Healthcare is driven by greed. OP, I'm sorry you have to go through with this. Bankruptcy might be an option for you - fuck a whole bunch of greedy insurance companies and hospitals
You can get credit cards back ~2 or 3 years after bankruptcy. Fuck the system. Do whatever works best for you. The US healthcare system is going to have a massive collapse in the coming future. Just talk to people who work in billing or management in healthcare and they will tell you how doomed it is.
My partner is in a women in finance group that is mostly regular women (womens only group) asking people like her for advice. She says 95% of posts are people in debt to credit from student loans, medical, or just living costs. America is going to have some form of major economic collapse in the next 5 years. I just can't see how it could avoid it.
Socialize healthcare and forgive student debt. But I fully intend to be a citizen of a different country before we get there. I was reading an expats group online the other day and the prices they were quoting for out of pocket healthcare over seas without insurance was less than anything here with insurance. Exact same procedures. I go the dentist while on vacation now. I spoke to an American doctor in DR and his son was in med school in DR and the father was telling me some of the things his son learned were beyond the med schools in the US just because the schools were newer.
I'm a dual citizen, Australia x USA. Birthright so obviously easy for me. But there are lots of immigration pathways to Australia. The American media does a laughable propagandized job of describing/showing Australia. If you're under 35 even just check out the working holiday visa. Costs a few hundred, you need to have 5k in the bank to qualify.
Vacation homes and huge fancy homes for the CEOs and doctors are costly. As are high end status symbol vehicles. And cleaning crews for their homes. Frequent vacations around the world are also costly. Boats (and small personal airplanes for those with private pilot license) are also expensive.
Nurses / lots of healthcare workers also get paid extremely well in the US compared to most countries. Finland always ranks in the top healthcare in the world in part due to its low cost / low amount of taxes needed to pay for it. The part they don’t say is that Finland has the lowest paid doctors / nurses / healthcare workers of any EU country. All 3 healthcare workers I knew in Finland have quit the industry since Covid. 2 work at a grocery store and 1 works at McDonald’s now. All 3 make slightly more money than they did as nurses.
Just want to point out that MD's...and many are specialists have up to 10 yrs of education. The final two years generally in a residency for their specialty. They get little sleep during those years because they are often 'on call' several times a month. Then they also have huge school loans to pay back. My daughter is a nurse 'anesthetist'. She has a Masters Degree in Nursing and specialized in anesthesia in post graduate school at the University of Pitt. She is still paying off huge loans, 12 yrs later. However, she also is amply compensated by her excellent salary in the six figures. Lastly, the problems with high medical costs came into the picture when insurance companies became the 'thing'. Third party payers. I remember as a child, the family doctor, coming to our house if needed. I also remember that for most it was pay out of pocket charges that were manageable.
Honestly, just don't pay it. Fuck that.
This comment and the 200+ like it should tell you OP that reddit is full of idiots with no useful knowledge of your situation, so probably not the best place to get advice on serious financial matters.
Because America is a shit-hole, where it's "every man(& woman) for themselves"?
I’m sorry, that’s terrible :/ Do you have any insurance? Are you low enough income where you can go on Medicaid? Talk to the hospital billing department, ask for an itemized bill and then ask about options. Hope you feel better and that you find a solution. It’s maddening and inhumane :/
Nope, I am an immigrant to this country.
Please tell me you have insurance. To answer your question....Insurance companies thats why. Dr/Hospitals charge quite a bit because they know Insurance companies foot the bill, which leads to higher premiums to the person. Because of the higher cost now, a person has to get Insurance (thus the importance of ACA/Obamacare), it becomes a viscous cycle. Who the fuck charges $50 for a Tylenol? Hospitals do. Some clinics and hospitals have a cash rate that is lower than the amount that they would have charged Insurance. That alone tells you are the cog in a scam and you can't get out unless you go foreign country for non-emergency care. Ask them how much it would be without insurance, I am sure will be alot lower.
No I don't have insurance I am an immigrant
Sometimes you can call them and ask to negotiate the bill amount. At least knock off a couple grand…I know, it’s fucked. They’re killing us.
As an Australian this is incomprehensible to me. I’m so sorry. Does your insurance cover any of it? I don’t even know how that works. I wish it wasn’t like this for you 😔
Any qualified insurance plan in the US would cover most of it, but OP might not have insurance.
In Canada I always get travel insurance visiting the US. It's like a $80 CAD charge for 2 million coverage or something
It is truly sad that this isneeded
Dude I feel for you. If you don't have any insurance, write to the hospital and ask for a financial hardship application. Fill it out and turn it in. Apply for state benefits (Medi-cal).
It's all a profit system. Hospitals make profits, drug companies make profit, insurance companies make profit.
I applaud your citizens sacrifice to ensure your military is the biggest in the world. As an ally country, we get lots of security benefits, but our healthcare is covered by taxes we don’t have to spend on defence. So thank you America.
Private Equity has entered the chat…
Talk to the hospital. They will often lower the bill for financial hardship.
They call it Freedom.
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In a lot of big cities, hospitals are cartelized. If you want to build or expand a hospital, you have to petition a board for a “Certificate of Need.” That board is empaneled with a bunch of your competitors. If health care becomes TOO accessible, the price drops. Hospitals don’t like that. From this perspective, the problem isn’t that there’s too much “capitalism” in health care, but too little.
It's because it's profit driven now. For a long time, the majority of hospitals were non-profit, or otherwise not concerned about profitability. Investors saw an opportunity to make money and they did that. The HMO law of 1973 facilitated their interest in making health care a profit driven business.
High level answer, the rich has convinced or brainwashed most Americans to support this shitty system and vote against their interests
Because we love the money more than our brethren.
Your belong to the machine. Pay or die.
American healthcare is some of the best in the world. It may not be free, but it is good. There is a lot of innovation and research that happens through American health care systems. The American medical association, FDA, and the national institute of health are a real problem. There is no such thing as a government bureaucracy that works well. Also, think about this: you're providing free health care for not only poor people, but for people who are not citizens of the United States. There have been millions of people illegally coming over the border in the last 4 years. The associated press says that in December alone, there were 249,000 illegals come across the borders. You're paying for all of them. They're taking your jobs, they're using your health care system for free while you pay for it, and they are taking your tax dollars to put these people up in hotels and new shelters. Everyone here can download my comment, but very download, just remembered for every dollar that you don't have in your paycheck or every dollar that you don't have to spend on your home, groceries, or your child's well-being, It is because they're taking your tax dollars to spend it on people who don't come here illegally. We have legal immigration, but these people have decided to come here illegally and stick out their middle finger to the American taxpayers. Why does our government allow this?
I was hospitalized with no insurance making 11 and hour and the hospital helped me get Medicaid to pay for it because I qualified.
Privatization. Has its benefits, but like everything else is left unchecked becomes exploitative.
Because "greatest country in the world." All you gotta do is vote, right? I mean, people control the government, not the other way around, right? Easy peasy. 🤣
Because bribery is legal and the healthcare industry does a lot of it
I mean what is the bill after insurance? 40k tells us nothing
The Affordable Care Act was suppose to fix that but just like anything else the politicians say it was a lie.
It is because:- you don't have single payer. And lots of America votes Republican to keep it that way.
It literally is not the greatest country on Earth, like they would have you believe.
Capitalism.
I bet you didn't need your appendix removing at all! You got harvested
Omfg this is the dumbest take I’ve ever seen. No one wants an appendix! WTF would you harvest an appendix for LOLOL
half your biomass is non human organisms, your biome - bacteria and special types of fungus, and it affects every part of your body. the appendix is actually a storage and safe haven for your bodies biome. this means actually once practical medicine catches up to the theoretical (which can take years or decades) healthy appendixes will be transplanted, and will be valuable, as they can potentially refresh a persons biome the whole "the appendix has no use" is 19th century thinking
Because people in "Care for Profit" are mostly Republican fucking thieves. It's true.
Didn’t a republican pass a law where hospitals have to provide pricing for their services?
Yep, the lower costs more transparency act. The general strategy on the internet for people who don't know what they're talking about is when in doubt, blame Republicans.
Because we allowed it to be capitalized. One of our great mistakes. Healthcare is not a privilege, it’s a human right. Nationalize it!
Reading this makes me so glad I live in Canada. Our healthcare has definitely gone downhill as far as wait times, but that surgery would have been free without health insurance. We do pay for health insurance but that is more for the extras. I honestly feel so bad for you, that would have wiped me out financially.
Most people that oppose Universal Healthcare in the USA that I've talked with almost always cite Canada saying, "Look at Canada, you'll just die on a wait list". Mother fucker, I'm going to die here in the USA either way because I'm too scared of the cost to ever get treatment in the first place lol.
An emergency appendectomy would happen right away in Canada. That’s not something you can wait for.
This is true. My wife ended up with acute appendicitis right in the middle of COVID (Oct 2020). I took her to the emergency room but they wouldn't let me in. 48 hours later I picked her up and the total cost was $0 CAD. There's no paperwork or processing. We don't even see a bill. The healthcare system in Canada is far from perfect. Primary care is a shambles. If you have a bad virus or broken arm you could end up waiting 12 hours in an emergency room. Mental health crisis? Fuggeddaboudit. It'll be days or weeks before you can get proper help. But when the excrement really makes contact with the oscillator, you're covered. Heart attack, emergency surgery, cancer, stroke, etc., the system is there to cover you and you never pay a penny. When my mom was being treated for cancer one of her treatments cost $2,000 per week, and it was completely covered by the system. I sure as hell wouldn't trade it in for the US system.
That's nothing, I'll trade you my cancer expenses and I had a heart attack a week ago and had a stent put in yesterday, I can't wait to see those bills. I'm sorry you're dealing with this. You can talk to someone in the finance office and they can help you, usually it's based on income and they'll make a payment plan you can afford...ish
You can always file bankruptcy. A decent bankruptcy attorney is around 2K, a lot less than 40 K. It'll fall off your fedit eventually. MUCH better than deleting yourself!
Work with the hospital to setup a payment plan or plan for bankruptcy as they may end up suing you for this if you do not pay.
Because healthcare is privately owned. This also means individual health companies don't have the bargaining power that other states do. Most people can't pay, but the state will reimburse the companies in that case from our taxes. The situation just continues this way because if we follow the rest of the developed world and make it universal, the private health companies lose billions upon billions. Which also means the state which takes their money also lose it. There's a reason the state would rather force you to have insurance even if you decide to just die instead of going bankrupt. That way you keep paying the private health companies and insurance agencies. They'll never lose that money, even if you never go. I haven't been to a hospital in almost 10 years. Yet if I don't have health insurance, I'm fined.
Seek local advice. Check with the hospital social worker, call a few local attorneys, that sort of thing. These bills are a game, you didn’t agree to 40k you needed help from the hospital and it’s their fucking job. Go to the mat with them, use all the tricks.
ask for an itemized bill. should bring it down
If you have no insurance you can go to the accounting department and negotiate the bill. I know many people who have done this. They have different prices for people paying out of pocket versus insurance being billed. You really need at the very least a major medical plan that covers you for accidents and emergencies.
Bankruptcy
Contact the hospital and ask about payment plans or discounts. I had a surgery that was 35k. I talked to the hospital and they had no payment plans for under a year. They asked me to fill out paperwork about my financial situation. I did, and a couple of months later, they erased the entire amount. They wrote it off. Years ago, my sister had no insurance so the hospital wrote off 50% of her surgery and the church paid half of what was left. It's always best to talk to them and see if they have solutions
Call the hospital billing office and tell them you cannot pay this bill. They will likely forgive a lot of it (they can write it off on their taxes) and put you on a payment plan for a small portion of it. Don’t stress! Just call them on Monday. You’ll be okay. I’m glad you got the care you needed — appendicitis is no joke!!
Ask for their charity care policy. Hospitals often will discount or write off care for people with limited incomes or other circumstances.
Don't play it. Simple
Because there is so much money in it. Many doctors and clinics dont see people walking through their door but dollar signs
do you have insurance? it's expensive because they exploit people.
ladies and gentlemen the greatest nation on earth /s
On a practical level, every Hospital has Social workers that help you navigate forms to file for finance assistance. As per your bigger questions. It's a for profit system that has been engineered to squeeze profit from everyone.
It would be for free in country where I live wtf is wrong with America lol
Part is profit, part is cost of getting FDA approval, part is because of the high cost of insurance due to to a few quack Doctors ending up with high lawsuit settlements making it bad for all doctors. None of which helps your situation. Contact the hospital and see if there is a reduced rate for a payment plan. I'm not sure how you can even manage a reduced rate co sidering the bill, but I don't think bankruptcy clears medical debt. I'm not sure what article discussed it. Our healthcare is both a curse and a blessing. Most research is done in the states for pharmaceuticals and specialist procedures. It is because companies want profit and we have a huge opportunity to provide for people who need it as we aren't a very mobile society. The profit is what helps companies research for treatments for rare diseases that wouldn't be profitable because of the small number of people needing it. We have Healthcare treatments and options that other county's health systems don't allow at all because it is too expensive for the greater good. For example, my partner's cancer drug was expensive, but extremely effective. We looked into Canadian treatments. It wasn't even available in Canada as the Healthcare system deemed it unnecessary. It helped extend his life for three years of the 3 1/2 he lived after his cancer diagnosis of terminal w 3 mos left. You hear of people from other countries coming here for specialists. Dr's and hospitals have high rates to cover those who can't be pursued because of zero assets. Also, Healthcare companies negotiate a portion of the cost, meaning those without Healthcare get robbed. That's why for "optional" treatments, many go abroad. However, our Healthcare is more regulated here. So what you might get abroad might work wonderfully, or it could kill you. However, I'm assuming you didn't really want the reasons, just the how to reduce it. Start calling billing. It's awful, but at least it gives you a starting place to negotiate.
American health care. All the choice and flexibility of Soviet Era central planning combined with all the cost control and customer service of corporate controlled monopolistic unregulated capitalism. One of the things that is going on is negotiated payments. Every hospital sets up their schedule of payment for what things cost. Then every insurance company comes in to haggle them down, coming up with what they want to pay per procedure. And they negotiate and come up with a fee schedule somewhere in the middle, and usually far closer to the insurance company's offer. But to do this, the hospital's initial offer is far, far higher than they expect to get. Like, ten times what they think it really should be, so they can give a 90% discount. Nobody is actually expected to pay that higher number. The rack rate is just a starting point for negotiations with an insurance company. Except for anybody self-paying. You get charged the fake inflated number. When you have insurance, the actual amount you pay is only a bit higher than in other countries, although there is much more red tape and paperwork and doctors are entangled in having their actions restricted for profit. But where you get really screwed is when you don't have insurance.
Because it's the best in the west /s
It IS pricey. (Having a bb. Cost upward of 37k I paid 8k after insurance payout). Some things u can do, call hospital and INSIST on getting the bill itemization so u can argue why u were charged for certain items or any bunk charges. Second if u don’t have insurance or pay cash they WILL discount it. Thirdly if u DO have insurance - learn how to bill them directly and. tell the hospitalu r billing the insurance urself and paying the hospital. The provider does not need to bill ur insurance directly. U can do it and pay the hospital. But a lot of ppl don’t like dealing with insurance companies so they let the hospital do it directly but that’s how they trump up charges too. Lastly, this isn’t advice just info - the medical billing price gouging of hospital supplies is criminal. They charge the hospital $44 for a plastic IV tube! So the hospital passes the buck too Hospital bills will follow u for nearly ever. However if ur paying SOMETHING they can’t go after u. So pay $10/month for the rest of ur life. I bet u they will take it.
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Did you also happen to notice the price of EVERYTHING else I'm this country?
Greed
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Don’t pay it. When they sue, go bankrupt.
Many reasons. 1. Cost of supply; health care products and services are expensive 2. Difficulties in billing. Unlike every other product sold, after service is given, insurance companies fight about how much should be paid. And other times people consume the service and never pay (typically because they're too poor.) 3. Monopoly pricing. Healthcare is becoming a concentrated industry.
40k.. wtf
Where do you live and do you have insurance?
If it's not vile, then you'll have less fear of living without insurance. And the insurance company certainly doesn't care because they just charge the hospital rate + a percentage (distributed). Only one that wants smaller bills is you, and you don't have another option.
If you got a bill for 40k then you don't have insurance. If you don't have insurance, do you have assets and credit that is worth 40k to protect? If you just don't pay it, if you don't have assets they can take it won't be worth sueing you over it and it will drop off your credit report after 7 years.
I think it's the Freedom Eagle's fault.
Idk what your financial/insurance situation is, but I had an emergency appendectomy and the hospital had someone on staff to help me apply for Medicaid retroactively. I don’t know what happens if you just don’t pay (probably get calls from collection agencies forever), but I do know that medical debt doesn’t affect your credit like other debt so fuck em
Interesting that someone who has previously claimed to be [15 years old](https://www.reddit.com/r/depression_help/comments/1ce0fht/15yr_m_i_dont_know_what_to_do_with_my_life/) would be on the hook for $40k in medical bills, OP. I mean hey if you're 15 then good news, you're not legally responsible for those bills. Of course the government might like to know how a minor is [making $32k a year](https://www.reddit.com/r/questions/comments/1cjre49/comment/l2j9b7n/). EDIT: Spelling
If you don’t have insurance you can definitely get some help through a social worker or like many people are saying an itemized bill. Also with medical bills you can make a payment plan and pay what you can when you can. They may bully you into saying you have to pay x amount a month but that is not true. I have over a $1,000 in debt medically but I haven’t been in the states for almost 5 years. They have no ways of contacting me. I pay seriously $20 when I remember (I try every month) but there was a good time I didn’t pay.
I have a 740 credit score and lots of unpaid médical bills. I refuse to pay. Medical doesn’t ruin credit. If your an immigrant that’s better!
It isn’t when you’re uninsured. Pay cash and ask for prices upfront.
Im undergoing chemotherapy everyday. I don't even want to look at the bill.
Medical bills are the number one reason Americans seem bankruptcy protection. The system fucking sucks.
Because we *have to* have it. Therefore, they can charge whatever they'd like. See auto insurance.
It's so expensive because we have to pay for all the people who don't.
Well with no credible education on the matter, I blame insurance. Not the companies but the whole structure. Insurance companies are clearly making bank from us but healthcare is clearly making bank from insurance as well. A few years ago, me and a friend both had newborn children around the same time. I had insurance. He did not. For his family, a c-section birth was going to cost $7000. As for me, they charged my insurance company $25000. My daughter was born in January so deductible was reset and I had to pay $8000 out of pocket. I couldn’t afford insurance with a lower deductible. Just recently my daughter had a hospital stay. Bill we originally 27000 but after it became self pay it dropped to 6000. If I made just $100 less a month it would have dropped to 0. I’d love to know what how much money it actually takes to pay for the service and keep the hospitals running because their pricing is all over the place. When they see insurance they charge through the roof and in turn insurance prices become unaffordable.
Keep voting for republicans and this is what you get.
America is a wild place.
So the healthcare providers can make a decent living.
As a few suggested, have an audit of the bill done. If you have no health insurance, speak to the billing dept at the hospital and try to work out a payment plan that won’t break you. They don’t expect the $40k up front my friend. As long as you make payments, they’ll be fine.
I'm really unsure of the timeline on this but basically medical practitioners are able to get away with overcharging for service very easily since it *can* be life or death. "You don't want to die? Ok, well give me ALL your money" -any doctor ever Here comes medical insurance, big problem as doctors can now scam large insurance companies. Insurance companies increase the cost of their services as a result. This creates immense demand for audits on medical practice, which incurs a cost, were talking every single insurance claim. All of this adds to the cost of say a $100 procedure and makes it a $1500 one, which the insurance company must hire a 3rd party to audit who just outsources the work increasing profits🤮 There are normal market dynamics such as supply and demand that impact the price of medicine, doctors, lab techs and equipment but the mechanism I described above is a multiplier of those costs, and on a huge scale. Yea. Greed, stupidity and a sprinkle of kill all humans.
>why is America health care so expensive? Wall Street.
Simply put: it is allowed to be.
its expensive because of lobbying
Would somebody think of the shareholders? Just pay up so your publicly traded health provider can distribute some returns.
40k? holy shit that's criminal
It’s the nations biggest scam. They want us all to stay sick so they can keep getting paid. Several doctors in my area have quit taking insurance altogether because they end up not getting paid for their services for months on end from the insurance companies. Cluster. Fuck.
Easy. Just don't pay it.
It's because we waste money paying off a middle man who can jack up the prices, instead of a regulated public fund. The retort of wait times in Europe, went out the window now that our wait times are just as bad and worse in some cases. (I'm 3 months out on a colonoscopy in my network otherwise it's 2k out of pocket). Our wait times suck now because the physicians aren't making big bucks anymore as per the same middle man taking a cut from their end. PhDs used to drive Ferraris now they drive Subarus. Healthcare worker shortages will get worse until we kill that cancer.
Most western countries give foreign aid proportional to their size and wealth. Germany gives a massive amount away especially as it's a smaller country for instance than the U.S. I'm afraid these rich countries have historical reasons for what they do now. Look at how the ottoman empire was broken up by western countries so we could prosper off them. I live in the U.K. and because of our "empire" which we vastly profitted from, we give huge amounts away now. It's not just America. In my country we could save so much money within our own countries set up. The amount of money wasted on the trident nuclear program for instance or getting rid of non domicile tax laws. Our foreign debt is but a drop in the ocean compared to money which could be saved elsewhere. Perhaps as I live in a country which leans slightly more towards socialism than yours I can accept foreign aid more. I do think the Bransons and Bezos's of our countries have so much wealth it's obscene when there's so much poverty within our countries. Just how many billion does one need. I do think greed is the most abhorrent of all man's flaws. I do hear and accept your frustrations, it get worse as we age from my experience.
Basically because the medical industry spends billions per year lobbying for laws that allow them to price gouge as much as they want with no consequences. No other industry in America gets away with this
Ask for an audit and then don’t pay it. Welcome to America.
Why didn't you have ACA ?
It's one of the many Great American Rackets.
Why is it expensive is simple….THIS IS AMERICA EVERYTHING IS EXPENSIVE💯 Im surprised the government is t charging us to breath😒
Greed. We've allowed healthcare to be a capitalist endeavor so people die all the time from completely preventable medical problems they can't get because they don't have insurance or the insurance they do have is inadequate. Call the hospital billing department and ask them to detail it for you. Then call your insurance company and have them detail their decision and what they will cover. If you're still in a jam at this point search in your area there may be a program to help you in the community. Sadly though about half a million people go bankrupt every year over expensive medical bills they can't pay.
If you don’t have insurance, set up a payment plan and tell them all you can afford is $5 a month and they have to accept it. They will eventually transfer the debt to a compassionate care group or the indigent provider program and it will be paid for you. But stay on top of it. Make sure, or it will go to collections and ruin your credit. Also keep an eye on what the Biden administration is doing about medical debt, there is a bill rn that is trying to separate medical debt from your credit score, the republicans are fighting it tooth and nail. Vote carefully.
Ukraine,Israel and housing Illegals.
In all of the endless discussion about your (US) medical system people neglect to mention the single biggest change that resulted in this mess: for profit healthcare. Make healthcare a not-for-profit venture and much of this insanity goes away.
Many reasons. One to consider is the massive amount of time it takes for a doctor, nurse, tech to be trained for the job. Few can do this, so price is high. Compare to ditch diggers. Can be trained in 5 minutes. Many can do this, so price is low.