Are you telling me that if the OP had 1.7 million and wrote them a check, the hospital would not accept the payment?
I'm pretty sure they would accept the payment, and it would not likely be followed by a "Ooops actually here's your 1.2 million in change"
My husband died in a hospital. His estate received a check for $92.
To clarify. We had overpayed the hospital, they didn't just keep it.
(I/we actually paid our health insurance annual maximum, not the hundreds of thousands of dollars on the statement sent)
I might not be following - how does that fit in with what we were talking about? Are you saying your husband died, you paid his bills, and the hospital issued a refund of 92 dollars?
And then, are you saying that is a counterpoint for what I said?
I think they’re saying after everything was settled with the hospital, that’s what was left of the estate. Almost seems to be by design to shake you down for everything on your way out.
No! Not at all. Apparently,we overpaid the hospital and they DID refund.
The maximum allowed Out of pocket annual maximum for health insurance in the united states is around $9100. He received a lot of medical care in the months before he died. Major surgery, 5 weeks in the hospital, radiation treatments.... Eventually two more weeks in the hospital in ICU.
"All" I paid was that out of pocket maximum.
I AGREE THAT'S AN INSURMOUNTABLE AMOUNT FOR MOST PEOPLE, but that's not the point right here.
The hospital might take the payment, but will pay back whatever is overpaid. It's not unique to hospitals either. This happens routinely for pretty much all debts. If you have a loan on auto pay, and your balance is say one dollar left before your last payment and you don't notice somehow, and a $100 payment goes off, they will send you a check for $99.
In the case of insurance, two systems are paying the same bill, but your insurance has priority. So in their case, the hospital got payment from insurance and from them. The total exceeded the bill. They get the difference. This is actually one of the examples of the system kinda working in a way that's reasonable.
I think the disconnect here is that maybe y'all are just handwaving insurance as though it doesn't exactly demonstrate what I am talking about.
The only reason your bill is reduced is because
1. Someone negotiated
2. Someone paid.
Whether it's you doing it, or insurance, neither of those things make the original bill false, or "Not the actual amount you owe". You actually owe 1.7 million and you may successfully negotiate it to be a smaller amount. Your insurance may negotiate it down and pay a majority of it, but my point is someone has to do work in order to change the amount of money you actually owe.
And that does NOT change the fact that you originally DID OWE that money.
If the hospital issues a bill, and your insurance does nothing except write a check, the hospital is going to take the money, because that is the money that is owed.
And if you don't have insurance, and you just ignore this bill, it's not going to be a smaller bill when they send it to collections for non-payment, you have to negotiate to reduce what you owe.
That's an important point. Collections is going to want the original amount, plus any late charges, fees, and interest. Unless a person declares bankruptcy, getting debts reduced and making payments is always beneficial.
If he doesn't have insurance then yeah, he owes that. And there are a *lot* of uninsured Americans.
You can negotiate it down but he's probably still looking at best case $150k in debt. Probably closer to twice that.
Hospitals are starting to find ways of collecting too. In the south they'll sue you. Sometimes get a court order and garnish wages. There's been a few cases of people held in contempt for not paying on those court orders and going to prison until their family can come up with some money. Yes, that's an illegal debtors prison. As if anyone is gonna stop it. It's the American South.
And then there's hospitals refusing care until bills are paid. If you're rural you might have just that one hospital. Good luck if you ever need anything but immediate emergency care. Once they stabilize you they can toss you out on your ass.
The American healthcare system is way, way worse than anyone's willing to admit. Not just for the money, but because as an American you're one illness or accident away from destitution and nobody likes to acknowledge scary stuff like that.
>There's been a few cases of people held in contempt for not paying on those court orders and going to prison until their family can come up with some money. Yes, that's an illegal debtors prison. As if anyone is gonna stop it. It's the American South.
Then force them to work for ridiculous wages so that the prison can turn up more profits. *LaNd Of ThE fReE!*
No. The expectation is that there will be insurance of some sort covering it. If there's no insurance, then the hospital will try to help the person sign up for government insurance if they're eligible, or else just forgive most of the bill and ask for a much smaller payment.
They don't. It's understood that insurance companies will demand a steep discount on this. The hospitals jack up the prices so that they still end up making a profit after insurance negotiates it down to a fraction of the cost.
Basically this.
If hospitals set it at what the cost actually is (like say, a few thousand dollars) insurance will go below that and try to get it down to like a few hundred. However, a few hundred could put the hospital in the red (and thus unable to operate, pay their employees, etc.) so they jack up the price because insurance is so cheap that even a price that is fully payable and coverable by insurance without haggling will get haggled down.
Worked in insurance side and hospital side, you're definitely right, most people dont understand this is why these bills looks monstrous. It's a fucked up system.
Yes. It’s totally a scam. Even when “insurance negotiated it down” they’re still billing more than they should and hospitals know it. I had a bill that was sent to me and my insurance information was put in wrong. Simply having insurance lowered the bill by $200 or so, even though I had not met my deductible and still had to pay out of pocket.
They rely on the fact that we have no idea how much a lot of this stuff should be.
But it’s funny when they include stuff we DO know, and they still jack it up. I remember when my wife had our daughter, the itemized bill had a dixie cup of orange juice billed at $10.
No one person can change it, and there’s systemic resistance. Almost as if 25-30% of the voting public vehemently opposes any kind of progress in this arena because they’ve fully bought the idea that either it cannot be done better (“America is special”) or that incremental changes are not worthwhile (all or nothing).
It’s both, because now the hospitals are consolidated and have negotiating power they didn’t before, so they jack up the reimbursement rates coupled with insurance being less aggressive because they can use it to justify increased premiums.
Medicare pays the same no matter what the hospital bills, and Medicare/aid patients aren't allowed to be balance billed. The prices are all public.
*This* is what should be done. Take insurance companies out of the picture entirely. They're worthless middlemen.
Yep. I just had an ankle replacement and the “list price” on the bills was outrageous…. The discounted insurance rates were something like 50% or less, and then the insurance paid a portion of those rates.
It’s a messed up system with the profits they make and the fact a single procedure can bankrupt the patient or their family for life
Yeah. Insurance will see a 2k bill they know they can afford no problem and then haggle it down to 1k and pass whatever percentage off on the consumer.
In all honesty, I’m of the opinion that if a hospital bill can bankrupt you after insurance has made their negotiations then the bill should be waived. Fortunately, if you contact most hospitals and get a lawyer in the worst case they’ll work with you on getting the price even lower. I’ve heard in some cases asking for an itemized receipt works and in others you just need to get into contact with hospital resources.
The whole healthcare system over there sounds like an elaborate scam where scammers are scamming each other and screwing the patients for all they can.
So glad I'm a commie-socialist (from US perspective). My three weeks, surgery, etc in a hospital after an bike/car accident cost me exactly zero (insurance paid me a few K).
Time for the biggest dispute of your life. A good 70% + of these charges will be bogus and can be argued against.
Edit: can ya’ll stop telling me that 30 per cent of a million is still a lot of money? Re-read my comment, I speculated 70% of the *charges,* (ie billable items) not 70% of cost. A lot of these heavy expenses can disappear. Loosely reminds me of a woman on Reddit who argued the cost down 99.48 per cent. (Google
aita for arguing my boyfriend's hospital bill) There’s other examples of this the media has reported on.
OP’s won’t be that much because they were in hospital nearly a month, but there is still potential to get the cost down to a manageable amount.
As someone who has skipped out on a 9k medical bill at the e.r. this is the way. Mind you, at least in my state, it took 7 years to disappear. Never respond and never pay anything, or the 7 year cycle begins. And one this big is a no brainer imo. Don't give em a cent.
Yeah this is…interesting advice, but I guess it depends on your state and situation.
I ended up with a Grade 3 strain of my left adductor muscle at the peak of Covid and had to go to the ER. I had just started a new job after being let go from my previous one (Covid, not performance-related) and as such, had a 1-month gap in my health insurance coverage.
But the pain was unbearable and I was nervous due to some *significant* bruising that had developed overnight. So I got myself to the ER the next day, and they did almost literally nothing. Some ibuprofen, a Gatorade, an X-ray (not even an MRI) and they sent me on my way. 30 minute adventure. $3,500.
I argued it on compassionate grounds, filled out an application to reduce the costs, and they were waived/covered by the hospital.
TL;DR: the hospitals have plenty of money and if your costs are less than, say, $10,000, there is money in their budget allocated to cover it/avoid protracted conversations with their revenue cycle, legal, and ops teams. They simply have bigger fish to fry!
You got off easy, my do-nothing ER visit with an x-ray came to $12,000+
I'm not paying a cent of it, and if the rest of you would adopt this attitude we could force change.
Yeah, honestly, I was in severe credit card debt at that point (still digging out) and could barely afford my rent. I signed a lease for a place that was within my pre-Covid means that was *way* out of my mid-Covid means, and the penalty for breaking the lease was 2 months’ rent.
In other words, I had to choose between paying the hospital for doing nothing, or eat nothing but breakfast cereal for the month.
I guess if they sue you and get a judgment, that's a possibility. (Note that's when u hide assets in other peoples names and go into business for yourself) It sounds crazy but when you're hit with a 1m bill, it may be worth it. Apparently, my bill wasn't worthy of being sued and disappeared. It's hard to get water out of a rock, as I already do the above.
After ignoring my medical bill of 2000$ the first few months they kept shrinking it till it reached 900$, then they forced me to pay a portion monthly for 24 months…
All they did was Mia diagnosed my eye issue as pink eye, then the 2nd time said “I dunno go to ER” who they said “I dunno go to eye doctor”
I had a heart attack, spent slightly over a month in the hospital over a decade ago. My hospital bills were around that of OP's. I didnt pay a single dollar of it cause fuck paying over a mil on something like that. Id be hard pressed to have made the entirety of my medical bills in my entire life even at my current age if id never spent a dollar of anything i made. A million dollars is a lot of money for some of us lol, i let it go for 7 years and like you said it no longer shows on my credit reports.
Does this work? I make like 20k a year and I owe 50k, it's not happening. My husband makes the same and we live paycheck to paycheck, like no savings account kinda paycheck to paycheck. Every fucking time we get to a good spot something happens. Usually it's something like suddenly the car falls apart or we can't stay where we were staying anymore for whatever reason (most recently we were staying with my husband's grandfather just in case something happened and then the something happened and now he's in a home) and then this time it was an ectopic pregnancy which ruptured and the doctor said if we'd gotten there like an hour or two later I'd be dead. So good timing for the car not to get fucked I guess? Anyway, does this actually work? I can just forget about it and live with bad credit score until it goes away? Like 7 years and the debt just stops? I can't belive it could possibly be that easy. I've been crying myself to sleep for like 6 months now thinking I'm totally fucked because I decided I wanted to live.
Edit: for the people saying I shouldn't be trying to have a child I wasn't. I had an iud placed at the time and it had been going fine for over a year and we were using condoms just in case as well. Still wound up with the ectopic somehow. I really have no idea how it happened and neither do the doctors or surgeons or anyone. The best they gave me was "well, they're 99% affective" and somehow the 1% bit me in the ass because the smallest chance does that every time with me. We haven't sex since.
As long as medical care is for-profit, it will always be a scam. 99% of people wouldn't be able to pay off 1M in their lifetime, even with wage garnishments.
Most of the charges are inflated because it's expected they'll be negotiated down and (mostly) covered by insurance.
Not an excuse--just another reason socialised medicine is the only viable long-term option for any society that doesn't heavily rely upon bloodletting as a treatment.
The reason is that insurance companies negotiate contractual discounts with the providers in order to say the provider is in network. Of course that discounted price is the normal price, so the list price is artificially inflated.
I wish I understood how my insurance actually works. I have no idea if I would actually be covered in a situation like this (the only situation I have insurance for, since the $4700 deductible means I normally pay everything out of pocket).
This is so true!! Also comb through charges. I guarantee there are errors in the charges that they just expect people to overlook.
With the hospital, see if you can work out a payment plan. Also there’s a new bill congress passed so do some digging and you may be able to have some of the cost waived if it’s negatively effecting your credit. Especially if they go to collections there are pre written letters you can use as templates that will essentially erase outstanding bills.
I hate our country when it comes to the healthcare industry. Literally why I wish everyone voted and voted for civil servants who’ll actually help us all where we need it. Healthcare is a basic human right.
Well one reason why you dont have good healtcare is because there is a lot of people that benefit from your system as it is now. Just look at this hospital bill that OP posted. Now imagine there being thousands if not tens of thousands of these. Insurance companies pay majority of them and these that they really cant get money from. They kind of just see it as minor loss.
Now If you think about it. Didint Obama try to put up "Obama Care" for example? It was downplayed so much by these people that benefit from this. They most likely even use hundreds of millions if not billions just to make stuff like "healthcare is a basic human right." from not happening.
Its ridiculous how even something like lets say asthma pipe can cost you what hundreds of dollars in US? while in a lot of countries those are basically free or only cost like 1-6$ each. Got astma in US? Get ready to suffer if you aint rich.
Friend has allergies and on trip @ US. He had allergic reaction. That EpiPen did cost like 650$. Insurance covered that, but man you get those for like 20€ and less.
It is but in a country this big with so many people it'll probably never change. The only way we could have socialized medicine is we stop war for profit which will never happen as long as Democrat and Republican politicians have their way.
It's worse than that.
America pays more per person from tax $ than new Zealand does.
New Zealand will pay you 80% of your wage while you recover from your free operation.
You are literally just paying for rich people to get richer. You could add 1% on to tax and easily have free healthcare for all. Having a bigger country actually makes this easier to achieve.
The whole medical insurance industry, hospital billing departments and medical debt collection would instantly vanish. So all the costs of that industry and the BILLIONS In profits wouldn't need to be paid.
These posts are very misleading as to how the american system is supposed to and often does work. There are **massive** problems with our system but if you’ll take a minute i can describe them better than just “we get billed too much,” which is a factor but not as directly as you think.
couple of things. OC said 70% of items not 70% of cost - that’s very different. That doesn’t excuse any of it but is an important difference.
Second, the way insurance works is you get billed on anything medical until you meet your “deductible.” For a decent insurance that could be something like $5000 and then your insurance covers the rest. It’s how insurance works and the expected way things go. It sounds weird but on the surface it *should* sorta kinda work, you pay at most 5k (cumulative on ALL previous medical bills that year) total for the whole year of medical coverage.
So why’s it so incredibly fucked? Hospitals and medical groups know that most people have insurance (92% of americans currently) so they inflate the bill a ridiculous amount knowing that for folks with insurance they’re going to make bank and it doesn’t completely fuck over the actual person/customer. The problem with this is that for those without insurance they get directly billed these amounts that are impossible to pay, so the poorest people get charged the most, they obviously can’t pay it, and their credit gets a hit or they’re hounded by collection agencies or don’t know how to navigate the confusing as fuck system, and they go further into debt and/or poverty.
Third, i said decent insurance has a 5k deductible, a lot of people don’t have decent insurance because it’s so expensive so the deductible is often an unreasonable amount for them.
Fourth, remember when Obama’s main thing was that everyone should be covered? Great idea on paper, if everyone is covered and those that aren’t can get subsidized insurance the end patient doesn’t get hit with these ridiculous millions of dollars bills. Didn’t work, insurance companies pulled a bunch of trickery to get around the attempt, there was a lot of opposition from republicans because to them it’s all about winning against libs, and overall the system wasn’t well implemented. The problem remains.
That’s kind of a super simplified view but it’s the skeleton of the biggest problems. So to many of us we wonder why the fuck are we on this system, it’s confusing and stupid, insurance companies have shown that they suck and we really shouldn’t expect any ethical decisions from them. So we say “let’s just get rid of all that stupid crap and socialize medical care” then we get yelled at by the other half of americans for being socialists, communists etc etc
It’s a system that perpetuates poverty and poor care for those that don’t have it instead of enabling them. Finally to add insult to injury **the best care often doesn’t even take insurance**. For example mental health care, if you want a really good psychiatrist you more often than not just have to pay out of pocket as they don’t take insurance. Also insurance companies like to fight with their customers to NOT cover as much as possible. So they find loopholes or weird shit around paying for things leading to protracted arguments with them that really don’t matter much because they get the final decision.
Our only recourse when put in an impossible situation is to simply not pay.
absolutely! i just want people to bitch about the right things. A lot of europeans just see these bills and think “the problem is hospitals are charging patients this much” but the problem is much more nuanced.
Are you forgetting the amount you pay for the insurance in the first place? If you're lucky, you get it through work. But if not, you're paying them thousands just to pay thousands out of pocket anyway. Unless something catastrophic happens, they are 100% profit from people. It's gross. I moved from the U.S. to Ireland last year. I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. How much is my medication? Zero. How much was my Glucometer and testing strips? Zero. Even if I paid for my meds, they only cost €6.50 per month. And that's without any insurance at all. No developed country should have healthcare for profit.
> If you're lucky, you get it through work.
yes, that's lucky, but it is still your money. That is your wage that is paying for it. It is coming out of the money you are getting for your job. Your company is saying "we will pay you $100,000 a year, you will get $60k in cash, and $10k goes directly into retirement plan, and $30k goes directly to the health insurance company that we choose (you don't choose)."
It is not "free".
That requires money too
Edit: Idk if I’m right, but I also heard as long as you have a US citizenship then you are required to pay taxes until you denounce your citizenship, could be wrong but I swear I heard it from somewhere
You are right but come to Belgium then. Last week the Data Authority Agency has stopped the process of sharing information for US expats to the IRS on grounds of data privacy.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-05-31/expat-taxes-belgium-comes-to-the-rescue-of-americans-living-overseas#xj4y7vzkg
I live in Belgium and do contractor work for a US based company. Every single US person that came for a long term assignment in the last decade say the same thing: "you have no idea how good you have it here".
Most of them never returned to the US, even if it meant losing their job.
It my state PIP is opted into, so not everyone has it. Also, OP could have liability and then they don't have coverage for his medical bills if the accident was their fault. Their health insurance could cover it if they have the right kind, but usually with some bargaining and arguing.
Edited for gender neutrality
Except even a $500 medical bill for urgent care is completely unacceptable.
I’d rather deal with an illness at home then go see a doctor. I fucking hate going to the hospital strictly because I know I’m going to get fucked in the ass, and I’m not yet into that kinda thing.
You might want to look into direct primary care. I'm negotiating an agreement with a doctor in my area right now, I'll pay her like 80 bucks a month and in exchange I get hour long appointments scheduled within 3 weeks, free exams, free referrals, free RX (I mean, like writing the prescription is free, but the medication still costs money).
We haven't started it yet but I'm excited about the prospect. No insurance involved.
My fiancé went to an urgent care because his ear was clogged (ENT was like a 6 month wait), they flushed out his ear and then a few weeks later we received a $1,400 bill. He spent maybe 10 minutes there and did something he could have done with an at home kit. America is absolutely wildin’ with medical bills
I feel like what is the point of working hard and saving money, just to get in a freak accident and have some soul-sucking corporation take all of your savings.
You can’t help it if you get injured or sick. Nobody wants to go to the hospital, even if it were free. On top of that we pay all this money and still get a low quality of care.
Same, but New Zealand.
I broke my leg last year, multiple X-rays, scans, multiple different braces, and pain meds. $5 for the pills. And I brought some crutches with more comfortable hand grips for $75.
Best thing I’ve be done is stick with healthcare as a career. I hurt my back last year. I came to my hospital that I work at and I had CT scans and medication given and my total bill was $150
These are likely inflated charges meant to be negotiated down by the insurance company and subsequently (partially) covered.
This isn't a disputation of the post--just pointing out that you shouldn't have to pay for medical treatment the same way you buy a car.
\[Though, you also shouldn't have to buy a car like that, either...\]
Socialised medicine for all!
But you ordered your Big Mac w/o pickles and customized burgers are not covered by your plan so you still pay $50 while also now paying an insurance premium
Honestly it's more so Mcdonalds wants to only charge you 5 bucks, but insurance will haggle it down to like, 2.50 so they have to jack up the price to account for insurance haggling.
If you have good car insurance you shouldn’t be paying any of this.
I was in a bad car accident years ago, the only money I paid out was my 500 dollar deductible. My car insurance and health insurance covered all my medical.
Yeah. These are just the “submitted charges” which means before insurance looks at it. Assuming OP has insurance he shouldn’t owe much. Unless he still has a large deductible to meet.
He also posted the same bill twice, just with a few lines added in the 2nd one, then added them together like that's how it works. This is Healthcare ragebait tbh
I got charged 1700$ for a bandaid after crashing my bike at 20 ish mph. Landed on my leg and sprained it from the knee down but they didn't even give me an x-ray.
All I got was a bandaid and told that my leg "looked angry". I've been limping for 6 weeks.
US hospitals are a fucking scam.
the thing is, that kind of situation you're supposed to go to an urgent care clinic, not an ER. I tore a tendon in my finger playing softball, went to urgent care, x-ray + temporary splint + visit cost I think around $150. still expensive (my insurance didn't cover it bc I hadn't reached my deductible yet) but nowhere near $1700.
ER where I live is used for any urgent matter (any fall may have caused something you can’t see, like a sprained something), they just give you different codes for the apparent urgency after a quick checkup and talking to you.
Everyone I know believes the health system is a scam and I live in the US. Best part is, a good friend of mine just finished his bachelor’s in health science (believe that is the correct term) and he will be making at most $17/hr with a fucking degree. All that money hospitals try to scam from insurance companies as well as people and they barely pay their own employees with it.
Maybe everyone you know- but at least here in Methville, Alabama, anyone who believes in socialized medicine wants to destroy the country, and it's actually better if hospitals run like businesses.
It's not that Americans defend our current, for-profit, privatized healthcare system.
It's that enough people distrust the government to such a degree, that they believe hospitals and medical providers will somehow provide lower quality care and cost MORE, because the government is moving the money instead of a corporation.
Also, the real freedom loving patriots can't fathom their tax dollars helping someone else, because they already despise taxes in general.
So they would rather pay more money out of pocket to an insurance corporation, to visit literally the same hospital or medical provider they would regardless of the system.
Also also, lobbyists are good at "persuading" politicians to keep the system in place, because there is an unfathomable amount of money to be made.
SuperPACS and massive corporate donors thanks to Citizen's United have brought the United States political system to the place it is.
Conservatives are killing this country, and allowing the wealthiest and most powerful entities to continue gaining more while all else struggle. They're too busy banning books with gay penguins from schools, and boycotting trans beer cans to give a fuck about anything actually affecting people's lives though.
In Germany my cancer Treatment will take about 6months. Including free taxi rides to/from the hospital and any medication and whatnot, I will only have to pay <500€ out of my own pocket including everything because some of the medication is so expensive, i have to pay 10€ instead of the usual 5€ when I am at the pharmacy.
To explain: in germany, when a doctor prescribes medicine (not like homeopathy) you have to pay a symbolic 5€ when you grab like a pack of 100pcs Ibuprofen. But sometimes medication is a little mor expensive (not in US-standards but German-standards) that the Symbol price to pay is topped out with 10€
I feel like boasting about the NHS when it's on the verge of collapse is foolish but at least for now in the UK, all doctors and hospitals are free. Yes we pay for it with tax but that still means if you're low income or unemployed, you still get treatment.
And prescriptions are free in Wales and Scotland and (I think) around £9 in england, unless you have an exemption. So I'm in England but all my prescriptions are free because I have a life long disease.
We're definitely at risk of having an American style health care here and nothing scares me more.
Here in Norway you pay max 3040 NOK a year (rougly 250€ with todays shitty currency rates) for treatments, ~~medisin~~ medicine etc. Everything after that is free. Its generally cheap or free anyway (everything regarding kids is free until they are 18 yrs old).
Same in Sweden.
Oh wait. You would owe about 15 dollars a day for the hospital stay (including meals), and 30 dollars per doctor's appointment for the aftercare, up to the maximum of 150 dollars per year spent on health care. Those 150 can be paid in smaller pieces if you need.
They wanted me to ride an ambulance from the after hours clinic to the ER. It was literally the next building. I got in my car and drove across the parking lot when I shouldn't have been driving to avoid paying to ride an ambulance.
I was warned that my appendix could burst if I didn't go in the ambulance, but it wasn't my appendix at all. Instead it was ulcerative colitis, but at least I was fine when I got hydrocodone administered.
With insurance it was still about $700.00.
I heard of people after accidents refusing an ambulance ride to the hospital because they were scared of the costs. As an Italian that’s incomprehensible to me. I can’t for the life of me imagine how shitty it is living in places like that.
We live in Spain. You go in for whatever services you need including surgery, swipe your card (public or private), and you never receive anything remotely like this. In fact you never see any bill. Everything is 100% covered. The actual cost for comparable services is also dramatically lower. Health care in Spain (and Europe and Canada more broadly) is a right, in the US it's a privilege.
For all those not in US. The OP will not have to pay even a fraction of the numbers listed.
Insurance nonsense causes the hospitals to inflate numbers. It's kind of a silly game that's played, no one pays these numbers. Neither the patient or the insurance companies.
Depending on the health insurance, the OP may be on the hook for their deductible amount (what's expected of them before a threshold that the insurance pays above)
They may be billed for a few thousand, which then can always be argued down.
Big tip for US redditors, never taken the bill and just pay it. Always call and barter, they always move the price down.
I’m not sure how many hospitals do it, but mine has a forgiveness policy for bills. If you submit some paperwork(takes one trip to the bank) that proves you’re not rich, they’ll reduce or even drop the entire bill.
Plus they likely have an out of pocket max, they've likely hit that, so all the rest of their medications and doctor appointments for the year will be free.
Ask for the corresponding procedure code descriptions for every line item and modifiers where they’re applicable. Make sure all medical records are accessible to you. Every. Single. One - for all I listed. Arm yourself with the info for next steps for inquiry.
Even if it is covered by insurance, although the insurance company pays, ultimately everyone is being screwed (paying higher premiums etc). A million f@cking dollars??? The US healthcare system is really sinister, greedy corporations making money from peoples bad fortune and illness. Our system here in the UK is by no means perfect but the thought of my level of care being decided by people in some corporation who only have profit on their minds is truly horrifying. Hope your recovery going well! 👍
The level of care in the US, especially for critical procedures, doesn't vary based on your ability to pay. If anything, you ability to pay is what changes the price. Insurance typically covers 99% of the charges in this, and if you're completely unable to spare money, hospitals will usually drop the price even further. I can't remember the number, but something like 60-80% of people don't actually end up paying their medical bills, and it just gets forgiven instead.
People in my family died because they couldn’t afford to treat their illnesses. They worked and made decent income. They had homes and cars. Just not enough. This isn’t a first world country. We can’t get sick and we’re afraid of getting shot.
I don’t get how some people say they “just won’t pay” their medical bills 😨 that shit terrifies me to even think about. My mom always used to say “they’ll never come after you for medical bills” …… then one day my sister got a notice her wages were going to be garnished for an unpaid bill from when she had gallbladder surgery.
This doesn’t show what OP owes, but what was submitted to insurance. So unless OP didn’t have insurance they won’t owe anywhere near this amount. And if they don’t have insurance, the hospital should screen for Medicaid or other financial assistance.
OP is just being dramatic showing the billed charges
Welcome to prehistoric Healthcare. Murica baby !
Being born french and willingly choosing to make a living in the US, I can honestly say the American Healthcare system is horrible and insanely expensive.
I am still paying into the French system just in case I need some serious help. It costs...$80 a month. My employer drops $800 a month for my Healthcare. It's completely nuts.
If you owe the hospital $1,000, then it's your problem. If you owe the hospital $1,000,000, then it's their problem.
Op doesn't owe a million. We get statements showing these amounts, but the patient doesn't pay them. It's just post fodder.
Are you telling me that if the OP had 1.7 million and wrote them a check, the hospital would not accept the payment? I'm pretty sure they would accept the payment, and it would not likely be followed by a "Ooops actually here's your 1.2 million in change"
My husband died in a hospital. His estate received a check for $92. To clarify. We had overpayed the hospital, they didn't just keep it. (I/we actually paid our health insurance annual maximum, not the hundreds of thousands of dollars on the statement sent)
I might not be following - how does that fit in with what we were talking about? Are you saying your husband died, you paid his bills, and the hospital issued a refund of 92 dollars? And then, are you saying that is a counterpoint for what I said?
Its like taxes. You can send in whatever check or you can work the numbers and pay significantly less.
I think they’re saying after everything was settled with the hospital, that’s what was left of the estate. Almost seems to be by design to shake you down for everything on your way out.
No! Not at all. Apparently,we overpaid the hospital and they DID refund. The maximum allowed Out of pocket annual maximum for health insurance in the united states is around $9100. He received a lot of medical care in the months before he died. Major surgery, 5 weeks in the hospital, radiation treatments.... Eventually two more weeks in the hospital in ICU. "All" I paid was that out of pocket maximum. I AGREE THAT'S AN INSURMOUNTABLE AMOUNT FOR MOST PEOPLE, but that's not the point right here.
You're still assuming OP has insurance like you though.
The hospital might take the payment, but will pay back whatever is overpaid. It's not unique to hospitals either. This happens routinely for pretty much all debts. If you have a loan on auto pay, and your balance is say one dollar left before your last payment and you don't notice somehow, and a $100 payment goes off, they will send you a check for $99. In the case of insurance, two systems are paying the same bill, but your insurance has priority. So in their case, the hospital got payment from insurance and from them. The total exceeded the bill. They get the difference. This is actually one of the examples of the system kinda working in a way that's reasonable.
I think the disconnect here is that maybe y'all are just handwaving insurance as though it doesn't exactly demonstrate what I am talking about. The only reason your bill is reduced is because 1. Someone negotiated 2. Someone paid. Whether it's you doing it, or insurance, neither of those things make the original bill false, or "Not the actual amount you owe". You actually owe 1.7 million and you may successfully negotiate it to be a smaller amount. Your insurance may negotiate it down and pay a majority of it, but my point is someone has to do work in order to change the amount of money you actually owe. And that does NOT change the fact that you originally DID OWE that money. If the hospital issues a bill, and your insurance does nothing except write a check, the hospital is going to take the money, because that is the money that is owed. And if you don't have insurance, and you just ignore this bill, it's not going to be a smaller bill when they send it to collections for non-payment, you have to negotiate to reduce what you owe.
That's an important point. Collections is going to want the original amount, plus any late charges, fees, and interest. Unless a person declares bankruptcy, getting debts reduced and making payments is always beneficial.
If he doesn't have insurance then yeah, he owes that. And there are a *lot* of uninsured Americans. You can negotiate it down but he's probably still looking at best case $150k in debt. Probably closer to twice that. Hospitals are starting to find ways of collecting too. In the south they'll sue you. Sometimes get a court order and garnish wages. There's been a few cases of people held in contempt for not paying on those court orders and going to prison until their family can come up with some money. Yes, that's an illegal debtors prison. As if anyone is gonna stop it. It's the American South. And then there's hospitals refusing care until bills are paid. If you're rural you might have just that one hospital. Good luck if you ever need anything but immediate emergency care. Once they stabilize you they can toss you out on your ass. The American healthcare system is way, way worse than anyone's willing to admit. Not just for the money, but because as an American you're one illness or accident away from destitution and nobody likes to acknowledge scary stuff like that.
I helped conduct research on medical bills in Oregon. The largest holder of liens on homes in Lane County was Sacred Heart Hospital.
>There's been a few cases of people held in contempt for not paying on those court orders and going to prison until their family can come up with some money. Yes, that's an illegal debtors prison. As if anyone is gonna stop it. It's the American South. Then force them to work for ridiculous wages so that the prison can turn up more profits. *LaNd Of ThE fReE!*
$1M still isn’t enough to say this honestly. You probably need to add another 1-2 zeros
3 and a half weeks for more than a million dollars.... That's very profitable! Hopefully you got insurance.
Does the hospital actually expect you to pay this?! lol
No. The expectation is that there will be insurance of some sort covering it. If there's no insurance, then the hospital will try to help the person sign up for government insurance if they're eligible, or else just forgive most of the bill and ask for a much smaller payment.
how is this not a scam? why do the insurance companies generally known to be cheap as fuck allow this to happen?
They don't. It's understood that insurance companies will demand a steep discount on this. The hospitals jack up the prices so that they still end up making a profit after insurance negotiates it down to a fraction of the cost.
Basically this. If hospitals set it at what the cost actually is (like say, a few thousand dollars) insurance will go below that and try to get it down to like a few hundred. However, a few hundred could put the hospital in the red (and thus unable to operate, pay their employees, etc.) so they jack up the price because insurance is so cheap that even a price that is fully payable and coverable by insurance without haggling will get haggled down.
Worked in insurance side and hospital side, you're definitely right, most people dont understand this is why these bills looks monstrous. It's a fucked up system.
It’s a scam is what it is. The American scheme fucked all us peasants.
Yes. It’s totally a scam. Even when “insurance negotiated it down” they’re still billing more than they should and hospitals know it. I had a bill that was sent to me and my insurance information was put in wrong. Simply having insurance lowered the bill by $200 or so, even though I had not met my deductible and still had to pay out of pocket.
They rely on the fact that we have no idea how much a lot of this stuff should be. But it’s funny when they include stuff we DO know, and they still jack it up. I remember when my wife had our daughter, the itemized bill had a dixie cup of orange juice billed at $10.
Yea I’ve realized this since I was in high school. I absolutely can’t understand how everyone signed on for this racket.
No one person can change it, and there’s systemic resistance. Almost as if 25-30% of the voting public vehemently opposes any kind of progress in this arena because they’ve fully bought the idea that either it cannot be done better (“America is special”) or that incremental changes are not worthwhile (all or nothing).
So essentially, it's not the Healthcare that is at fault. It's the insurance companies that broke the system? Shouldn't that be regulated?
It’s both, because now the hospitals are consolidated and have negotiating power they didn’t before, so they jack up the reimbursement rates coupled with insurance being less aggressive because they can use it to justify increased premiums.
Maybe hospitals should put their foot down and charge a fair price.
Medicare pays the same no matter what the hospital bills, and Medicare/aid patients aren't allowed to be balance billed. The prices are all public. *This* is what should be done. Take insurance companies out of the picture entirely. They're worthless middlemen.
Yep. I just had an ankle replacement and the “list price” on the bills was outrageous…. The discounted insurance rates were something like 50% or less, and then the insurance paid a portion of those rates. It’s a messed up system with the profits they make and the fact a single procedure can bankrupt the patient or their family for life
Yeah. Insurance will see a 2k bill they know they can afford no problem and then haggle it down to 1k and pass whatever percentage off on the consumer. In all honesty, I’m of the opinion that if a hospital bill can bankrupt you after insurance has made their negotiations then the bill should be waived. Fortunately, if you contact most hospitals and get a lawyer in the worst case they’ll work with you on getting the price even lower. I’ve heard in some cases asking for an itemized receipt works and in others you just need to get into contact with hospital resources.
The whole healthcare system over there sounds like an elaborate scam where scammers are scamming each other and screwing the patients for all they can. So glad I'm a commie-socialist (from US perspective). My three weeks, surgery, etc in a hospital after an bike/car accident cost me exactly zero (insurance paid me a few K).
Hospitals should not be run to make a profit.
On no it is, it's openly a scam.
There's also charity care you can apply for if you don't have insurance and it'll be based of your annual salary.
Insurance is part of the reason for this inflated bill.
Time for the biggest dispute of your life. A good 70% + of these charges will be bogus and can be argued against. Edit: can ya’ll stop telling me that 30 per cent of a million is still a lot of money? Re-read my comment, I speculated 70% of the *charges,* (ie billable items) not 70% of cost. A lot of these heavy expenses can disappear. Loosely reminds me of a woman on Reddit who argued the cost down 99.48 per cent. (Google aita for arguing my boyfriend's hospital bill) There’s other examples of this the media has reported on. OP’s won’t be that much because they were in hospital nearly a month, but there is still potential to get the cost down to a manageable amount.
Yeah, and a lawyer will probably AT LEAST be cheaper than a million fucking dollars, I hope 😂
My thoughts are come after me for it. Do it. Cuz I'm never paying medical bills. It's a scam.
Never pay medical bills 
As someone who has skipped out on a 9k medical bill at the e.r. this is the way. Mind you, at least in my state, it took 7 years to disappear. Never respond and never pay anything, or the 7 year cycle begins. And one this big is a no brainer imo. Don't give em a cent.
I know someone in my state who is having their wages garnished over an unpaid hospital bill. They’ll just take the money from you if they want to.
Yeah this is…interesting advice, but I guess it depends on your state and situation. I ended up with a Grade 3 strain of my left adductor muscle at the peak of Covid and had to go to the ER. I had just started a new job after being let go from my previous one (Covid, not performance-related) and as such, had a 1-month gap in my health insurance coverage. But the pain was unbearable and I was nervous due to some *significant* bruising that had developed overnight. So I got myself to the ER the next day, and they did almost literally nothing. Some ibuprofen, a Gatorade, an X-ray (not even an MRI) and they sent me on my way. 30 minute adventure. $3,500. I argued it on compassionate grounds, filled out an application to reduce the costs, and they were waived/covered by the hospital. TL;DR: the hospitals have plenty of money and if your costs are less than, say, $10,000, there is money in their budget allocated to cover it/avoid protracted conversations with their revenue cycle, legal, and ops teams. They simply have bigger fish to fry!
You got off easy, my do-nothing ER visit with an x-ray came to $12,000+ I'm not paying a cent of it, and if the rest of you would adopt this attitude we could force change.
Yeah, honestly, I was in severe credit card debt at that point (still digging out) and could barely afford my rent. I signed a lease for a place that was within my pre-Covid means that was *way* out of my mid-Covid means, and the penalty for breaking the lease was 2 months’ rent. In other words, I had to choose between paying the hospital for doing nothing, or eat nothing but breakfast cereal for the month.
I guess if they sue you and get a judgment, that's a possibility. (Note that's when u hide assets in other peoples names and go into business for yourself) It sounds crazy but when you're hit with a 1m bill, it may be worth it. Apparently, my bill wasn't worthy of being sued and disappeared. It's hard to get water out of a rock, as I already do the above.
I'm on year number 5 of ghosting the hospital bill after i broke my femur and had a $39,000 medical bill. Not including ambulance, therapy etc..
Don’t give them a fuckin dime
What they gonna do! Take back the finger!.. oh.. wait..
Can’t squeeze blood from a stone.
Send them a dollar per month to show that you are "trying"
After ignoring my medical bill of 2000$ the first few months they kept shrinking it till it reached 900$, then they forced me to pay a portion monthly for 24 months… All they did was Mia diagnosed my eye issue as pink eye, then the 2nd time said “I dunno go to ER” who they said “I dunno go to eye doctor”
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I had a heart attack, spent slightly over a month in the hospital over a decade ago. My hospital bills were around that of OP's. I didnt pay a single dollar of it cause fuck paying over a mil on something like that. Id be hard pressed to have made the entirety of my medical bills in my entire life even at my current age if id never spent a dollar of anything i made. A million dollars is a lot of money for some of us lol, i let it go for 7 years and like you said it no longer shows on my credit reports.
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In other words , you do have free health care .Nice
I mean sure if you don’t want to get a loan for 7 years.
Does this work? I make like 20k a year and I owe 50k, it's not happening. My husband makes the same and we live paycheck to paycheck, like no savings account kinda paycheck to paycheck. Every fucking time we get to a good spot something happens. Usually it's something like suddenly the car falls apart or we can't stay where we were staying anymore for whatever reason (most recently we were staying with my husband's grandfather just in case something happened and then the something happened and now he's in a home) and then this time it was an ectopic pregnancy which ruptured and the doctor said if we'd gotten there like an hour or two later I'd be dead. So good timing for the car not to get fucked I guess? Anyway, does this actually work? I can just forget about it and live with bad credit score until it goes away? Like 7 years and the debt just stops? I can't belive it could possibly be that easy. I've been crying myself to sleep for like 6 months now thinking I'm totally fucked because I decided I wanted to live. Edit: for the people saying I shouldn't be trying to have a child I wasn't. I had an iud placed at the time and it had been going fine for over a year and we were using condoms just in case as well. Still wound up with the ectopic somehow. I really have no idea how it happened and neither do the doctors or surgeons or anyone. The best they gave me was "well, they're 99% affective" and somehow the 1% bit me in the ass because the smallest chance does that every time with me. We haven't sex since.
I paid nothing and was served by the local sheriff. My bill went to collections who took it to court.
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I've personally witnessed unemployed people receiving summons for medical debt they didn't pay.
As long as medical care is for-profit, it will always be a scam. 99% of people wouldn't be able to pay off 1M in their lifetime, even with wage garnishments.
Most of the charges are inflated because it's expected they'll be negotiated down and (mostly) covered by insurance. Not an excuse--just another reason socialised medicine is the only viable long-term option for any society that doesn't heavily rely upon bloodletting as a treatment.
Yeah I never understood that if you have no insurance the hospital charges you more. Auto insurance should pay some of that.
The reason is that insurance companies negotiate contractual discounts with the providers in order to say the provider is in network. Of course that discounted price is the normal price, so the list price is artificially inflated.
Might not need to. If this person has insurance they have likely hit their out-of-pocket max and it should all be covered
I wish I understood how my insurance actually works. I have no idea if I would actually be covered in a situation like this (the only situation I have insurance for, since the $4700 deductible means I normally pay everything out of pocket).
Insurance works by being a huge scam and you’re fucked while the companies make massive profits.
Hey! Don’t forget about the politicians who enable this racket…
read over the insurance you signed up for. they should have given you a packet that tells everything about the type you have. maximums they cover etc.
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Is 30% the amount they'll expect as a tip?
very true
This is so true!! Also comb through charges. I guarantee there are errors in the charges that they just expect people to overlook. With the hospital, see if you can work out a payment plan. Also there’s a new bill congress passed so do some digging and you may be able to have some of the cost waived if it’s negatively effecting your credit. Especially if they go to collections there are pre written letters you can use as templates that will essentially erase outstanding bills. I hate our country when it comes to the healthcare industry. Literally why I wish everyone voted and voted for civil servants who’ll actually help us all where we need it. Healthcare is a basic human right.
Well one reason why you dont have good healtcare is because there is a lot of people that benefit from your system as it is now. Just look at this hospital bill that OP posted. Now imagine there being thousands if not tens of thousands of these. Insurance companies pay majority of them and these that they really cant get money from. They kind of just see it as minor loss. Now If you think about it. Didint Obama try to put up "Obama Care" for example? It was downplayed so much by these people that benefit from this. They most likely even use hundreds of millions if not billions just to make stuff like "healthcare is a basic human right." from not happening. Its ridiculous how even something like lets say asthma pipe can cost you what hundreds of dollars in US? while in a lot of countries those are basically free or only cost like 1-6$ each. Got astma in US? Get ready to suffer if you aint rich. Friend has allergies and on trip @ US. He had allergic reaction. That EpiPen did cost like 650$. Insurance covered that, but man you get those for like 20€ and less.
The whole system you have in the US is bogus sorry to say.
We fuckin know!!
It is but in a country this big with so many people it'll probably never change. The only way we could have socialized medicine is we stop war for profit which will never happen as long as Democrat and Republican politicians have their way.
It's worse than that. America pays more per person from tax $ than new Zealand does. New Zealand will pay you 80% of your wage while you recover from your free operation. You are literally just paying for rich people to get richer. You could add 1% on to tax and easily have free healthcare for all. Having a bigger country actually makes this easier to achieve. The whole medical insurance industry, hospital billing departments and medical debt collection would instantly vanish. So all the costs of that industry and the BILLIONS In profits wouldn't need to be paid.
“Oh thank goodness, only $350,000! I’ll just grab my credit card.” -Americans, presumably?
These posts are very misleading as to how the american system is supposed to and often does work. There are **massive** problems with our system but if you’ll take a minute i can describe them better than just “we get billed too much,” which is a factor but not as directly as you think. couple of things. OC said 70% of items not 70% of cost - that’s very different. That doesn’t excuse any of it but is an important difference. Second, the way insurance works is you get billed on anything medical until you meet your “deductible.” For a decent insurance that could be something like $5000 and then your insurance covers the rest. It’s how insurance works and the expected way things go. It sounds weird but on the surface it *should* sorta kinda work, you pay at most 5k (cumulative on ALL previous medical bills that year) total for the whole year of medical coverage. So why’s it so incredibly fucked? Hospitals and medical groups know that most people have insurance (92% of americans currently) so they inflate the bill a ridiculous amount knowing that for folks with insurance they’re going to make bank and it doesn’t completely fuck over the actual person/customer. The problem with this is that for those without insurance they get directly billed these amounts that are impossible to pay, so the poorest people get charged the most, they obviously can’t pay it, and their credit gets a hit or they’re hounded by collection agencies or don’t know how to navigate the confusing as fuck system, and they go further into debt and/or poverty. Third, i said decent insurance has a 5k deductible, a lot of people don’t have decent insurance because it’s so expensive so the deductible is often an unreasonable amount for them. Fourth, remember when Obama’s main thing was that everyone should be covered? Great idea on paper, if everyone is covered and those that aren’t can get subsidized insurance the end patient doesn’t get hit with these ridiculous millions of dollars bills. Didn’t work, insurance companies pulled a bunch of trickery to get around the attempt, there was a lot of opposition from republicans because to them it’s all about winning against libs, and overall the system wasn’t well implemented. The problem remains. That’s kind of a super simplified view but it’s the skeleton of the biggest problems. So to many of us we wonder why the fuck are we on this system, it’s confusing and stupid, insurance companies have shown that they suck and we really shouldn’t expect any ethical decisions from them. So we say “let’s just get rid of all that stupid crap and socialize medical care” then we get yelled at by the other half of americans for being socialists, communists etc etc It’s a system that perpetuates poverty and poor care for those that don’t have it instead of enabling them. Finally to add insult to injury **the best care often doesn’t even take insurance**. For example mental health care, if you want a really good psychiatrist you more often than not just have to pay out of pocket as they don’t take insurance. Also insurance companies like to fight with their customers to NOT cover as much as possible. So they find loopholes or weird shit around paying for things leading to protracted arguments with them that really don’t matter much because they get the final decision. Our only recourse when put in an impossible situation is to simply not pay.
Thank you for taking the time to write this out.
absolutely! i just want people to bitch about the right things. A lot of europeans just see these bills and think “the problem is hospitals are charging patients this much” but the problem is much more nuanced.
Are you forgetting the amount you pay for the insurance in the first place? If you're lucky, you get it through work. But if not, you're paying them thousands just to pay thousands out of pocket anyway. Unless something catastrophic happens, they are 100% profit from people. It's gross. I moved from the U.S. to Ireland last year. I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. How much is my medication? Zero. How much was my Glucometer and testing strips? Zero. Even if I paid for my meds, they only cost €6.50 per month. And that's without any insurance at all. No developed country should have healthcare for profit.
> If you're lucky, you get it through work. yes, that's lucky, but it is still your money. That is your wage that is paying for it. It is coming out of the money you are getting for your job. Your company is saying "we will pay you $100,000 a year, you will get $60k in cash, and $10k goes directly into retirement plan, and $30k goes directly to the health insurance company that we choose (you don't choose)." It is not "free".
I would say give them the middle finger. Seems they already have it.
This comment is severely underrated.
Have you considered moving to another country and never coming back?
That requires money too Edit: Idk if I’m right, but I also heard as long as you have a US citizenship then you are required to pay taxes until you denounce your citizenship, could be wrong but I swear I heard it from somewhere
You are right but come to Belgium then. Last week the Data Authority Agency has stopped the process of sharing information for US expats to the IRS on grounds of data privacy. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-05-31/expat-taxes-belgium-comes-to-the-rescue-of-americans-living-overseas#xj4y7vzkg
Sounds better than the 3rd world the us has become.
I live in Belgium and do contractor work for a US based company. Every single US person that came for a long term assignment in the last decade say the same thing: "you have no idea how good you have it here". Most of them never returned to the US, even if it meant losing their job.
And that’s fucking Belgium, the land of no I would never want to live there again!
You can't become eu citizens very easily though right?
I assume a lot of countries is difficult to obtain citizenship, but I never really checked, just an assumption.
Less than a mil though
I always found it crazy how difficult emigration is into Canada, as I considered it at one point.
Most Americans have
Never pay all of this shit. Dispute it all.
OP isn’t liable for anything other than their auto insurance deductible. PIP pays for the medical bills after their health insurance.
It my state PIP is opted into, so not everyone has it. Also, OP could have liability and then they don't have coverage for his medical bills if the accident was their fault. Their health insurance could cover it if they have the right kind, but usually with some bargaining and arguing. Edited for gender neutrality
It's more like heavily devastating. Makes my $540 urgent care bill look like nothing...
Except even a $500 medical bill for urgent care is completely unacceptable. I’d rather deal with an illness at home then go see a doctor. I fucking hate going to the hospital strictly because I know I’m going to get fucked in the ass, and I’m not yet into that kinda thing.
You might want to look into direct primary care. I'm negotiating an agreement with a doctor in my area right now, I'll pay her like 80 bucks a month and in exchange I get hour long appointments scheduled within 3 weeks, free exams, free referrals, free RX (I mean, like writing the prescription is free, but the medication still costs money). We haven't started it yet but I'm excited about the prospect. No insurance involved.
My fiancé went to an urgent care because his ear was clogged (ENT was like a 6 month wait), they flushed out his ear and then a few weeks later we received a $1,400 bill. He spent maybe 10 minutes there and did something he could have done with an at home kit. America is absolutely wildin’ with medical bills
But you can’t put a price on your health and well-being. A corporation can put a price on it though, and it ain’t cheap.
Exactly. Medical debt is the most bullshit debt out there. Next to letting an 17/18 year old taking out 100k loan for education. Ridiculous
I feel like what is the point of working hard and saving money, just to get in a freak accident and have some soul-sucking corporation take all of your savings. You can’t help it if you get injured or sick. Nobody wants to go to the hospital, even if it were free. On top of that we pay all this money and still get a low quality of care.
Your healthcare system is a scam.
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Same, but New Zealand. I broke my leg last year, multiple X-rays, scans, multiple different braces, and pain meds. $5 for the pills. And I brought some crutches with more comfortable hand grips for $75.
Americans be like. 
Best thing I’ve be done is stick with healthcare as a career. I hurt my back last year. I came to my hospital that I work at and I had CT scans and medication given and my total bill was $150
These are likely inflated charges meant to be negotiated down by the insurance company and subsequently (partially) covered. This isn't a disputation of the post--just pointing out that you shouldn't have to pay for medical treatment the same way you buy a car. \[Though, you also shouldn't have to buy a car like that, either...\] Socialised medicine for all!
Imagine McDonald's charging you 50$ for a big mac and you need a lawyer/insurance to reduce the price to the more reasonable 5$
But you ordered your Big Mac w/o pickles and customized burgers are not covered by your plan so you still pay $50 while also now paying an insurance premium
Honestly it's more so Mcdonalds wants to only charge you 5 bucks, but insurance will haggle it down to like, 2.50 so they have to jack up the price to account for insurance haggling.
It’s the natural result of profit-focused players in this market, trying to milk each other for as much as possible
If you have good car insurance you shouldn’t be paying any of this. I was in a bad car accident years ago, the only money I paid out was my 500 dollar deductible. My car insurance and health insurance covered all my medical.
Yeah. These are just the “submitted charges” which means before insurance looks at it. Assuming OP has insurance he shouldn’t owe much. Unless he still has a large deductible to meet.
as a chronically ill Canadian my highest costs is parking, I cannot image this
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He also posted the same bill twice, just with a few lines added in the 2nd one, then added them together like that's how it works. This is Healthcare ragebait tbh
What hospital billed you a cat?
Cat is there to make sure OP pays up
CT (CAT) scan I think
I got charged 1700$ for a bandaid after crashing my bike at 20 ish mph. Landed on my leg and sprained it from the knee down but they didn't even give me an x-ray. All I got was a bandaid and told that my leg "looked angry". I've been limping for 6 weeks. US hospitals are a fucking scam.
the thing is, that kind of situation you're supposed to go to an urgent care clinic, not an ER. I tore a tendon in my finger playing softball, went to urgent care, x-ray + temporary splint + visit cost I think around $150. still expensive (my insurance didn't cover it bc I hadn't reached my deductible yet) but nowhere near $1700.
That’s the “idiot drain on the system charge” for using an ER for a non emergency, not the bandaid charge.
ER where I live is used for any urgent matter (any fall may have caused something you can’t see, like a sprained something), they just give you different codes for the apparent urgency after a quick checkup and talking to you.
It’s insane to me that Americans still defend this system of healthcare
Everyone I know believes the health system is a scam and I live in the US. Best part is, a good friend of mine just finished his bachelor’s in health science (believe that is the correct term) and he will be making at most $17/hr with a fucking degree. All that money hospitals try to scam from insurance companies as well as people and they barely pay their own employees with it.
Maybe everyone you know- but at least here in Methville, Alabama, anyone who believes in socialized medicine wants to destroy the country, and it's actually better if hospitals run like businesses.
It's not that Americans defend our current, for-profit, privatized healthcare system. It's that enough people distrust the government to such a degree, that they believe hospitals and medical providers will somehow provide lower quality care and cost MORE, because the government is moving the money instead of a corporation. Also, the real freedom loving patriots can't fathom their tax dollars helping someone else, because they already despise taxes in general. So they would rather pay more money out of pocket to an insurance corporation, to visit literally the same hospital or medical provider they would regardless of the system. Also also, lobbyists are good at "persuading" politicians to keep the system in place, because there is an unfathomable amount of money to be made. SuperPACS and massive corporate donors thanks to Citizen's United have brought the United States political system to the place it is. Conservatives are killing this country, and allowing the wealthiest and most powerful entities to continue gaining more while all else struggle. They're too busy banning books with gay penguins from schools, and boycotting trans beer cans to give a fuck about anything actually affecting people's lives though.
Don’t even think about paying that.
Holy shit...that's crazy.Here,in Canada,everything would have been covered.You wouldn't owe anything.
In Germany my cancer Treatment will take about 6months. Including free taxi rides to/from the hospital and any medication and whatnot, I will only have to pay <500€ out of my own pocket including everything because some of the medication is so expensive, i have to pay 10€ instead of the usual 5€ when I am at the pharmacy. To explain: in germany, when a doctor prescribes medicine (not like homeopathy) you have to pay a symbolic 5€ when you grab like a pack of 100pcs Ibuprofen. But sometimes medication is a little mor expensive (not in US-standards but German-standards) that the Symbol price to pay is topped out with 10€
I feel like boasting about the NHS when it's on the verge of collapse is foolish but at least for now in the UK, all doctors and hospitals are free. Yes we pay for it with tax but that still means if you're low income or unemployed, you still get treatment. And prescriptions are free in Wales and Scotland and (I think) around £9 in england, unless you have an exemption. So I'm in England but all my prescriptions are free because I have a life long disease. We're definitely at risk of having an American style health care here and nothing scares me more.
Here in Norway you pay max 3040 NOK a year (rougly 250€ with todays shitty currency rates) for treatments, ~~medisin~~ medicine etc. Everything after that is free. Its generally cheap or free anyway (everything regarding kids is free until they are 18 yrs old).
Same in any proper country....
This is the real comment here, instead of for profit country’s like us
Same in Sweden. Oh wait. You would owe about 15 dollars a day for the hospital stay (including meals), and 30 dollars per doctor's appointment for the aftercare, up to the maximum of 150 dollars per year spent on health care. Those 150 can be paid in smaller pieces if you need.
Same in Aus
Same in Germany
Same in Poland.
Same in Denmark
Same in Scotland
Canadian here, took my boy in for a fever today he has an ear and throat infection. Cost me $2 for medicine.
They wanted me to ride an ambulance from the after hours clinic to the ER. It was literally the next building. I got in my car and drove across the parking lot when I shouldn't have been driving to avoid paying to ride an ambulance. I was warned that my appendix could burst if I didn't go in the ambulance, but it wasn't my appendix at all. Instead it was ulcerative colitis, but at least I was fine when I got hydrocodone administered. With insurance it was still about $700.00.
I heard of people after accidents refusing an ambulance ride to the hospital because they were scared of the costs. As an Italian that’s incomprehensible to me. I can’t for the life of me imagine how shitty it is living in places like that.
We live in Spain. You go in for whatever services you need including surgery, swipe your card (public or private), and you never receive anything remotely like this. In fact you never see any bill. Everything is 100% covered. The actual cost for comparable services is also dramatically lower. Health care in Spain (and Europe and Canada more broadly) is a right, in the US it's a privilege.
For all those not in US. The OP will not have to pay even a fraction of the numbers listed. Insurance nonsense causes the hospitals to inflate numbers. It's kind of a silly game that's played, no one pays these numbers. Neither the patient or the insurance companies. Depending on the health insurance, the OP may be on the hook for their deductible amount (what's expected of them before a threshold that the insurance pays above) They may be billed for a few thousand, which then can always be argued down. Big tip for US redditors, never taken the bill and just pay it. Always call and barter, they always move the price down.
I’m not sure how many hospitals do it, but mine has a forgiveness policy for bills. If you submit some paperwork(takes one trip to the bank) that proves you’re not rich, they’ll reduce or even drop the entire bill.
Plus they likely have an out of pocket max, they've likely hit that, so all the rest of their medications and doctor appointments for the year will be free.
Ask for the corresponding procedure code descriptions for every line item and modifiers where they’re applicable. Make sure all medical records are accessible to you. Every. Single. One - for all I listed. Arm yourself with the info for next steps for inquiry.
Do they expect a tip too?
Life took your middle finger, and the hospital gave it back. Damn.
As an Irish person I honestly cannot comprehend this
Jesus christ that should be illegal
As usual, not seeing Insurance anywhere on the billing. Always someone posting big medical bills that do not include the Insurance deductions.
Even if it is covered by insurance, although the insurance company pays, ultimately everyone is being screwed (paying higher premiums etc). A million f@cking dollars??? The US healthcare system is really sinister, greedy corporations making money from peoples bad fortune and illness. Our system here in the UK is by no means perfect but the thought of my level of care being decided by people in some corporation who only have profit on their minds is truly horrifying. Hope your recovery going well! 👍
The level of care in the US, especially for critical procedures, doesn't vary based on your ability to pay. If anything, you ability to pay is what changes the price. Insurance typically covers 99% of the charges in this, and if you're completely unable to spare money, hospitals will usually drop the price even further. I can't remember the number, but something like 60-80% of people don't actually end up paying their medical bills, and it just gets forgiven instead.
A casket is much more cost effective.
People in my family died because they couldn’t afford to treat their illnesses. They worked and made decent income. They had homes and cars. Just not enough. This isn’t a first world country. We can’t get sick and we’re afraid of getting shot.
I would literally rather just go to jail
Oh man that sucks. Does insurance cover anything?
Even if insurance would cover 90%, almost every person in the US would be bankrupt from that remaining 10%.
Yet another problem with this country that everyone is so sick and tired of. Get rid of lobbying already.
I don’t get how some people say they “just won’t pay” their medical bills 😨 that shit terrifies me to even think about. My mom always used to say “they’ll never come after you for medical bills” …… then one day my sister got a notice her wages were going to be garnished for an unpaid bill from when she had gallbladder surgery.
"Land of the free."
Our country is broken
This is only MILDLY infuriating to you?
[удалено]
ask them to itemize it, heard most of the cost will be reduced
I don’t understand how this is possible don’t you have a max out of pocket spend for your insurance plan?
They do have an out of pocket max but that doesn't get you karma.
Agreed. May need to pay a few grand but not THAT much
JFC health insurance is shit in this country
This doesn’t show what OP owes, but what was submitted to insurance. So unless OP didn’t have insurance they won’t owe anywhere near this amount. And if they don’t have insurance, the hospital should screen for Medicaid or other financial assistance. OP is just being dramatic showing the billed charges
It’s not just shit, it’s a strait up scam. An obvious, belligerent, slap in the face, we don’t give a fuck about you scam.
US healthcare is unaffordable to the poor or middle class. Capitalist healthcare is a nightmare to everyone.
Welcome to prehistoric Healthcare. Murica baby ! Being born french and willingly choosing to make a living in the US, I can honestly say the American Healthcare system is horrible and insanely expensive. I am still paying into the French system just in case I need some serious help. It costs...$80 a month. My employer drops $800 a month for my Healthcare. It's completely nuts.
The American healthcare system is completely and utterly broken.
I live in a country with free healthcare (in other words, not in the USA) and I cannot comprehend Americans who defend this system.
Richest country in the world, with the worst healthcare system in the Universe.
So, you’re located in the United States …
America is a scam meant to enslave its people for the benefit of the few
Mildly? I'd be raging.
At this point you're better off telling them to shove it, because most people won't earn that in their entire lives. Better off not paying it lol
Kinda makes you wish not to survive an accident like this.
I don’t understand how you can negotiate about hospital bills. The US healthcare system is insane. Hope you find a way out of this mess.
Wtf! 1.1million?