Current Events > Corona survivor gets 181 page hospital bill. 1.1 million dollars.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/inspiring-story-of-seattle-mans-coronavirus-survival-comes-with-a-1-1-million-dollar-hospital-bill/

god damn. Thankfully he has insurance and the bill is just formality, but it illustrates just how overpriced our health care system is. Could you imagine a family with no insurance, the dad gets Corona because some fuckwit thinks wearing a mask is communism, and then having the hospital be all we fixed you give us a million dollars now. Id be done.

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thats not that much

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The sad thing is stories like this happen constantly, yet we never seem to be able to push for actual change in healthcare. It's just status quo.

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Trickfinger posted...

thats not that much

I mean, if your comparison is cancer treatment.

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yeah its really a breakdown of charges. ive gone though some of them i get, and its insane.

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TheVipaGTS posted...

dad gets Corona because some fuckwit thinks wearing a mask is communism

that's the scenario we're living in right now. doesn't matter who they happen to be they'll be impacting someone else with that goddamn sickness.

those protests sure aren't helping as far as health reasons (not for the other thing) i'm all for free speech.
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Trickfinger posted...

thats not that much

and thats why our HC system is fucked

Healthcare is a scam, we pull these numbers out of our asses.

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If he pulled himself along by his bootstraps before getting sick then he wouldn't have that issue!
/s

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Its time for universal healthcare. These bandaids they keep slapping on only make things worse. Dissolve Obamacare and all medical insurance and just make it free. I would rather wait than get a bill that will take me a decade to pay.

They just can not handle making payments fair. We have a some people pay and some people dont system and the people who are not privileged enough to receive Obamacare are forced to pay unfeasible sums of money to pick up the tab indirectly. The government doesnt pay for that.

The medical field has gotten way too greedy and if theyre trying to charge people tens of thousands of dollars for a few stitches, then maybe its time to take some action.

When you take a job at a hospital, you instantly abandon the Hippocratic oath because a hospital will throw a sick person right out if they cannot pay.

Ex-Kefiroth posted...

How do the people working the billing departments at these hospitals live with their miserable selves?

as if its their fault?

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Ex-Kefiroth posted...

How do the people working the billing departments at these hospitals live with their miserable selves?

So my wife works in medical billing and auditing and handles all this stuff. They are trained from day 1 to never question the amounts, and only make sure everything is totaled and accounted for correctly. If she questions the dollar amounts for procedures or equipment, she gets disciplined very quickly. Same goes for the doctors, they get btfo too if they question it. It's a bespoke system that is set in stone years in advance between providers and the insurance companies.

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Pretty sure medical debt doesn't affect your credit.

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Lonestar2000 posted...

Pretty sure medical debt doesn't affect your credit.

yeah tell the collections agency that

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Lonestar2000 posted...

Pretty sure medical debt doesn't affect your credit.

It does. The pricing strategies of health care providers needs to be fixed. They are extremely opaque to the consumer until the final bill is rendered. Nearly no other industry works like that. I hope during the Trump-Biden debates this is talked about.

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Crono99 posted...

As long as healthcare prices are so gigantic, it's useless to debate a single payer public healthcare system. The first step is to find some kind of way to burst that ridiculous bubble.

But that's not going to happen.

The prices are so gigantic because it isn't single payer healthcare. The insurance companies that cover medical bills don't pay nearly the same amount as an individual does, since they're effectively paying "in bulk" and a single-payer option would do the same thing.

I wonder how the uninsured are handling this?
Surely single payer is still a terrible idea.

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It's stories like that that reaffirm my belief that we are not a 1st world country.
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A lot of people are going to come into this topic talking about the necessity of abolishing a system that allows this to happen. But wouldn't it poll better if they just talked about reform instead?

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Crono99 posted...

As long as healthcare prices are so gigantic, it's useless to debate a single payer public healthcare system. The first step is to find some kind of way to burst that ridiculous bubble.

But that's not going to happen.

This is a bad take. The prices are gigantic because we don't have single payer and they've been allowed to balloon in an ever escalating arms race between the scamming insurance companies and healthcare providers.

Dismantle the whole insurance system. Implement what nearly every other first world country has and then allow people to buy private insurance if they want fancier shit.

Intro2Logic posted...

A lot of people are going to come into this topic talking about the necessity of abolishing a system that allows this to happen. But wouldn't it poll better if they just talked about reform instead?

its been called reform from the beginning of time.

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They pulled a Dr. Evil on that former COVID patient.


Our health care system is a joke.


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are these the death panels?

either way all will be fixed when trumps lawsuit gets to the supreme court and they declare ACA illegal and revoke 10s of millions of peoples insurance plans going right into fall and the next spike in covid... thats a fix right?

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around here i'm not sure of policy but they have to treat all patients regardless of income but prepare for insurance collectors to look for people who haven't payed.

during peak covid in italy, they had death panels.
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Just dont get sick its so easy bros

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if i ever go to America one day, i gotta remember not to get sick while i'm there...

America is slowing regressing to third world status and the right still believes that bunker bitch is making America great somehow.

ZevLoveDOOM posted...

if i ever go to America one day, i gotta remember not to get sick while i'm there...

dont you want to take a ride in one of our fine ambulances for 20k a ride...

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P4wn4g3 posted...

I wonder how the uninsured are handling this?
Surely single payer is still a terrible idea.

I haven't been to see a doctor in over a decade, and that last time was because I got into a wreck and was comatose for a few days plus I had a broken leg.

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Aren't the bills being jacked up since people stopped going to hospital for no-covid stuff. This is how they recoup.

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Everyone needs to automatically be enrolled in healthcare and it needs to be affordable

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Payzmaykr posted...

Its time for universal healthcare.

I don't trust the government to pave a road correctly and on time, why the fuck would I trust them with my healthcare?

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https://i.imgur.com/ZTWl8P9.jpg
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healthcare should be 100% free. fuck the system. we need a revolution in not just policing but our hospitals as well

LanHikari10 posted...

The sad thing is stories like this happen constantly, yet we never seem to be able to push for actual change in healthcare. It's just status quo.

The people do what the media says. Of course, itll never say that.

Crono99 posted...

As long as healthcare prices are so gigantic, it's useless to debate a single payer public healthcare system. The first step is to find some kind of way to burst that ridiculous bubble.

But that's not going to happen.

single payer (or multi payer where you cant duplicate the coverage of a public option) lowers costs directly. when you have one payer you have more bargaining power with providers and drug manufacturers to set prices.

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Crazyman93 posted...

I don't trust the government to pave a road correctly and on time, why the fuck would I trust them with my healthcare?

because you can at least vote directly for the people who will oversee paying for your healthcare (not administrating it, which is still done privately). you cant do this with a private insurance company.

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lol this is almost the part where they say dat wuddent werk hier!!1 about all of the better healthcare systems in the world

ssk9716757 posted...

because you can at least vote directly for the people who will oversee paying for your healthcare (not administrating it, which is still done privately). you cant do this with a private insurance company.

I can vote for the people who oversee paving a road too, and that hasn't helped any.

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Crazyman93 posted...

I can vote for the people who oversee paving a road too, and that hasn't helped any

because the instant anyone insisted on using a tax dollar for it people like you tweak

Crazyman93 posted...

I can vote for the people who oversee paving a road too, and that hasn't helped any.

then you can vote in people who want to change the system

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VVALLBOUNCE posted...

because the instant anyone insisted on using a tax dollar for it people like you tweak

Or because politicians around here are notorious for raiding the highway funds for this or that. You know, like Congress has done with social security, another fund that people see as essential. But yes, let's trust them not to raid a federal healthcare budget for whatever stupid fucking pet projects or whatever else they want money for.

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This is also why I laugh when those against health care use the so what?! Other countries have to wait to be taken care of! argument. So, I have to wait a week or two longer, or Im in the hole for hundreds of thousands, potentially in the millions....its not like if your sitting there dying theyll turn you away. The fact that people fight better health care that will also benefit them is absurd to me.

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Road maintenance isn't a good analogy, because it's typically contracted to private companies

Id just make 5 dollar payments a month. Lol sucks for them.

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Yet another reason I'm glad I don't live in America

Went to hospital for a three night stay the other year, had my appendix out in emergency surgery, walked out on day 3 and all my wife and I paid was $75 for parking

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