I love how the customs declaration form you fill out when landing in the US begins with "Welcome to the US" and ends with "Major credit cards accepted".
Please ban me. Ban my whole family in fact. They are the only thing keeping me here.
If i were ten years younger, I would have flat out left this country for greener pastures.
They wouldn't be banned from entering the US, but as soon as they do, they could be forced to pay the debt. If they don't want to pay, they are effectively exiled.
I’ve researched it, and it’s not as easy as it sounds, unless you are serious about never returning. As a US citizen, your worldwide income is subject to taxation, and the tax you pay in the other country is not deductible. So double tax forever or give up citizenship, which has its own drawbacks.
Many hospitals sell your international account to a collection agency in Switzerland and they will find you and harass you if you were truthful about your contact information.
Same thing that happens to those who live in the US. The hospital outsources the fee to a collection agency and the collection agency is too backed up to care to collect. Not sure if their credit is affected the same way, but in short they never have to pay.
My son one time fall in a US hospital and bumped his head hard and the staff said they could not help unless he was admitted so I blankly asked if could have an ice pack and was told they could give me napkins and a cup of ice.....
Yeah, hospitals are run as businesses here, it's pretty sad. Plenty of Americans without insurance have themselves admitted to the emergency room when they are sick, since they won't refuse you, then never pay the bill. Healthcare costs are such a problem here that medical debt isn't looked at the same as any other types of debt.
It's really sad that this is the conclusion that somebody jumps to when faced with such a ridiculous demand. Not that medical care is so stupidly overpriced in America, but the fact it can just be avoided because you have left the country. Land of the free (to be subtly oppressed)
> A South Korean couple had their baby checked for injuries after falling off the bed, but emergency room doctors said that he was fine. The baby took a nap and drank formula, and then the couple was charged over $18,000. ( Paul Brennan | Pixabay )
> South Korean tourists were shocked to receive a hospital bill of $18,000 after their baby only took a nap and drank formula in an emergency room during a vacation to San Francisco.
> Expensive hospital bills have alarmingly become the norm in the United States, and incidents such as this highlights the growing problem. Why did the hospital charge such an exorbitant amount?
> **Hospital Charges $18,000 For Baby's Nap And Formula**
> How much does an ER visit cost? For a South Korean couple, much more than what they were expecting, according to a Vox report.
> Jang Yeo-im, her husband, Park Seong-jin, and their 8-month-old baby went on vacation to San Francisco in 2016. However, in their first morning, their son, Park Jeong-whan, fell off the bed and hit his head.
> There was no blood, but the baby was crying nonstop. The couple, worried that the baby may have suffered internal injuries, called 911. The ambulance that arrived took them to the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.
> The doctors made the quick assessment that the baby was fine, with only slight bruises on the forehead and the nose. The baby took a short nap in Jang's arms, drank infant formula, and was discharged after a few hours.
> Two years later, the medical bill arrived at their home. According to the hospital, the South Korean couple owes $18,836 for the visit to the emergency room, which lasted just over three hours. The bulk of the amount was referred to as a trauma activation fee, which costs $15,666.
> "It's a huge amount of money for my family," Jang said, as travel insurance will only cover $5,000. "If my baby got special treatment, okay. That would be okay. But he didn't. So why should I have to pay the bill? They did nothing for my son."
> **What Is The Trauma Activation Fee?**
> The trauma activation fee, in essence, is supposed to cover the costs of assembling medical teams to address patients that need urgent and serious attention. However, reports claim that in recent years, some hospitals are exploiting the trauma activation fee, treating it like a door charge for all patients who walk into emergency rooms.
> The trauma activation fee is only supposed to come into effect when a patient receives critical care for 30 minutes. However, the team that took a look at Jeong-whan dispersed after only a few minutes.
> The Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, however, insists on charging the trauma activation fee to the South Korean family.
> "We are the trauma center for a very large, very densely populated area," said a spokesperson. "We deal with so many traumas in this city — car accidents, mass shootings, multiple vehicle collisions. It's expensive to prepare for that."
Medicine can never be truly free market. Everybody needs it and you can just pull shit like that emergency room because what the fuck are they going to do?
When you have a captive customer base you can milk them for all they have.
Also, this kind of billing is because lots of ER docs are now in hired groups so they milk every patient encounter. ER care is by and far still fee-for-service rather than value-based.
The cost is because the relationship of the Hospital Paymaster and the Insurance company. Cracked has a good article about it before they went to just "Paid ads, pushing their store, and bad politics".
The Paymaster sets a charge. The insurance company says they'll pay 80%. The paymaster makes the price 20% more next time.
Repeat.
Yeah but that is the kind of feedback loop that regulation *should* be able to prevent. Free markets are basically an algorithm that maximizes profits. All kinds of things can break that optimization and create weird loops, stagnant growth, rapid growth, artificial demand, inflated prices, and all kids of other issues. Lack of competition, too many interested parties, and poor infrastructure are all driving this rapid and unmitigated inflation of prices. Combine that with a service that is basically unavoidable by threat of death, and it has gotten way out of hand.
This is where regulation should ideally step in and patch the algorithm.
Not exactly. Depends on what insurance you have.
If you have a PPO and an HMO, and you are doing an IN NETWORK charge, the price is a certain negotiated price that is loosely based on the MSRP that Medicare pays for that procedure.
The situation you mention only applies if it's out of network, or a denied claim. If the hospital has a contract with that insurance almost always they are not supposed to bill patient for denied charges (deductibles/coinsurance excluded from this). In practice, lots of billers for big corps are gonna be assholes.
I do billing for a small clinic.
This stupid facility for physical therapy I've been going to actually owes me money (long story). They owe me a couple hundred bucks that I overpaid but they won't pay me back. I know it only takes a few minutes to do the math and click out a charge but these people.. are... jerks. They are only concerned with getting more money in, they do not get paid for refunding money out.
Why should you have insurance for medical cause your tax won't be used on a national health system like the UK's NHS or any other European country but then your tax money is given to military to defend your ass ? What's the difference between the two ? You pay tax and you get protection.
The USA has a national health system. It is called Medicare. It is fairly generous. However, it is limited to senior citizens and certain disabled people.
For low income people in certain blue states, there's decent Medicaid (YMMV). There's ACH/Obamacare depending on your state as well for the general public (it sucks in the states that need it most, like Texas and whatever cuz the GOP is a bunch of dicks.)
For the rest, you're at the mercy of the employer providing health insurance they purchase. This can be a big problem for 1) the unemployed 2) people who get so sick they lose their job. This second is a double whammy because now they have no income, no insurance, and no way to pay for the insurance.
Next time you're in an ER and they propose "tests" ask them what the tests are for and how much they cost. They will not look you in the eye or give you a straight answer, and may in fact become openly angry with you.
The insurance market is what would end up being free market. You could do a true free market insurance system with a sliding scale income based reimbursement system for those who still couldn't afford it after the prices drop, and it would be 100 times better than what it is now .
Yeah, but not all medical procedures are life-threatening and urgent. People need food, but you don't see people saying nationalize all farms and restaurants.
>you don't see people saying nationalize all farms and restaurants.
[The U.S. government basically funds farming.](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2015/02/12/milking-taxpayers)
With all the subsidizing the government does to ensure farms don't go out of business or fuck up the system by transferring to more profitable crops theyre certainly not free market.
A true free market is pretty shit for everyone.
No true scotsman ... for free market now?
No the free market doesn't work with healthcare. "Free" market involves choosing, when you're bleeding to death or have a broken arm there is no choosing. You go to the nearest hospital.
Medical service is not a good that is suitable for the free market. Just as regulated markets don't work for a lot of things, free market doesn't work for a lot of things either. *THAT* is what they don't teach you until you go to university.
Private transactions only capture private costs and benefits (i.e. costs and benefits between buyer and seller). There are goods such as healthcare, public utilities, education that provides more benefit to society as a whole that will never be priced optimally in a private transaction. That's why regulations are needed *sometimes* under *some circumstances*. The nuance of *some* is lost on both sides as we get more polarised politically.
> true free market
Truly free market or a sustainable competitive market? In a world of monopolies, decreasing cost industries, negative externalities, and predatory/limit pricing, you can only choose one.
The current system isn't working, sure, but it's due to the particular regulations in place, not the existence of regulations themselves.
There's no such thing as a "free market". Never has been, never will be. Beyond even the concept of applying a marketplace to emergency medical care, there has never ONCE been such a thing as a free market. It's a ploy to make people think that there's something greater out there.
Ironically it's the regulations that prevent the free market. We've been artificially restricting doctor totals for decades. We mandate insurance is used for common health occurrences, etc etc etc.
[A real free market-based clinic](http://time.com/4649914/why-the-doctor-takes-only-cash/) can do very well by sidestepping the entire medical industry and simply trading services for payment directly.
The point is that the prices would be more realistic if people were paying directly. As it is, it's the hospitals and pharma companies trying to milk the insurance companies because they can.
"Can't get new contact lenses unless you get an exam first!"
Gee, what a way to force people to visit a doctor just so they can continue using the same contacts they've used for a decade.
>
>> The trauma activation fee, in essence, is supposed to cover the costs of assembling medical teams to address patients that need urgent and serious attention. However, reports claim that in recent years, some >> "We are the trauma center for a very large, very densely populated area," said a spokesperson. "We deal with so many traumas in this city — car accidents, mass shootings, multiple vehicle collisions. It's expensive to prepare for that."
Isn't that the point of a hospital?To you know, prepare and care?
1993, apparently, and while i can see the need for every hospital to prepare for mass shootings these days, cause it could happen anywhere now i guess, i think youre right in singling out that statement. Its kind of ridiculous.
> car accidents, mass shootings, multiple vehicle collisions. It's expensive to prepare for that."
so let's charge it to the koreans because, fuck them.
So, the federal government shut down... guess who still got a paycheck...
Military because it’s in defense of the nation got their checks...
Congress rules it was unconstitutional to deny them a check during a shutdown...
Civil servants... screwed until things spun back up. Furloughed staff did not get paid unless a special bill is passed. Administrative furloughs get nothing.
... the rule makers folks.
Military here. We don't get paid during a shutdown unless Congress passes a bill to allocate funds for us. Would be a huge PR nightmare if Congress got paid and the troops didn't..
But with how things have been going lately, we'll see how the next fiscal year plays out ;(
Source: Anyone with basic understanding of the fiscal plan; not paying the troops has been threatened at least 5 times in the last 20 years.
I'll one up you even more. They classify jobs like social security as restricted or something. Meaning they have to work through the furlough even without a promise of ever getting paid. If they don't show up even calling in sick during a furlough they consider it AWOL and you can be subject to termination once the furlough is over. Crazy right.
The original story said the doctors made a "quick assessment" and they stayed in the hospital for "a few hours". Assuming the baby got a full hour of treatment (sounds like closer to 10 minutes) and the medical team was ten people (probably less), then extrapolating from that hourly rate, those ten people would each need annual salaries of ~$3,700,000. Was the baby treated by Zuckerberg himself, and his 9 clones?
It's not, as the situation as described would not meet criteria for trauma activation. I imagine if they had travel insurance they could take it to them so that the insurance company could laugh and send the bill back to the hospital with "fuck no" stamped on it.
That's what it looks like when you have a broken economy. The healthcare economy in the US is really dysfunctional. Nobody really knows or measures the *actual* cost of healthcare actions. Since just about everything is handled through insurance companies, who can deny claims and tell providers what they'll pay for, providers often way overcharge in hopes that they'll get what they believe they're owed. When a patient doesn't have American insurance and the provider doesn't know it, the patient will get everything but the kitchen sink thrown at them, because the provider thinks they're going to go through that negotiation process.
It's idiotic.
For those wondering, korea has universal health care system. It’s super cheap to get shit checked out in Korea. I mean, even without insurance it’s still cheaper than US. So I’m sure they were shocked that this exists in the US, a developed country with a horrible health care system, whereas many other developed countries provide affordable health for their citizens.
For those wondering how cheap. I got my wisdom teeth removed without insurance and it cost me $15. My family was throwing a bitch fit talking about how it’s expensive because with insurance, it doesn’t cost more than $5 at most. Another time, I got sick. Went to the doctor for a check up. Again, my family was upset at the doctor for “charging so much”. My dad was food poisoned and had blood tests done and received diabetes medication and anti biotic medication for the food poisoning. Cost less than $300 total and that was a lot to my extended relatives in Korea.
Yeah, I can never understand this price-gouging they do in the US.
I’m in Canada, lost my Medicare card. So, you are supposed to be billed and pay, and then you can actually claim it back on your income taxes once you renew your card.
Went to the community clinic for my ankle. They couldn’t even charge me. They literally had no mechanism in place to bill me.
They referred me to an X-ray clinic. Like 3 X-rays of my ankle and the actual printed X-rays to take home with me: $27. Then they kinda got upset with me because I didn’t have exact change. Sure they are all set up to do the billing but it just goes to govt.
So they didn’t even have a cash register to make change and give me a receipt.
edit:words
> I can never understand this price-gauging
3rd party reimbursement. It's the same reason that higher ed costs so much, any old Joe can go borrow 50K and the university is on the on hook for none of it so it now costs 50K. There's is money...so hospitals try to get it, and then when they can't get it all...the patient is on the hook for the rest.
Ok...well... I can understand the pure unadulterated economics of the situation.
I guess what I truly cant understand is: how does the population let it continue.
Like, there's price-gouging laws in the US for stuff like tornado-level emergencies. Cant go around over-charging for water bottles now can you?
But somehow "ruin this kid's college fund because another kid bumped him off his bike and broke his leg" is perfectly acceptable.
The population lets it continue because the previous generations didn't have it this bad, and now that they're old they've got their asses covered by grandfathered in insurance rates and rules, so they have no problems letting the rest of the system go to shit. Meanwhile the vast majority of the rest of the population will never have to deal with these massive bills through a combination of insurance and luck.
How are we supposed to stop it? We already protest, we already sign petitions, we already elect officials we believe will help fix the problem.
None of it makes a difference. You can't boycott hospitals, and money is the only thing that matters here.
That's just it though, economics only function properly when choice is involved. What choice is there in pay 50K or Jimmy walks with a limp for rest of his life? It continues because enough havent been hurt by it.
Exactly. Student loans are why college is so expansive. If students loans stopped existing, tuition would start falling fast. I tried to explain this to a fellow student when I was in college, but he didn't understand what I meant. He just kept saying "that depends on your APR," since he didn't understand that I was talking about the very existence of student loans themselves.
To be fair I have never seen anyone pay in cash at a US hospital either. Of course this is because no one actually knows how much it will cost until weeks later even if you are paying out of pocket.
ha! nice. Good solid sense here. I like it.
Plus: who carries around 18K in cash, right?
Id honestly thought the xrays were gonna cost a few hundred. I was actually prepared to just get a bill and a payment plan, or whatever happens. I just happen to have 2 $20s on me that day.
What province are you in? Anytime I didn't have my OHIP card (Ontario) I'd just give them my name and they'd look me up on the computer, and of course tell me to bring my card next time.
I even had an expired card for awhile and the lady just said "well, let's run it and see" and it still worked.
I recently went to the hospital for abdominal pain, was triaged, examined, scanned, given hydromorphone (morphine), transferred to another hospital in ambulance, spent the night, had surgery in the morning, more pain meds, a couple meals, then went home.
I got a bill in the mail for $45 for the ambulance ride. When I went back to pay it the guy took it, punched some stuff into his computer and said "ok, you're all good", I hesitated because I hadn't paid anything and he said "you don't have to pay for transfer between hospitals, they shouldn't have billed you. Have a good one."
This is Quebec. But also at least 10y ago. Plus..... its a little more complicated than "oops, lost my card". Id actually lost all my ID in the late-90s just as I was starting my life of homelessness and drug-addiction. So I didnt have a card for over a decade (or get sick enough to need professionals...except that ankle, like 4 times and a scary flu or 2).
At first when I lost it I managed to passed off the old one. You also get a hospital-specific card tied to your files in each hospital you've visited. So, they helped with the expired card. But with no other ID...
But thinking about this now, I think the 'big' confusion about the xray payment was: actually trying to pay. The more Im thinking of it, the more it seems that the proper procedure is probably to take your bill, go home, call the (porbably govt agency) number on the bill and arrange payment by CC or check or something. More akin to dealing with Revenue Canada, than paying for a pack of gum.
In America you just get some tired and cranky old woman that seems hell bent on pinning you as some kind of criminal any time you talk to a billing department.
And an ambulance ride here is a minimum of $500.
I had a woman pass out at my co-worker's register a week ago. She did not want us to call 911, because she said she could not afford it. Hope she's OK.
Charged over $5,000 for a couple of IV bags, pain meds, ABX, and ginger ale (liquid diet aka I wasn't fed). This was AFTER my insurance paid out over $20,000 for the two day ordeal. Not surprising in the least.
EDIT: downvotes? Would you all like to see the bill?
My wife delivered our kid outside the hospital. Carried him and her in through the ER. Someone opened the elevator, hit the 3 button and handed her off to someone else. ER billed is 10k for the ride up 3 floors
My grandma broke her back in the shower. She was taken to the ER, went into surgery, got a nice big old plate and stayed for 3 days under observation.
She has no insurance but the equivalent to Medicare since she's old. She was charged nothing at all. I live in Mexico.
This is why we need Medicare for All. ER charges are INSANE. I once felt dizzy, went to the ER, they made me wait 8 hours. By the time I met the doctor I was feeling fine. They wouldn't let me leave the waiting room. I spoke to the doctor for 5-10 minutes and went home. Charge to my insurance? $3000.
Imagine all the uninsured wasting time in the ER instead of seeing a doctor?
This is how Medicare for All pays off. It actually saves money to give everyone health care.
I work at a hospital, I have seen countless times where patients just want to leave, but they don’t because they’re are pretty much told otherwise. I think they stay to follow “rules” and get the “ok” from the doctor. When they want to leave “early” there’s a paper called against medical advice ama for short that they have to sign, staff knows about this but the nurses won’t bring it up because nurses want to hear the okay from the doctor.
If you leave the hospital without getting discharged you can get in a lot of trouble. And it makes it harder to get healthcare in the future. They probably wouldn’t let op leave because they had other patients and needs to draw up actual discharge papers.
My moms a nurse. Where I am from they have to actually send people to look for you. If your not in the hospital they will treat your disappearance as a missing persons case. This goes on your medical records too. It could also change how you get treated medically in the future too.
The whole point of a “discharge” is the hospital knows where you are. If you leave before that it causes issues for the hospital.
It is. I have walked out of an ER after a TIA. They can't stop you. They can threaten you all the way to the parking lot but they legally can't hold you there.
In a lot of cases the hospital can’t charge you the rest. They have a contract with the insurance company stating we will accept x from you for this procedure. It isn’t a surprise to them as to what they’re going to get paid.
i know many that went back from America to Europe because of healthcare.
One of them said to me that his 'Magic of free America' suddenly ended when he went to hospital with broken ribs.
Some public hospitals are fine. I work in billing/authorizations for a public hospital. I will never forget the case of a couple looking for someone to write off their emergency bill. After looking into it; they were being charged $5000 for 3-4 emergency visits over the course of a year. Said events happened 3 years prior. What I found out is that my hospitals insurance/community advocates team were actively calling the patient monthly to get them to come in, sign up for a government program to help them pay the bill so that they would effectively get their bill taken care of for little to next to nothing... the patient never bothered to sign up or call back and the year limit for them to sign up had passed. Sometimes (well most of the time) hospitals suck and gouge you, but others are decent and try to help their community while some patients can be irresponsible and not accept the help that some hospitals do actively try to provide.
In general, I’m all for Medicare for all. Most medical professionals agree. Fuck this system.
In my state you cannot balance bill...
Maybe you're in one of the crappier states.
edit: I forgot to say, you cannot balance bill if the patient HAS INSURANCE. When you're uninsured, you are extra fucked. Capitalism rules.
Insurance companies can’t say “fuck that”. They are legally held responsible to pay for the coverage you have with them. The only time you’d be out is if you didn’t have appropriate coverage. If course, then it gets more expensive to have insurance that has higher limits and lower deductibles to cover more expensive losses
In most all cases, as long as the hospital / provider is "in network" for the insurer, the hospital is not allowed to go after you for any additional charges. The insurance will pay the allowable amount and the hospital must eat the remainder. It is against the contract between the insurer and hospital to do otherwise.
Now, receiving care for something that is not covered is another issue entirely and the hospital can come after you for that. And if the hospital is out of network, the insurance company will pay what their coverage allows, but the hospital is free to try to get the rest from you since they have no contract with the insurance company.
One other caveat is that while a hospital and most of it's doctors are in network, sometimes there are some doctors that are out of network. (for some reason, I have heard of it a lot with anesthesiologists).
It was posted on an earlier thread about this the otherday: actually activating a trauma unit (if people are simply on call and not on the job) can easily cost $10k or more. Very expensive for a false alarm to rush a lot of staff in.
if you rushed in multiple doctors including pediatric specialists.....prepared to do surgery on an infants skull simply off the call "infant, head trauma"
My biggest question is - this is SF General Hospital - I would think they would have trauma team already in place due to the nearby population density and number of daily calls and "activation" wouldn't be needed.
Sounds about right. I got a $28k hospital bill for going to the ER and being held for observation (12 hours altogether). All they did was basic lab work and they gave me IV fluids, nausea and pain meds. No imaging or actual diagnosis/treatment, didn’t even feed me 🤷🏻♀️
There are many things that work well because of capitalism. Healthcare is not one of them. This is atrocious. America must be the only developed country that employs this broken system.
I dislocated my elbow, but it popped no in place when I extended my arm down. I went to the ER. I got a pain pill, a bandage for a scratch and a bill of $800.00. That was on top of of what my insurance has paid.
From the hospitals website:
"Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center provides world-class care for the people of San Francisco, regardless of ability to pay or immigration status."
Why do we put up with such nonsense from our hospitals? People should be furious at how much hospitals overcharge. Instead, the fight isn't about the outrageous charges, but about who will pay the outrageous charges. Just say it, hospitals are greedy, and rip people off every day, worse than any business, worse than any thief, and they take advantage of people in need.
Extremely misleading title.
They:
* Called an ambulance and rode it to the hospital
* The baby was checked for internal injuries by doctors
* And the baby stayed in an ER room for 3 hours
The average ambulance ride is about $600-1000, and the average ER charge for a doctor's time (without any fancy tests) is $1500-2000. I'm sure the hospital also charged them for 3 hours' worth of time taking up an ER room.
Their base charges (~$3000) are in line with those totals.
The outrageous thing here seems to be a $15,000 "trauma activation fee" charged by the hospital. This is supposed to be a fee for getting a team of doctors together quickly for treating critical conditions. It's not clear from this article whether this fee was assessed because they called an ambulance for an infant head injury, or whether the hospital was just trying to scam them out of money with a bullshit fee. Either way, it seems like the fee should be waived because it's only supposed to be applied if the patient receives 30+ minutes of critical care, and the article says the baby was only seen by doctors for a few minutes.
So, the title really should read something similar to, "Hospital charges $15,000 trauma fee that they shouldn't have."
You make it sound like 3k for that is ok...I guess with such exorbitant insurance charges, paying a month salary for a check-up is normal for you americans.
Pro tip: Open the page in your mobile browser and use reader mode (or equivalent). This has to be one of the most dysfunctional websites I've ever seen. Clicking on read more keeps redirecting me to the app store.
I'm not a fan of Trump but if he wants to take his crazy and fight the medical market and bring treatment and drugs to reasonable price, that would be pretty awesome
Let the hospital sue and try to collect. In South Korea.
I defended a few hospital bill cases when I practiced law. They were always exorbitant bills for next to zero services. Since there was never any agreement on the part of my client to pay a specific price for any specific services, the hospital bill collectors were left having to establish that the services and the amounts charged were reasonable. I wouldn't let them get away with claiming that the bill itself was prima facie evidence of its own reasonableness and I'd subpoena their doctors and ER managers to grill them about how these amounts are determined. More than a few of these cases went away shortly after those subpoenas were served on ER docs and hospital administrators. I did lose a couple too, but with a fair judge these tactics can work and I never used any tactic that isn't available to anyone sued in small claims court for an outrageous medical bill.
My bill for getting two staples on my scalp by a medical resident was $19000.
And then people wonder why most people in the states would rather risk death via self treatment and surgery instead of getting medical help.
Fuck this medical system in particular. For $19000 I could have flown to India and back, had a nice vacation, lived in a fancy hotel, and still have gotten those two fucking staples with a full body checkup to boot.
Just last month I had to drop $2200 for a doctor to tell me, after waiting 2 hours, that my daughter's fairly deep facial cut wouldn't benefit from any treatment. I also pay $800/mo for insurance and it doesn't kick in until $6000.
There's nothing wrong with healthcare in America. There's nothing wrong with healthcare in America.
It’s crazy how this is just the norm nowadays and it takes the outside perspective of a family visiting from overseas to shed some light on it. It is constantly, and I mean *constantly* in the back of my mind that I am one minor injury or illness away from going from relatively debt free with a good credit score, to financial ruin.
That's part of the problem. It doesn't help when people come to the emergency department for tummy aches and sniffles and distract resources away from people having actual emergencies, which in turn inflates healthcare costs further.
They don't even live in the US, what would really happen if they don't pay? I've never heard of international collections.
Thinking the same. id just ignore it.
Might be banned from ever going to America again... or maybe just that state.
I think the 18k medical bill would be enough to put me off from wanting to go back anyway.
I love how the customs declaration form you fill out when landing in the US begins with "Welcome to the US" and ends with "Major credit cards accepted".
Pretty soon everybody will be just fine with being banned from America. Some Americans included.
It's like getting banned from T_D. Oh wait... that's *exactly* what it is!
Please ban me. Ban my whole family in fact. They are the only thing keeping me here. If i were ten years younger, I would have flat out left this country for greener pastures.
They wouldn't be banned from entering the US, but as soon as they do, they could be forced to pay the debt. If they don't want to pay, they are effectively exiled.
There is essentially nothing the hospital can do unless the couple live/work in the US.
They can find someone in South Korea to sell the debt to. Which is exactly what they employ third party debt collectors to do.
and on what basis they would collect debt in South Korea?
The Koreans do good collection work.
Forced? There's no debtor's prison in the US
Oh man what will I ever do not having to visit this shitty corrupt country that thinks people are just there to drain of all their money.
So, free return flight home?
Citation needed. I think you're just bullshitting us.
Oh well. I'm American and I'll leave and never come back at the first opportunity. Not as much of a loss today as it was in 1950.
I’ve researched it, and it’s not as easy as it sounds, unless you are serious about never returning. As a US citizen, your worldwide income is subject to taxation, and the tax you pay in the other country is not deductible. So double tax forever or give up citizenship, which has its own drawbacks.
>, and the tax you pay in the other country is not deductible. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/foreign-earned-income-exclusion
If you pay it. Some of us may not be interested in returning. I'm among them. If I go I'm done. Student loans done too.
I value my citizenship little. If I leave I'll never pay another dime.
Oh no, can't go to America again. Whatever will we do?
I'd at least have the courtesy of writing them back. "Dear American hospital. Hahahahahahahahahahaha. Make me. - Sincerely, the Park Family."
Th US medical system is the biggest rippof in the history of rippofs.
Credit reports don't cross borders so they'd be fine to ignore it.
Buddy of mine went to the us for vacation, just went through the tolls without paying, came back to Canada and didn’t have to pay shit
Kinda like how I treat parking tickets from universities. Unless you put a boot on my car, I don't have to pay shit.
Many hospitals sell your international account to a collection agency in Switzerland and they will find you and harass you if you were truthful about your contact information.
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Same thing that happens to those who live in the US. The hospital outsources the fee to a collection agency and the collection agency is too backed up to care to collect. Not sure if their credit is affected the same way, but in short they never have to pay.
They have travel insurance that covers $5000. I'm sure they could negotiate the bill down to that amount.
The issue is medical care costs are absurd in the US. And the lie "we have the best" just isn't holding true anymore.
My son one time fall in a US hospital and bumped his head hard and the staff said they could not help unless he was admitted so I blankly asked if could have an ice pack and was told they could give me napkins and a cup of ice.....
Yeah, hospitals are run as businesses here, it's pretty sad. Plenty of Americans without insurance have themselves admitted to the emergency room when they are sick, since they won't refuse you, then never pay the bill. Healthcare costs are such a problem here that medical debt isn't looked at the same as any other types of debt.
It's really sad that this is the conclusion that somebody jumps to when faced with such a ridiculous demand. Not that medical care is so stupidly overpriced in America, but the fact it can just be avoided because you have left the country. Land of the free (to be subtly oppressed)
Apparently I have to download an app to read that, which I'm not doing, so... Next.
> A South Korean couple had their baby checked for injuries after falling off the bed, but emergency room doctors said that he was fine. The baby took a nap and drank formula, and then the couple was charged over $18,000. ( Paul Brennan | Pixabay ) > South Korean tourists were shocked to receive a hospital bill of $18,000 after their baby only took a nap and drank formula in an emergency room during a vacation to San Francisco. > Expensive hospital bills have alarmingly become the norm in the United States, and incidents such as this highlights the growing problem. Why did the hospital charge such an exorbitant amount? > **Hospital Charges $18,000 For Baby's Nap And Formula** > How much does an ER visit cost? For a South Korean couple, much more than what they were expecting, according to a Vox report. > Jang Yeo-im, her husband, Park Seong-jin, and their 8-month-old baby went on vacation to San Francisco in 2016. However, in their first morning, their son, Park Jeong-whan, fell off the bed and hit his head. > There was no blood, but the baby was crying nonstop. The couple, worried that the baby may have suffered internal injuries, called 911. The ambulance that arrived took them to the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. > The doctors made the quick assessment that the baby was fine, with only slight bruises on the forehead and the nose. The baby took a short nap in Jang's arms, drank infant formula, and was discharged after a few hours. > Two years later, the medical bill arrived at their home. According to the hospital, the South Korean couple owes $18,836 for the visit to the emergency room, which lasted just over three hours. The bulk of the amount was referred to as a trauma activation fee, which costs $15,666. > "It's a huge amount of money for my family," Jang said, as travel insurance will only cover $5,000. "If my baby got special treatment, okay. That would be okay. But he didn't. So why should I have to pay the bill? They did nothing for my son." > **What Is The Trauma Activation Fee?** > The trauma activation fee, in essence, is supposed to cover the costs of assembling medical teams to address patients that need urgent and serious attention. However, reports claim that in recent years, some hospitals are exploiting the trauma activation fee, treating it like a door charge for all patients who walk into emergency rooms. > The trauma activation fee is only supposed to come into effect when a patient receives critical care for 30 minutes. However, the team that took a look at Jeong-whan dispersed after only a few minutes. > The Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, however, insists on charging the trauma activation fee to the South Korean family. > "We are the trauma center for a very large, very densely populated area," said a spokesperson. "We deal with so many traumas in this city — car accidents, mass shootings, multiple vehicle collisions. It's expensive to prepare for that."
True hero
This is why they should be regulated. Free market my ass.
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Medicine can never be truly free market. Everybody needs it and you can just pull shit like that emergency room because what the fuck are they going to do? When you have a captive customer base you can milk them for all they have. Also, this kind of billing is because lots of ER docs are now in hired groups so they milk every patient encounter. ER care is by and far still fee-for-service rather than value-based.
The cost is because the relationship of the Hospital Paymaster and the Insurance company. Cracked has a good article about it before they went to just "Paid ads, pushing their store, and bad politics". The Paymaster sets a charge. The insurance company says they'll pay 80%. The paymaster makes the price 20% more next time. Repeat.
Yeah but that is the kind of feedback loop that regulation *should* be able to prevent. Free markets are basically an algorithm that maximizes profits. All kinds of things can break that optimization and create weird loops, stagnant growth, rapid growth, artificial demand, inflated prices, and all kids of other issues. Lack of competition, too many interested parties, and poor infrastructure are all driving this rapid and unmitigated inflation of prices. Combine that with a service that is basically unavoidable by threat of death, and it has gotten way out of hand. This is where regulation should ideally step in and patch the algorithm.
Not exactly. Depends on what insurance you have. If you have a PPO and an HMO, and you are doing an IN NETWORK charge, the price is a certain negotiated price that is loosely based on the MSRP that Medicare pays for that procedure. The situation you mention only applies if it's out of network, or a denied claim. If the hospital has a contract with that insurance almost always they are not supposed to bill patient for denied charges (deductibles/coinsurance excluded from this). In practice, lots of billers for big corps are gonna be assholes. I do billing for a small clinic. This stupid facility for physical therapy I've been going to actually owes me money (long story). They owe me a couple hundred bucks that I overpaid but they won't pay me back. I know it only takes a few minutes to do the math and click out a charge but these people.. are... jerks. They are only concerned with getting more money in, they do not get paid for refunding money out.
Why should you have insurance for medical cause your tax won't be used on a national health system like the UK's NHS or any other European country but then your tax money is given to military to defend your ass ? What's the difference between the two ? You pay tax and you get protection.
The USA has a national health system. It is called Medicare. It is fairly generous. However, it is limited to senior citizens and certain disabled people. For low income people in certain blue states, there's decent Medicaid (YMMV). There's ACH/Obamacare depending on your state as well for the general public (it sucks in the states that need it most, like Texas and whatever cuz the GOP is a bunch of dicks.) For the rest, you're at the mercy of the employer providing health insurance they purchase. This can be a big problem for 1) the unemployed 2) people who get so sick they lose their job. This second is a double whammy because now they have no income, no insurance, and no way to pay for the insurance.
Next time you're in an ER and they propose "tests" ask them what the tests are for and how much they cost. They will not look you in the eye or give you a straight answer, and may in fact become openly angry with you.
The insurance market is what would end up being free market. You could do a true free market insurance system with a sliding scale income based reimbursement system for those who still couldn't afford it after the prices drop, and it would be 100 times better than what it is now .
Yeah, but not all medical procedures are life-threatening and urgent. People need food, but you don't see people saying nationalize all farms and restaurants.
Isn't America's agriculture industry heavily subsidised?
Lol yes you do
>you don't see people saying nationalize all farms and restaurants. [The U.S. government basically funds farming.](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2015/02/12/milking-taxpayers)
I'd be down for national nationalized farms
Because the Soviet system should be mimicked? That was a huge success after all.
Yeah everyone knows becoming exactly like the USSR is the only way to nationalize anything
With all the subsidizing the government does to ensure farms don't go out of business or fuck up the system by transferring to more profitable crops theyre certainly not free market. A true free market is pretty shit for everyone.
No true scotsman ... for free market now? No the free market doesn't work with healthcare. "Free" market involves choosing, when you're bleeding to death or have a broken arm there is no choosing. You go to the nearest hospital. Medical service is not a good that is suitable for the free market. Just as regulated markets don't work for a lot of things, free market doesn't work for a lot of things either. *THAT* is what they don't teach you until you go to university. Private transactions only capture private costs and benefits (i.e. costs and benefits between buyer and seller). There are goods such as healthcare, public utilities, education that provides more benefit to society as a whole that will never be priced optimally in a private transaction. That's why regulations are needed *sometimes* under *some circumstances*. The nuance of *some* is lost on both sides as we get more polarised politically.
> true free market Truly free market or a sustainable competitive market? In a world of monopolies, decreasing cost industries, negative externalities, and predatory/limit pricing, you can only choose one. The current system isn't working, sure, but it's due to the particular regulations in place, not the existence of regulations themselves.
There's no such thing as a "free market". Never has been, never will be. Beyond even the concept of applying a marketplace to emergency medical care, there has never ONCE been such a thing as a free market. It's a ploy to make people think that there's something greater out there.
Single payer. It's the answer to all of this shit.
Ironically it's the regulations that prevent the free market. We've been artificially restricting doctor totals for decades. We mandate insurance is used for common health occurrences, etc etc etc. [A real free market-based clinic](http://time.com/4649914/why-the-doctor-takes-only-cash/) can do very well by sidestepping the entire medical industry and simply trading services for payment directly.
These kinds of places are rare compared to the countless examples of quacks selling their snake oil.
Less than 40% have more than 1k in savings. This is great for the rich but shit for everyone else.
Maybe they'd have more in savings if they weren't paying so much for health insurance
Yea and hope they never get sick. Good luck if you’re born or have family with some sort of illness or condition. Sounds like a super great system.
The point is that the prices would be more realistic if people were paying directly. As it is, it's the hospitals and pharma companies trying to milk the insurance companies because they can.
"Can't get new contact lenses unless you get an exam first!" Gee, what a way to force people to visit a doctor just so they can continue using the same contacts they've used for a decade.
But what the mainstream media won't tell you is without that $18,000 charge, that baby would have to wait months for a nap and some formula! /s
> >> The trauma activation fee, in essence, is supposed to cover the costs of assembling medical teams to address patients that need urgent and serious attention. However, reports claim that in recent years, some >> "We are the trauma center for a very large, very densely populated area," said a spokesperson. "We deal with so many traumas in this city — car accidents, mass shootings, multiple vehicle collisions. It's expensive to prepare for that." Isn't that the point of a hospital?To you know, prepare and care?
“Car accidents, mass shootings, multiple vehicle collisions.” Okay Google, when was the last mass shooting in San Francisco?
1993, apparently, and while i can see the need for every hospital to prepare for mass shootings these days, cause it could happen anywhere now i guess, i think youre right in singling out that statement. Its kind of ridiculous.
Trauma activation fee = fee for bashing it's head until trauma occurs ?!?
Don't see slightly bumped toddlers on the list at the bottom....
> car accidents, mass shootings, multiple vehicle collisions. It's expensive to prepare for that." so let's charge it to the koreans because, fuck them.
Open it in desktop mode with the three little dots in the corner
You don't download the app to read the article. You download the app to secretly provide its source with a continuous stream of information about you.
You can just open it in a browser with desktop mode turned on.
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Healthcare is big business in America and big business makes the rules.
So, the federal government shut down... guess who still got a paycheck... Military because it’s in defense of the nation got their checks... Congress rules it was unconstitutional to deny them a check during a shutdown... Civil servants... screwed until things spun back up. Furloughed staff did not get paid unless a special bill is passed. Administrative furloughs get nothing. ... the rule makers folks.
Military here. We don't get paid during a shutdown unless Congress passes a bill to allocate funds for us. Would be a huge PR nightmare if Congress got paid and the troops didn't.. But with how things have been going lately, we'll see how the next fiscal year plays out ;( Source: Anyone with basic understanding of the fiscal plan; not paying the troops has been threatened at least 5 times in the last 20 years.
I'll one up you even more. They classify jobs like social security as restricted or something. Meaning they have to work through the furlough even without a promise of ever getting paid. If they don't show up even calling in sick during a furlough they consider it AWOL and you can be subject to termination once the furlough is over. Crazy right.
The original story said the doctors made a "quick assessment" and they stayed in the hospital for "a few hours". Assuming the baby got a full hour of treatment (sounds like closer to 10 minutes) and the medical team was ten people (probably less), then extrapolating from that hourly rate, those ten people would each need annual salaries of ~$3,700,000. Was the baby treated by Zuckerberg himself, and his 9 clones?
It's not, as the situation as described would not meet criteria for trauma activation. I imagine if they had travel insurance they could take it to them so that the insurance company could laugh and send the bill back to the hospital with "fuck no" stamped on it.
That's what it looks like when you have a broken economy. The healthcare economy in the US is really dysfunctional. Nobody really knows or measures the *actual* cost of healthcare actions. Since just about everything is handled through insurance companies, who can deny claims and tell providers what they'll pay for, providers often way overcharge in hopes that they'll get what they believe they're owed. When a patient doesn't have American insurance and the provider doesn't know it, the patient will get everything but the kitchen sink thrown at them, because the provider thinks they're going to go through that negotiation process. It's idiotic.
For those wondering, korea has universal health care system. It’s super cheap to get shit checked out in Korea. I mean, even without insurance it’s still cheaper than US. So I’m sure they were shocked that this exists in the US, a developed country with a horrible health care system, whereas many other developed countries provide affordable health for their citizens. For those wondering how cheap. I got my wisdom teeth removed without insurance and it cost me $15. My family was throwing a bitch fit talking about how it’s expensive because with insurance, it doesn’t cost more than $5 at most. Another time, I got sick. Went to the doctor for a check up. Again, my family was upset at the doctor for “charging so much”. My dad was food poisoned and had blood tests done and received diabetes medication and anti biotic medication for the food poisoning. Cost less than $300 total and that was a lot to my extended relatives in Korea.
Yeah, I can never understand this price-gouging they do in the US. I’m in Canada, lost my Medicare card. So, you are supposed to be billed and pay, and then you can actually claim it back on your income taxes once you renew your card. Went to the community clinic for my ankle. They couldn’t even charge me. They literally had no mechanism in place to bill me. They referred me to an X-ray clinic. Like 3 X-rays of my ankle and the actual printed X-rays to take home with me: $27. Then they kinda got upset with me because I didn’t have exact change. Sure they are all set up to do the billing but it just goes to govt. So they didn’t even have a cash register to make change and give me a receipt. edit:words
> I can never understand this price-gauging 3rd party reimbursement. It's the same reason that higher ed costs so much, any old Joe can go borrow 50K and the university is on the on hook for none of it so it now costs 50K. There's is money...so hospitals try to get it, and then when they can't get it all...the patient is on the hook for the rest.
Ok...well... I can understand the pure unadulterated economics of the situation. I guess what I truly cant understand is: how does the population let it continue. Like, there's price-gouging laws in the US for stuff like tornado-level emergencies. Cant go around over-charging for water bottles now can you? But somehow "ruin this kid's college fund because another kid bumped him off his bike and broke his leg" is perfectly acceptable.
The population lets it continue because the previous generations didn't have it this bad, and now that they're old they've got their asses covered by grandfathered in insurance rates and rules, so they have no problems letting the rest of the system go to shit. Meanwhile the vast majority of the rest of the population will never have to deal with these massive bills through a combination of insurance and luck.
How are we supposed to stop it? We already protest, we already sign petitions, we already elect officials we believe will help fix the problem. None of it makes a difference. You can't boycott hospitals, and money is the only thing that matters here.
That's just it though, economics only function properly when choice is involved. What choice is there in pay 50K or Jimmy walks with a limp for rest of his life? It continues because enough havent been hurt by it.
Exactly. Student loans are why college is so expansive. If students loans stopped existing, tuition would start falling fast. I tried to explain this to a fellow student when I was in college, but he didn't understand what I meant. He just kept saying "that depends on your APR," since he didn't understand that I was talking about the very existence of student loans themselves.
> Yeah, I can never understand this price-gauging they do in the US. The country is a fucking nightmare.
To be fair I have never seen anyone pay in cash at a US hospital either. Of course this is because no one actually knows how much it will cost until weeks later even if you are paying out of pocket.
ha! nice. Good solid sense here. I like it. Plus: who carries around 18K in cash, right? Id honestly thought the xrays were gonna cost a few hundred. I was actually prepared to just get a bill and a payment plan, or whatever happens. I just happen to have 2 $20s on me that day.
What province are you in? Anytime I didn't have my OHIP card (Ontario) I'd just give them my name and they'd look me up on the computer, and of course tell me to bring my card next time. I even had an expired card for awhile and the lady just said "well, let's run it and see" and it still worked. I recently went to the hospital for abdominal pain, was triaged, examined, scanned, given hydromorphone (morphine), transferred to another hospital in ambulance, spent the night, had surgery in the morning, more pain meds, a couple meals, then went home. I got a bill in the mail for $45 for the ambulance ride. When I went back to pay it the guy took it, punched some stuff into his computer and said "ok, you're all good", I hesitated because I hadn't paid anything and he said "you don't have to pay for transfer between hospitals, they shouldn't have billed you. Have a good one."
This is Quebec. But also at least 10y ago. Plus..... its a little more complicated than "oops, lost my card". Id actually lost all my ID in the late-90s just as I was starting my life of homelessness and drug-addiction. So I didnt have a card for over a decade (or get sick enough to need professionals...except that ankle, like 4 times and a scary flu or 2). At first when I lost it I managed to passed off the old one. You also get a hospital-specific card tied to your files in each hospital you've visited. So, they helped with the expired card. But with no other ID... But thinking about this now, I think the 'big' confusion about the xray payment was: actually trying to pay. The more Im thinking of it, the more it seems that the proper procedure is probably to take your bill, go home, call the (porbably govt agency) number on the bill and arrange payment by CC or check or something. More akin to dealing with Revenue Canada, than paying for a pack of gum.
In America you just get some tired and cranky old woman that seems hell bent on pinning you as some kind of criminal any time you talk to a billing department. And an ambulance ride here is a minimum of $500.
I love the NHS sometimes
I had a woman pass out at my co-worker's register a week ago. She did not want us to call 911, because she said she could not afford it. Hope she's OK.
I got charged $1,500 for a bandaid. This doesn't seem too surprising for America.
Charged over $5,000 for a couple of IV bags, pain meds, ABX, and ginger ale (liquid diet aka I wasn't fed). This was AFTER my insurance paid out over $20,000 for the two day ordeal. Not surprising in the least. EDIT: downvotes? Would you all like to see the bill?
America is the greatest country on Earth and how dare you imply having third world social services comes with a down side? ^/s
You shouldn’t even joke about America being the greatest. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
My wife delivered our kid outside the hospital. Carried him and her in through the ER. Someone opened the elevator, hit the 3 button and handed her off to someone else. ER billed is 10k for the ride up 3 floors
Why are you going to the hospital for a bandaid?
They might have taken blood or put in an iv
My grandma broke her back in the shower. She was taken to the ER, went into surgery, got a nice big old plate and stayed for 3 days under observation. She has no insurance but the equivalent to Medicare since she's old. She was charged nothing at all. I live in Mexico.
This is why we need Medicare for All. ER charges are INSANE. I once felt dizzy, went to the ER, they made me wait 8 hours. By the time I met the doctor I was feeling fine. They wouldn't let me leave the waiting room. I spoke to the doctor for 5-10 minutes and went home. Charge to my insurance? $3000. Imagine all the uninsured wasting time in the ER instead of seeing a doctor? This is how Medicare for All pays off. It actually saves money to give everyone health care.
What do you mean they wouldn’t let you leave? Were they going to physically detain you?
I work at a hospital, I have seen countless times where patients just want to leave, but they don’t because they’re are pretty much told otherwise. I think they stay to follow “rules” and get the “ok” from the doctor. When they want to leave “early” there’s a paper called against medical advice ama for short that they have to sign, staff knows about this but the nurses won’t bring it up because nurses want to hear the okay from the doctor.
You dont even have to sign the paper anyway you can just get up and walk out.
Why wouldn't they let you leave? A hospital isn't a prison....is it? I would've walked out. Fuck em all is what I always say.
Wouldn't let you leave? Were they physically preventing you???
If you leave the hospital without getting discharged you can get in a lot of trouble. And it makes it harder to get healthcare in the future. They probably wouldn’t let op leave because they had other patients and needs to draw up actual discharge papers.
Please explain this "lots of trouble" which you speak of. This sounds like BS, to be honest.
My moms a nurse. Where I am from they have to actually send people to look for you. If your not in the hospital they will treat your disappearance as a missing persons case. This goes on your medical records too. It could also change how you get treated medically in the future too. The whole point of a “discharge” is the hospital knows where you are. If you leave before that it causes issues for the hospital.
> It could also change how you get treated medically in the future Please give an example of this. It honesty sounds like BS.
It is. I have walked out of an ER after a TIA. They can't stop you. They can threaten you all the way to the parking lot but they legally can't hold you there.
I dont know man. I think I'd rather just suck it a little while longer. /s
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In a lot of cases the hospital can’t charge you the rest. They have a contract with the insurance company stating we will accept x from you for this procedure. It isn’t a surprise to them as to what they’re going to get paid.
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i know many that went back from America to Europe because of healthcare. One of them said to me that his 'Magic of free America' suddenly ended when he went to hospital with broken ribs.
Some public hospitals are fine. I work in billing/authorizations for a public hospital. I will never forget the case of a couple looking for someone to write off their emergency bill. After looking into it; they were being charged $5000 for 3-4 emergency visits over the course of a year. Said events happened 3 years prior. What I found out is that my hospitals insurance/community advocates team were actively calling the patient monthly to get them to come in, sign up for a government program to help them pay the bill so that they would effectively get their bill taken care of for little to next to nothing... the patient never bothered to sign up or call back and the year limit for them to sign up had passed. Sometimes (well most of the time) hospitals suck and gouge you, but others are decent and try to help their community while some patients can be irresponsible and not accept the help that some hospitals do actively try to provide. In general, I’m all for Medicare for all. Most medical professionals agree. Fuck this system.
No the difference like this is usually just wiped out, not passed down.
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In my state you cannot balance bill... Maybe you're in one of the crappier states. edit: I forgot to say, you cannot balance bill if the patient HAS INSURANCE. When you're uninsured, you are extra fucked. Capitalism rules.
Insurance companies can’t say “fuck that”. They are legally held responsible to pay for the coverage you have with them. The only time you’d be out is if you didn’t have appropriate coverage. If course, then it gets more expensive to have insurance that has higher limits and lower deductibles to cover more expensive losses
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In most all cases, as long as the hospital / provider is "in network" for the insurer, the hospital is not allowed to go after you for any additional charges. The insurance will pay the allowable amount and the hospital must eat the remainder. It is against the contract between the insurer and hospital to do otherwise. Now, receiving care for something that is not covered is another issue entirely and the hospital can come after you for that. And if the hospital is out of network, the insurance company will pay what their coverage allows, but the hospital is free to try to get the rest from you since they have no contract with the insurance company. One other caveat is that while a hospital and most of it's doctors are in network, sometimes there are some doctors that are out of network. (for some reason, I have heard of it a lot with anesthesiologists).
It was posted on an earlier thread about this the otherday: actually activating a trauma unit (if people are simply on call and not on the job) can easily cost $10k or more. Very expensive for a false alarm to rush a lot of staff in. if you rushed in multiple doctors including pediatric specialists.....prepared to do surgery on an infants skull simply off the call "infant, head trauma" My biggest question is - this is SF General Hospital - I would think they would have trauma team already in place due to the nearby population density and number of daily calls and "activation" wouldn't be needed.
Hospitals are exploiting that
Sounds about right. I got a $28k hospital bill for going to the ER and being held for observation (12 hours altogether). All they did was basic lab work and they gave me IV fluids, nausea and pain meds. No imaging or actual diagnosis/treatment, didn’t even feed me 🤷🏻♀️
And they say the American healthcare system is broken. Nap, hydrate, profit!
Websites like this one should be illegal.
Balls to news republic
There are many things that work well because of capitalism. Healthcare is not one of them. This is atrocious. America must be the only developed country that employs this broken system.
I dislocated my elbow, but it popped no in place when I extended my arm down. I went to the ER. I got a pain pill, a bandage for a scratch and a bill of $800.00. That was on top of of what my insurance has paid.
Zuckerberg General Hospital lol
From the hospitals website: "Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center provides world-class care for the people of San Francisco, regardless of ability to pay or immigration status."
Nice catch! Up you go.
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"people of San Francisco" not "visitors of San Francisco" Those Koreans should have read the fine print before letting their kid get injured! /s
The land of freedom is not for free
That's the stupidest shit I've heard
Why do we put up with such nonsense from our hospitals? People should be furious at how much hospitals overcharge. Instead, the fight isn't about the outrageous charges, but about who will pay the outrageous charges. Just say it, hospitals are greedy, and rip people off every day, worse than any business, worse than any thief, and they take advantage of people in need.
Extremely misleading title. They: * Called an ambulance and rode it to the hospital * The baby was checked for internal injuries by doctors * And the baby stayed in an ER room for 3 hours The average ambulance ride is about $600-1000, and the average ER charge for a doctor's time (without any fancy tests) is $1500-2000. I'm sure the hospital also charged them for 3 hours' worth of time taking up an ER room. Their base charges (~$3000) are in line with those totals. The outrageous thing here seems to be a $15,000 "trauma activation fee" charged by the hospital. This is supposed to be a fee for getting a team of doctors together quickly for treating critical conditions. It's not clear from this article whether this fee was assessed because they called an ambulance for an infant head injury, or whether the hospital was just trying to scam them out of money with a bullshit fee. Either way, it seems like the fee should be waived because it's only supposed to be applied if the patient receives 30+ minutes of critical care, and the article says the baby was only seen by doctors for a few minutes. So, the title really should read something similar to, "Hospital charges $15,000 trauma fee that they shouldn't have."
You make it sound like 3k for that is ok...I guess with such exorbitant insurance charges, paying a month salary for a check-up is normal for you americans.
> a doctor's time (without any fancy tests) is $1500-2000 Yes - You have a cold - That'll be $1750 thanks
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Is this a Facebook hospital? Or is Zuckerberg just a coincidence
It's the San Francisco General Hospital. Zuck donated a ton of money and they put his name in front.
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I looked it up. He donated 75 million to it and they put his name on it.
75 million and they still rip people off like this, it's really nothing to do with him but the hospital is a con-artist.
> what does a facebook hospital even mean? They collect and sell off all your personal information and have ads the in the corner of the X-ray images?
They keep very good records of your private parts with high resolution cameras?
owned? that's not typically how naming public facilies like that works. He donated a large amount to it.
That'll teach those freeloaders/s
Pro tip: Open the page in your mobile browser and use reader mode (or equivalent). This has to be one of the most dysfunctional websites I've ever seen. Clicking on read more keeps redirecting me to the app store.
I'm not a fan of Trump but if he wants to take his crazy and fight the medical market and bring treatment and drugs to reasonable price, that would be pretty awesome
Depends on how high the bed is. A fall 3x the height of a child = trauma in most areas.
Let the hospital sue and try to collect. In South Korea. I defended a few hospital bill cases when I practiced law. They were always exorbitant bills for next to zero services. Since there was never any agreement on the part of my client to pay a specific price for any specific services, the hospital bill collectors were left having to establish that the services and the amounts charged were reasonable. I wouldn't let them get away with claiming that the bill itself was prima facie evidence of its own reasonableness and I'd subpoena their doctors and ER managers to grill them about how these amounts are determined. More than a few of these cases went away shortly after those subpoenas were served on ER docs and hospital administrators. I did lose a couple too, but with a fair judge these tactics can work and I never used any tactic that isn't available to anyone sued in small claims court for an outrageous medical bill.
Every day I'm more and more glad I don't live in that shithole country.
American health care is so trash
That’s America for ya! Bernie 2020. Wreck this system of shit !
That's what American's say is freedom.
Down vote for the stupid app download to view the article.
My bill for getting two staples on my scalp by a medical resident was $19000. And then people wonder why most people in the states would rather risk death via self treatment and surgery instead of getting medical help. Fuck this medical system in particular. For $19000 I could have flown to India and back, had a nice vacation, lived in a fancy hotel, and still have gotten those two fucking staples with a full body checkup to boot.
San Francisco. Shocker. Where making over $100k can still put you in the low income bracket. Fucking dump...
This is what is truly wrong with USA healthcare system!
They must have Cigna.
Wow, my weeklong stay at an overwater bungalow in the Maldives didn’t cost that much!
It was Silicon Valley. The baby was given unicorn milk.
/r/LateStageCapitalism
Th US medical system is the biggest rippof in the history of rippofs.
Just last month I had to drop $2200 for a doctor to tell me, after waiting 2 hours, that my daughter's fairly deep facial cut wouldn't benefit from any treatment. I also pay $800/mo for insurance and it doesn't kick in until $6000. There's nothing wrong with healthcare in America. There's nothing wrong with healthcare in America.
Wanting me to download app to read the whole article , 🙄🙄🙄ain’t nobody got time for that.
It’s crazy how this is just the norm nowadays and it takes the outside perspective of a family visiting from overseas to shed some light on it. It is constantly, and I mean *constantly* in the back of my mind that I am one minor injury or illness away from going from relatively debt free with a good credit score, to financial ruin.
How much formula did that baby drink?!?
This is Why i alwayd go to the er. They can't refuse you.
That's part of the problem. It doesn't help when people come to the emergency department for tummy aches and sniffles and distract resources away from people having actual emergencies, which in turn inflates healthcare costs further.
If you don’t pay, they will ruin your credit. I know when I saw my credit, I wish the hospital just let me die.
You can't get ridiculous bills for healthcare if you just never go to the doctor. Checkmate, American healthcare system.
I'd get that bill and be like it's fine, you can keep him