Pretty soon you're talking about real money
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First, I still don’t understand how medical costs work. The doctors, the facilities, private vs institutions, insurance, networks, etc. Gives me a headache.
Second, I love how $98,000 could be so easily made as a mistake on their end. Pretty sure if you went to buy three or four new cars from a dealership, the price wouldn’t be a guess.
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Wow, Horace. You're pretty cool and collected about this, I think I'd be a wreck.
Of course the difference is, $98,000 is just pocket change to you, not that big a deal, just a nuisance, a slight bother, just one less bottle of expensive wine, one hour less in the Gulfstream.The thumb issue though, that's different. As someone that likes to dabble playing the piano, that would be more than catastrophic. I think it would send me into an emotional tailspin.
As I recall, Trump issued an EO that at least prescription prices on ads would need to be displayed, as a first step towards people being able to compare prices in the health care field. Blocked by a court (again).
Good luck and give 'em hell.
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@Klaus said in Pretty soon you're talking about real money:
American exceptionalism at its best.
Don't worry, though. If you sit in front of a mirror and say "But we have the best healthcare in the world!" a thousand times you can make yourself believe it.
Klaus, everything is best over here. Because over here is America.
You might not know what that means, but I'll clue you in: everything American is better than everything non-American, simply by virtue of being American. American cheese is better than non-American cheese. The same goes for American German beer, American museums that house European works of art, American incarceration rates, American healthcare debt, etc., etc.
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@Aqua-Letifer said in Pretty soon you're talking about real money:
American cheese product is better than non-American cheese product .
FIFY
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I haven't finalized anything yet, but it is seeming like this surgery center sends these huge bills as leverage to get the patient to pay the smaller amount they are really looking for, asap. Like, before the patient pays any other bills they may have. The problem is that I never received a bill for the smaller amount. Only this estimate they gave me before the surgery.
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@Axtremus said in Pretty soon you're talking about real money:
I keep telling you folks, single-payer universal healthcare FTW.
No. If that had been in place he would have had to wait so long to get his surgery that the joints would have healed leaving him deformed, when he finally did get to have surgery it would have been done by a half trained flunky who didn't give a shit whether or not he did a good job because he's working for peanuts and if you don't like it tough shit because the government writes his paycheck not you.
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- Single-payer universal healthcare doesn't necessarily mean long waiting times or bad health service. In some countries it works well, in other countries not so much.
- There are various health systems that work better than the American one that are not single-payer universal.
I have the impression that the healthcare debate in the US is much too focused on a seemingly one-dimensional binary decision, but in reality health care systems have many many dimensions, and there are many incremental improvements on dimensions different from single-payer universal vs private.
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That sucks, Horace.
I had a part time unpaid job after my transplant getting everything sorted out. Lasted for months. It got to where I had the desk number and email of a woman at United Health Care and we were sending spreadsheets back and forth with the status of various claims.
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My impression is that reports from boots on the ground in various countries, as they consume their own health care, are overwhelmingly not in favor of the reports from Americans. More often than not it boils down to people from other countries agape at the stuff we Americans have to deal with and saying a silent thank you to their God that the don't have to.
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@ILM said in Pretty soon you're talking about real money:
Horace,
You don’t have to do anything. The price you see is the max retail price. Your insurance will cover your costs. Give it time, and you will see that your out-of-pocket will be much, much lower!!I think that's right.