Pretty soon you're talking about real money
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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.
Please love yourself.
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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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Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
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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.
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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!!Not in my experience, unless you want it to get really nasty(Jolly, who has been known to rack up several years of >$100,000 full retail bills)
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There is no margin in letting it be, and as far as I'm aware, the laws of the land dictate that I legally owe this place $94000 at this moment, because that's the number they chose to write on the bill they sent my insurance company as an "out of network" provider. I am not aware of any laws preventing them from writing 94m instead, so I can be glad they did not. If I get hit by a bus and all my heirs also get hit by a bus, that surgery center gets the 94k from my estate.
Education is extremely important.
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@Horace said in Pretty soon you're talking about real money:
There is no margin in letting it be, and as far as I'm aware, the laws of the land dictate that I legally owe this place $94000 at this moment, because that's the number they chose to write on the bill they sent my insurance company as an "out of network" provider. I am not aware of any laws preventing them from writing 94m instead, so I can be glad they did not. If I get hit by a bus and all my heirs also get hit by a bus, that surgery center gets the 94k from my estate.
Didn't you have to have this surgery pre-approved?
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That was the verbal story I was given at the time. Along with a warning from the surgery center Administrator to call her if I had any trouble from my insurance company. Which sank my heart a bit. I worried that she knew she was going to be trying something they might not like. Then there was the wording on the estimate, the first line of which warns that the bill sent to the insurance company will be large but that I shouldn't worry because these things get negotiated down. But behold, no negotiation, just retail, right there on my insurance company's website that collates all my current medical bills. And when I called the insurance company, they are uninterested in doing anything about it. They just want me to call the surgery center. And I can't get in touch with the surgery center Admin because she's on vacation this week.
It's a little odd that the surgery center is "out of network" since they work exclusively with surgeons who are "in network" for my insurance. I think they intentionally are "out of network" so they can send these sorts of bills and leave the patient with the choice of paying the cash immediately to make it go away, or letting them suffer under the massive debt.
