Originally published at: Florida hospital sends debt collectors after 4-year-old child | Boing Boing
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Late stage capitalism means you are either born rich, or you are born in debt and then die in debt. That’s the endgame.
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Clearly they care a lot about children down in Florida.
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Yep. Just ask DeSantos (/sarcasm)
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Combine this with their fascination for child labour and the American capitalist conservative’s goal is clear:
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Unfortunately, this isn’t limited to Florida. This is everywhere in the US under a for-profit healthcare system.
If there’s any way to get conservatives on board with single-payer healthcare it’s pointing out the inefficiency and corruption in the private insurance/billing fraud system.
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Isn’t that a feature and not a bug for them?
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It’s probably happening in every community across the country - we’re all fucked by the health care system, unless we’re so wealthy that we can pay out of pocket for even the most expensive procedure.
You’d think, but they no longer care about inefficiency, only about ensuring that access to health care is restricted to the “right” people… They even don’t mind the endless fraud, because it’s sticking it to the libs and the poors.
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For the capitalists and their pet politicians (including some Democrats), yes but this is something many GOP voters have experienced first- or second-hand. It resonates. Then you just have to overcome the propaganda of fictional wait times for care and “death panels” that gets vomited up by the right wing.
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You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Unfortunately I think this is just one more item on the long, long list of things that are unfair and wrong when it happens to them, but is perfectly fine and valid when it’s applied to most anyone else.
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Me literally yesterday:
I am a caregiver for an elderly disabled woman. She had a doctor’s appointment with her wound care doctor yesterday. She sees this doctor every Tuesday. On the way out, the receptionist said, “Hey, did you call billing to straighten out that $20 charge? You have to get that straightened out or next time we’re going to have to demand payment or she won’t be able to see the doctor.” They had told us about this the week before, but I had forgotten about it. She has a balance of $19.94 on her account. She has Medicare and the best Medicare supplement plan available. She has no copays and no coinsurance ever. This charge was for a service provided in January, 2022. So I called billing. They said they sent the claim in, Medicare paid their part, the supplementary didn’t, for some reason I didn’t understand. They said I needed to talk to the supplement provider. They gave me a claim number to give them. I called the supplement provider. They said the claim number wasn’t a valid claim number, but they were able to track down the claim after putting me on hold for 10 minutes. They said Medicare paid their part, and they paid there’s, and then the provider send in a duplicate claim, which they rejected because they’d already paid it. They’re sending an EOB in snail mail (because I don’t know why tf they can’t email it). In the meantime, they suggested I have the provider’s billing department call them. So I called billing. This time I was speaking to a different person, and she said they never received any payment from the supplementary provider. I said, “Well ok, they want you to call them to straighten it out.” She said, “We don’t do that. You’ll have to do that.” At that point, I could feel myself getting close to losing it, so I took an internal 5 count and said, “Why am I having to straighten all this out? This wasn’t my problem. She has Medicare and a supplement plan that covers everything, without any copays or coinsurance. They want you to call them.” She said, “Because it isn’t worth our time over a $19.94 charge to spend an hour on the phone straightening it out.” This time I took a 10 count. I said, “So my time is worth nothing?” I then told her what the receptionist said about having to resolve this situation immediately. She said, “Well I can’t tell the front desk what to do, but I don’t know why they’d say that over such a small amount.” The situation still isn’t resolved. I guess I’ll wait for the EOB and see what that says.
With all due respect, fuck our entire health care system and all the people involved in the financial side of it. And I realize the billing person I spoke to doesn’t make the rules, but the things she said to me were completely out of line, so I don’t have much sympathy for her either.
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THIS.
My mother went through this a while ago when one of her (many) procedures got mis-coded as being from a car accident, and had to deal with the provider’s billing service, Medicare, and her supplemental insurance as well.
I had to ultimately have a conference call with my insurance provider and the ER room’s billing department back in 2021 from a visit there in order to get them to straighten their shit out instead of using me as a go-between. AND one of the providers didn’t decide to finally bill me until EIGHTEEN MONTHS afterwards for what the insurance didn’t cover, which also pissed me off.
I know everyone and their dog b*%tches about how Medicare sucks, but seeing it in action as intended? GIMME. No worrying if the specialist will cover you, or if a procedure is covered at all, etc.
(Now if we can get Medicare to cover things like dental, vision, and hearing…)
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They should have sent debt collectors to a charter school.
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I have serious medical problems, I literally spent this past weekend in the hospital. Over the years I’ve gotten tens of thousands of dollars worth of bills. Even when I had good insurance from my employer. So, at some point in time I decided I would just stop paying them. I wouldn’t answer the debt collection calls and I sometimes blocked them.
And nothing really happened, my credit is ok, and the bills just end up disappearing after a while.
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Boy, if this had continued, given how the parents were being blocked from even discussing it, it really could have gone somewhere that was both grotesque and absurd - debt collectors harassing a 4 year old over the payment, with all the slimy shit they get up to brought short by the realization they were dealing with a small child. (Or maybe that wouldn’t dissuade them.)
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A month ago I slammed my fingertip in my car door. When I was able to get an appointment with my primary care physician, I had several go-rounds with the clinic, who insisted I had to see if my car insurance (!) would cover the exam. I said, what if I just paid for it outright? The clinic was shocked. I came in, was treated, and paid cash, which came out to under $200. I can see an entire load of manure for someone who couldn’t afford to deal expediently with the bureaucracy.
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Isn’t it wonderful? A year after visiting an urgent care I got a bill from a collections agency for a fee I supposedly owed the doctor that saw me. While I was there nobody said anything about the doctor not working for the urgent care but basically acting as a contractor. Nobody asked for any payment while I was there. I never got a bill from them just the collections people. Call urgent care and they can’t provide any info on the scope of the charges because they “no longer had the case, it is in collections”. Call the collections place and they can’t give me any details. After several back and forths they agree to send me an itemized bill for the charges. Eight months later I have yet to see the itemized bill, but on the good side I have yet to receive another bill from them either.
Managed healthcare blows chunks and if I had one wish from a genie I would destroy the entire industry.
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I wish there was some way to punish companies that miraculously grow a customer service department only when threatened with bad media coverage. That deliberate obfuscation should cost them dearly.
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