Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/27/hospital-charges-2658-98-to.html
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The article forgot to mention who put that shoe in there
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“Don’t put marbles in your nose! Put them in there! Do not put them in there!”
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should be at most $200
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I would have done it for $125 flat.
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Soooo can we just start calling this a failed state or…?
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Except they did. And the urgent care facility couldn’t help. I guess they should have spent more time shopping around at various different UC centers though. /s
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sounds like someone or someones need a shoe somewhere.
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A round-trip flight Las Vegas to New Zealand is $1241, where she could have had health care for free, even as a tourist.
So, yeah, that.
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It is easy to crucify the doc in this case, but in fairness, we don’t “bill” as such. We enter a code, in this case T17.1XXA or S00.35XA, into our friendly idiot boxes and press “enter.” The billing systems then work to maximize reimbursement based on what insurance pays. We have our coding and billing practices reviewed quarterly or so, which is far more frequently than we have our actual medical practices reviewed. Strange thing, that… Anyway, if the billing specialists find that we are undercoding, we can pretty much be assured of a visit from the physician liaison to “review our habits.” The system is flat busted and universal healthcare cannot get here soon enough.
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So in other words, people with health insurance had a minor, easy to resolve problem, shopped around, followed advice and got charged $2k out of their own pocket.
Medicare for all will never sell because Americans love their health care plans, right?
Honestly, though, this just makes me feel like crying. I don’t know the parents’ financial situation or how much hardship this will actually put them under, but that amount of money could be a big problem for a lot of people. “Well, my 3-year-old was playing with dolls so I guess we don’t get to eat.”
Jesus, America.
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In my experience, insurance companies only pay out about 10% of a bill so hospitals just automatically increase the cost of everything. They don’t actually thing, for example, that Tylenol is worth $900, but in order to be reimbursed $9 they simply have to charge $900. If you explain to the billing department that you are paying out of pocket, not using insurance, they should re-bill you for a lot less, magically around 10%. The whole system is FUBAR.
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We tend to see the reverse. There is a list price, that $900 Tylenol. Most insurance companies negotiate a discount, even if the hospital is out of network. So, the “allowed” price may be $90 or $25. That covers the costs. Since it’s a negotiated price with a company they have a relationship with, they’re pretty sure they’ll get paid.
If you’re uninsured, there’s no relationship, you’re just part of the pool of “all the other uninsured” people. They know they’re going to simply bankrupt most of those people and never get paid anything. All those statistics on families that can’t absorb a $400 hit, and this will always be larger. The list price is set to cover costs of the entire pool. If the real cost is $25, and only 1 in 36 uninsured people actually pay instead of going bankrupt, then $900 is the correct list price. That 1 person is paying to cover the costs of the entire pool.
Same concept when you buy something at retail and the unit price is high enough to cover breakage/loss/theft. The percentages are just very different.
That’s part of how M4A reduces costs. They’ll get paid by all 36, so they only need to charge the $25.
The stupid part is, unless someone is arguing to kick people to the curb and let them die, we’ve already decided that everyone will get care. We’ve just done it in the most expensive, least effective, stupidest way possible.
Which is why everyone should ask people against single payer healthcare, if they want to kick people to the curb, deny ER and all care, or if they’re they just like to waste money. Are they cruel, fiscally stupid, or both.
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“Not every urgent situation is an emergency,” the hospital said in an emailed statement. "It is important for patients to understand the terms of their health insurance before seeking treatment.
This doesn’t make sense. It’s like they are saying you should read through the lawyer-ese terms of their health insurance before going in for urgent or emergency treatment. FUBAR is right.
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It’s a long flight with a shoe up your nose.
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I’ll put down $10 on “both.” No, make that $50.
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But a lovely destination…
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A huge portion of emergency room resources go to helping people who have no health coverage at all and no way to pay (i.e. homeless & destitute people whose problems are made all the worse by a lack of access to preventative care) so whenever a hospital finds an E.R. patient who has money they have to stick them extra hard to make up the difference.
Like you say, FUBAR.
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It’s public healthcare, but only for the absolute most expensive way to provide healthcare!
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Your one chance to use your long-ass forceps!
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