Wednesday, August 21, 2019

the fucking absurdity of our healthcare system


Yesterday was such a relief. It was overcast all day and the temperatures stayed in the mid to high 80˚s. No rain though. The city an hour from us gets it all. All that concrete sending up heat waves. Did I take advantage of it and do cold work over at the shop? No, no I did not.

I got an email the other day from the Memorial Hermann Hospital System for my recent procedure and hospital stay. It was a bill that said I owed $9,484. Click here to pay! A bit of a shock since at no time was I told that I would owe this amount. The co-pay they asked for when I arrived for the procedure was $200 which I paid at the time. So I clicked and got this itemized bill. This is a screen shot but online I could click on all those little plus signs and get even more detail about the charges.


$109,691.75

Insurance and provider adjustments winnowed it down to $18,355.55 of which I owed $200 and had paid and my balance was zero. I'm on the phone immediately. What the hell? Oh, she says, that email was a mistake, you shouldn't have received it, just ignore it. So I don't owe anything, this online statement is correct? Yes, she says. I also got a separate bill from the electrophysiologist for $84 which is fine considering they have never asked for the $40 co-pay for office visits I'm supposed to pony up.

Before I agreed to the flutter ablation, I had researched on-line to see about what it would cost. Depending on where and what facility, costs ranged from about $20,000 to $35,000. So what the fuck is the point of this $100,000+ charge if they are willing to accept $18,000 for it. I wonder, if I had had the ablation with no insurance if this is the amount, $109,691.75, they would have charged me?

Some doctors/hospitals have a 'cash' price. I know because I always asked what the charge would be pre-insurance and while I never had to have a hospital procedure I know someone who did and he negotiated the cash price with the hospital in advance.

This country is so fucked up. Billions for war and aggression but national health care, well, too expensive, no money for that. Instead, Americans without insurance or with a crappy policy have to engage in medical tourism to get excellent care for a fraction of what you would be charged here. Here, you go without or you go bankrupt. My granddaughter had to have an emergency appendectomy before they had any insurance and my daughter is going to be paying that bill, also over $100K, for the rest of her life. Fortunately, the hospital is content with the small payment she can send every month, for now anyway.

The richest country in the world and we can't manage what most every other nation can and does...healthcare for their population.





13 comments:

  1. It is completely insane. When I covered health care as a journalist in the 1990s I was astonished at how high hospital prices were -- and how drastically they came down for those with health insurance, whose insurance companies were able to negotiate better rates. Some hospitals say people without insurance often don't pay the full cost either, because their bills get written off, essentially as charity cases. (This is particularly true of public hospitals.) So what's the point of these prices if nobody pays them? I guess they're used as the hospital's starting point in negotiating with insurers, for one thing, but yeah, it's an interesting question.

    Thank god that bill was a mistake, but still -- what a shock it must have been!

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  2. More than 100K for an emergency appendectomy?? The prices are crazy. Most bankruptcies in this country are due to health care bills that are simply too steep to pay. When my husband had his emergency heart surgery two years ago, we got a bill for almost 300K, but fortunately for him, he had insurance. It's beyond insane, it's beyond absurd. Glad you are among the ranks of the insured.

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  3. It cost $98,986 for my mastectomy, of which I owe 0. It cost $89,594 for the implant and reduction, I owe nothing. That's medicare for low income people. I don't know how people with no insurance don't go crazy with these bills.
    I'm so glad, Ellen, that you don't have to pay that bill, but sad for your daughter. But like Steve says they sometimes do write off a large portion. Hope that happens for her!!

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  4. It is totally bewildering to an outsider as well. Utterly. It seems a case of count your blessings and forget it.
    Here, we have a fixed scale of fees for all medical procedures which is available online to all but hardly any patient knows/understands how to properly check it and I am sure, there are doctors/clinics who overcharge and/or add treatment extras they never carried out. Or they overtreat people.

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  5. That's complicated.. excessive and disturbing. I don't understand the resistance that so many have to national health care. I don't know how people manage. It's a terrifying worry. Everyone gets ill or hurt at some point. I have never seen a hospital bill other than one for about $25 for the television... or for long distance phone calls back in the days before cell phones. I so hope that this comes together for Americans sometime before too long. I'm really glad you don't have to pay more than the $200.

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  6. I wonder how people hang onto the notion that this is Amerika and we are self sufficient.

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  7. My niece did not have insurance and unfortunately got very sick and was admitted to a hospital. They kept her two days and sent her home. She got sicker and had to return. She almost died from a flesh eating bacteria. She remained in the hospital for three weeks and when they realized that they could be sued for malpractice for sending her home and the story could get out, her bill was minimal.

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  8. Just remember to vote in November. We are a wealthy country but waste all of our money on war and subsidizing billionaires.

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  9. Remember when I got the bill for my hip surgery two years ago? Almost $75k they said I owed! I flipped out. When I called - oh we haven't billed the insurance yet - we just like to get the bill out to you right away. I wonder how many people just pay (if they can), not realizing that they don't need to. What a scam.

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  10. I am so thankful for my husbands Blue Cross Blue Shield. We tallied up all the surgeries and procedures plus ER visits for the past 10 years for both of us(mostly mine) and it hit close to $1,700,000 without insurance. Of all that we paid roughly only $19,000. Having the right insurance helps but I wonder what the insurance people will do once the U.S. changes over to Medicare for all if we ever get there.

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    Replies
    1. I don't think we'll ever get rid of private insurance but I guess they will just have to find new jobs. industries come and go.

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  11. It is totally outrageous. What we need, as a nation (besides a totally new government), is a national healthcare plan that is the same as the idiots in office enjoy.

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I opened my big mouth, now it's your turn.