That's insane. Unfortunately politicians will not touch this issue because most people either have insurance which covers these idiotic baseless fees or indigent people go to the emergency room and avoid these fees as well. But the poor sap who wants to do things the right way gets effed over like these people. What a shame.<p>I don't care who, Bernie, Trump, some socialist, take this cause (hospital billing) and have them come correct. They need someone to get tough and straighten them out.<p>I mean, it's legalized robbery. Nothing less.
John Cochrane, a well known financial economist and former president of the American Finance Association, last month wrote a blog post [0] reacting to a similar article in Bloomberg about the pricing of air ambulance services. If you want to see how bizarre the structure of our markets for healthcare services looks to an economist, I encourage you to read it.<p>I wonder if there’s a collection of this sort of article somewhere, all these journalistic accounts of ordinary people’s financially nightmarish encounters with the American market for healthcare. It feels like I’ve read dozens of them, and they’re all basically similar, not just in the facts they relate of each debacle, but also in their lack of insight into what’s really so fundamentally broken about our healthcare markets.<p>0. <a href="https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2018/06/cross-subsidies.html" rel="nofollow">https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2018/06/cross-subsidies.h...</a>
Recently a friend of mine visited the emergency care in a private hospital in downtown SF with heavy stomach pain. It turned out to be a partial bowel obstruction, which thankfully sorted itself out with some conservative treatment.<p>My friend was discharged in a couple of days... with a bill of 70K USD. Except for an IV and a Ryles tube, there was hardly any other intervention.<p>Having just finished college, my friend did not have an insurance plan that could cover such a huge bill. Thankfully the state stepped in to help since the yearly income was below the federal poverty line. Otherwise, I can't imagine the plight.<p>For once, my friend was thankful for being a broke college grad.
American hospitals are just big ripoff machines. The whole nonsense with insurance negotiated, uninsured, in-network, out-of-network fees needa to go. Just post one price for a service for all. My girlfriend had a few surgeries over the last few years. The only conclusion I could draw from the bills was that<p>a) they make up prices as they go<p>b) they like to charge for things that never happened or put a several thousand percent markup on things<p>They said that Obamacare was broken beyond repair. The same should be said for the current system and its billing practices.
Healthcare in US is a best example of how a Healthcare shouldn't be. The citizens of the country shouldn't be scared of going to hospital. Countries like India may have corruption, but their people, even the poorest, have the option to consult doctor free of cost or at the cost they can afford. The Healthcare in US is in the clutches of Insurance companies.
My personal story from Germany:
My 14 month old son got a deaseae in the spine so he could not walk anymore.<p>We spent 4 weeks in the hospital. 1 week until it was diagnosed in the MRT, 3 weeks with 3 different antibiotic treatment and another two month antibiotics at home.<p>All this while my wife continued to study for her PHD so I stayed away from work and lived with my son in the hospital.<p>This whole experience did cost us around 200€ (incl. gasoline to drive to the hospital) while still getting full income from my employer.
My oldest bumped his head as a baby, went to the ER, he had a great time seeing and visiting with the nurses and doctors (he couldn't speak, but he knew how to get a response). I think it cost us $150 (with insurance) rather than 51k...<p>On the other hand his birth was near $200k because he was born early and had a long hospital stay (he's fine now, long term premature outcomes are amazing). Nothing we could have done to prevent it, know it was coming, it would have financially destroyed us at that time had we not had insurance.<p>The US healthcare system is borked.
Is it insane? Did people read the article? The critical trauma unit was activated. I suppose if people are called in to work, they shouldn't get paid if it turns out they aren't needed?
If there is one area ripe for disruption, it's US health care.<p>A few months ago my wife was showing me atrocious bills people were posting on FB, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It hit home because we "accidentally" got a bill when an in-network lab sent a blood test to an out of network testing facility and we got a $14k bill... for a blood test.<p>Just recently, a 2 hour ER visit for my toddler cost $3.5k for a breathing treatment, some Tylenol and some influenza tests. All part of my high deductible plan.<p>I used to be on the side against healthcare reform. I'm now counting the seconds until we have ANY regulation to stop this madness.
The issue here is that the head hit was activated as a trauma. Trauma activation criteria are different for every hospital. If the criteria is lower, you get situations like these.<p>Trauma teams legitimately require such expense. There are surgeons, nurses, neurosurgeons, and others on call 24/7 sleeping on the hospital so they can get to victims of trauma within 5minites. Gunshots, stab wounds, car accidents, massive balconies falling with kids on them, etc, all require legitimate trauma activations. So do drinks and homeless people who get hit by cars or stabbed in the middle of the night, and many who don’t have insurance are still treated by the hospital. Some hospitals bill all patients 7-10 times the actual costs, get paid 1-2 times actual by insurance. Uninsured either don’t pay, or negotiate down, or are plagued by the full bill designed to compensate for the others who don’t pay.<p>If a hospital isn’t able to cover the costs of a trauma team, that means they lose their trauma designation and any local patients bleeding out because of trauma have to be trekked by ambulance or helicopter to the next trauma center, which in SF is Stanford or John Muir in the East Bay. They might have needed to pay another 25k if a chopper was called for this.
I've said here before that I hope I get mauled and eaten by wolves to avoid the entire healthcare industry, but now I'm thinking about offering wolves as a service.
First, they're from South Korea. Paying even a cent of this would be a stupidly bad financial idea. Why? There is absolutely no reason. Let the hospital send the bill to some creditors and let them try to collect in South Korea. Honestly, the situation is laughable.<p>Second, the article thinks that this was fraud. Figures. It may not be too late for them to call the hospital and point this out and ask them to zero out the balance. This hospital, when it had its prior name, did something similar for a friend of mine, albeit his bill was about $1-2k and it was not fraud. Considering they might be on the wrong side of the law, this seems like a solution both sides can get behind.
My insurance was billed $8000 for an MRI and paid out $7000. I was only responsible for $500, but it was really upsetting because I'd had one before and only had to pay $50. The high cost came from the facility being on hospital grounds, which I wasn't aware of since I entered the area leading to the radiology center through an entrance that didn't look anything like the inside of a hospital.
My wife recently gave birth to our first child. Normal delivery - 2 nights in a hospital. Then we had to go back again for jaundice - nothing serious - but added another 2 nights in a hospital room. All said and done my insurance was billed $64,000 for what is considered a normal uncomplicated birth. That is insane to me. If you go over the bill carefully, instantly 50% of that disappears because I've "saved" by being with my insurance provider.<p>What if I had no insurance? Would I get billed that insane number and have to spend hours whittling it down?<p>My dad was commenting on how the drug he takes regularly in his home country (outside the US) is 1/10th the price of what it costs here.<p>The health insurance system is broken in USA (who knew?). Everything is artificially over-inflated because it all gets "negotiated" down in the end. This creates a lot of room to maximize your net revenue when you set prices arbitrarily high.
Break a leg. Well. I broke femur near San Luis Obispo.<p>I was admitted to hospital, was charged over $19000 (that is nineteen thousands dollars) per night for bed. Just for bed. And it was a "cheap" option with person crying in agony next to me whole time.<p>Total bill was 74k$ dollars just for hospital service. Emergency services, E.R., surgery, anesthesiology all Extra.<p>Welcome to US.<p>P.S. With that prices, hospital easily would make it in top 20 most expensive hotel rooms of the world, except I didn't have a choice but to pay for it.
I genuinely wonder where this money goes, if paid. It seems rather unrealistic to believe these costs can be genuinely justified, with an independent audit? Right? The genuine cost to business cannot be this high.<p>These values are utterly unreasonable. Someone, somewhere; is doing something extremely unethical.<p>The fact this can even happen somewhat indicates there’s a lot of “power” involved.<p>—<p>Edit: another poster had mentioned that some costs are included to cover other admissions in which fees are not paid - no matter the reason.<p>So, whilst this seems quite logical; it bothers me this is not clearly indicated. Its a pretty poor attempt to fix a clear, and genuine, other problem.
Curious... for international patients... if they just don't pay, is there anything the hospital can do?<p>It's not like it's going to affect their credit rating in Korea or anything?
OK so I know that emergency care not being free is madness, and _you_ know that emergency care not being free is madness, but what are the arguments from people who don't think this sound like?<p>Also, I wonder how feasible it would be for foreign governments to pay for the emergency care of their citizens when they have issues in America, and fund it by charging visiting American's American-style medical bills for any medical care they receive while there.
I'm norwegian.<p>I have two kids, and have used the emergency care unit a couple of times throughout my life. Total cost $0 in care fees. (They are allowed to charge for stuff like bandages and such for non layovers, usually $5-$20 each visit).<p>We don't have health insurance, but some insurance companies have begun selling "treatment guarantee" which guarantees start of treatment typically within 14 days of injury. (For non life threatening ailments of course. Elbow pains, leg pains, such..) The best thing about those are that they are usually paid for by your employer because they want you back at work as soon as possible :D
(The premium is added to our income tax though)<p>Socialism hell yeah!
Every now and then I seriously consider moving to the US, but the healthcare system scared the crap out of me. I can't imagine how stressful it must be to have to depend on your employer for health insurance.
If you are a foreign traveller in the US, and you need medical attention, if at all possible use a drop-in clinic instead of any hospital. Even the so-called non-profit hospitals charge outrageous fees.
A French friend of mine needed some emergency operation while he was in the States. He bought a round trip ticket to Paris, left, got the operation done, came back to the States. Saved $10,000.