Daily Kos relays a story from NBC4 NY's horrible website.
Last August, Baer Hanusz-Rajkowski, of Bayonne, accidentally cut his finger with the claw-end of a hammer. He says he waited a few days for it to heal but the cut didn't seem to be closing so he went to the Bayonne Medical Center emergency room to ask whether he should get stitches.
The nurse practitioner determined no stitches were necessary, he says. There was no X-ray either.
Instead, Hanusz-Rajkowsk got hit with a $8,200 bill for the emergency room visit, the I-Team has learned. On top of that, Bayonne Medical Center charged $180 for a tetanus shot, $242 for sterile supplies, and $8 for some antibacterial ointment in addition to hundreds of dollars for the services of the nurse practitioner.
Watch the full NBC 4 New York I-Team report here, which includes an interview with a hospital administrator who tries to justify the charges. After the attention of NBC 4 New York, the hospital is waiving the final balance.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by NCommander on Saturday August 09 2014, @09:34AM
ERs charge a *lot* for their services, since they have to subsidize those who can't pay; the law in the US says the ER can't turn anyone away, so a lot of people who can't afford any healthcare use ERs as general clinics; easy to go to the ER, declare bankruptcy, rinse, lather, repeat if you accept you'll never make ends meet. I'm not saying that its right, but its a further symptom of the broken healthcare system we have in the United States.
Granted, I'm not sure why he went to an ER for something that was not an emergency; you could have gone to a health clinic or called a doctor. Emergency rooms are exactly what they say on the tin "for emergencies", not for every single health problem ever.
*/2 cents*
Disclaimer: I used to work in emergency services, I might be bias on this.
Still always moving
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Saturday August 09 2014, @12:26PM
When you charge that kind of money, how can you be surprised that people don't pay?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Saturday August 09 2014, @10:40PM
I don't know if this is everywhere but in the south we are being flooded by illegals that crowd the ERs and won't be paying a cent no matter what the cost. its just one more way we the taxpayer is subsidizing the abuse of the illegal workers, as the companies that hire them can put them in unsafe working conditions and then just kick them out in front of an ER when they get hurt and grab another one, they are truly disposable people. We have seen the construction jobs in my area completely dominated by illegals and we are paying the price, since the companies can't compete on price anymore thanks to them all hiring illegals they have begun cutting corners in other ways such as substandard wiring and outlets.
But until we do something about the joke of a border the ERs are gonna have no choice but to be insanely expensive because you have entire communities using the ER for general care.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday August 09 2014, @12:41PM
From the description, I get that the problem is not that the ER is not allowed to turn anyone away, but that they are left sitting on the cost if someone doesn't pay.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 09 2014, @01:40PM
The whole theory of universal insurance is to eliminate that problem. Now that "everyone" is covered by insurance, I suppose we can look forward to a 10-50x reduction in the cost of emergency care.
Right?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Saturday August 09 2014, @07:50PM
Why do you think everyone is covered by insurance? That's not what the law, as passed, said. I think that everyone who holds a full time job is now covered, but that's certainly not everyone. E.g. I believe that most people who work at WalMart aren't covered. It is my understanding that WalMart has carefully structured their hiring and work policies to NOT make health insurance available. And they are only the largest and most blatant offender.
Remember, every time you purchase something at WalMart you are placing additional burden on your state's health. Also on it's schools, and other social services. If you don't count that as a part of the cost of your purchase, you are lying to yourself.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 09 2014, @09:12PM
The law said that large employers had to provide health insurance for their full time employees. It also said that, if your employer does not provide health insurance, then you must buy your own, personal insurance policy (or pay a fine). The individual mandate. It then set up an extensive system for ensuring that people could find and compare personal insurance policies. The exchanges, which many people call "Obamacare."
Anyone who is not covered by an employer plan, or by medicaid, has to buy insurance. Therefore, everyone is covered by some form of insurance.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday August 10 2014, @07:28PM
But if your employer regularly fires people just before they would become eligible? Or adjusts your hours to just below full-time?
Sorry, but many people CAN'T buy health insurance. They often must choose between eating and paying the rent. And I'm talking about employed people...which many aren't.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by zeigerpuppy on Saturday August 09 2014, @01:50PM
In disagree, the outlandish cost is a function of a broken system, not the inherent cost of providing emergency care.
In Australia, patients don't pay a cent at the ER (or ED as we call it).
Yet, the cost to the taxpayer of the Australian health system is cheaper per capita than the American one.
The real problem is when you have a for-profit company making money from peoples' misfortune.
Health should not be a profit industry, it leads to ripping people off when they are their most vulnerable and
from a purely economic perspective a healthy populace is worth much more than the money spent on rational health care.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Saturday August 09 2014, @02:36PM
If he waited that long, he shouldn't have been going to an ER. There are people with actual emergencies.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Sunday August 10 2014, @02:11PM
Where would he go? Urgent care around here categorically won't do accidental wounds, they'll kick him out to the ER probably adding insult to injury by charging for the consult. GPs don't really do wounds and mine does nothing all day but blood tests, immunization class of procedures, lectures about healthy living, medication mgmt and referrals to specialists so I would really prefer not to have him in charge of a wound. Best case would be get an appointment at my GP next week to get an office hours appointment a week or two later at a surgeon's office hours. And if its the kind of problem that won't wait 3 weeks, you hit the ER.
This is assuming its worse that the typical papercut class of injury. Implication was lack of healing after a week. On the other hand if you think its failing to heal as a complication of diabetes, the best possible place would be my Mr. Blood Test GP.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 09 2014, @03:29PM
People without insurance don't really have a choice, plus a lot of people actually believe the ER is the healthcare plan for the uninsured. [washingtonpost.com]
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday August 09 2014, @07:48PM
easy to go to the ER, declare bankruptcy, rinse, lather, repeat if you accept you'll never make ends meet.
You may make ends meet just fine - but not in the open. People on social security (maybe not all, but some that I know) are dealing in cash. They either don't have a bank account, or they keep nearly nothing there, just to show that they are poor. At the same time they may have cash from various odd jobs.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Saturday August 09 2014, @08:43PM
That's the excuse, but it doesn't wash. The U.S. has the most expensive healthcare in the world PER CAPITA. That means they're doing a lot more than just compensating for non-paying patients.
Honestly, if they try to charge 8.5K for bandages and a tetanus shot, I wouldn't blame ANYONE for not paying, able or not. At that price, they could afford to treat 50 more patients with the same problem for free.
Putting that in perspective, imagine paying $200/gallon for gas or $50 for a soft drink.
(Score: 2) by naubol on Sunday August 10 2014, @03:51AM
Incorporated into those costs are many other cost decisions. Your post seems to imply that you understand where those costs are sourced and that the ER can't offer quality services at a lower price. Since you didn't claim to work in the accounting department, I'm going to make a reasonable assumption that you've not seen the ledgers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/health/as-hospital-costs-soar-single-stitch-tops-500.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 [nytimes.com] appears to be a well-disguised attack ad against hospital costs. But, what if there is truthy in it?
I'd really like to see a reasoned break down of the costs. Pharmaceuticals seem to have a large profit to overhead ratio and ERs use a lot of drugs. Possibly this means there are inefficiencies in the market that could be corrected to deliver better or same care at a similar cost. I'm merely speculating, as I have no sense of the quantitative breakdown of costs. But, you seem to have conflated a forest-for-the-trees with such a perspective.
It is quite possible that market inefficiencies could be corrected that lead to higher salaries for doctors AND nurses while simultaneously delivering quality care at a lower rate than currently exists in some hospitals. So, it is not necessarily anathema to wages for health care workers. And, it isn't the same as suggesting health care workers aren't attempting to do their best.
I appreciate that the way the article in the summary and the article I linked seems to obscure the nuance of the anecdotes, but the costs do seem a little ridiculous.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by deego on Saturday August 09 2014, @09:40AM
.. of the cats (the ER, the man, and UHC) blaming each other, while ignoring the elephant in the room.
The ER was near bankruptcy, because LAW forces them to accept anyone and everyone, paying or not. So, they end up having to charge more from those who do pay. Now, let's have another do-gooder senator express outrage about that, and create yet another law.. this time forcing ERs to not overcharge others. No wonder "urgent care centers" are popping up all over the place. Pretty soon, Govt. will get its hands in them and spoil that party as well.
Does that remind you of SFians complaining that landlords have empty apartments but will refuse to rent them? That we need a law to forbid that. Guess why that happens in the first place? A bad law that makes evicting deadbeat tenants all-but-impossible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 09 2014, @03:36PM
Is the bad law that people can't be turned away from the ER? If they're going to turn away people who can't pay, can they at least have guns and bullets so that the people who are going to die can go out peacefully instead of the suffering they'll go through before they die as a direct result of being turned away?
(Score: 1) by deego on Saturday August 09 2014, @03:39PM
Right, there always is a good humanitarian heart-breaking reason for stupid laws. When these do-gooders make these laws, can they also please work out how the ER will stay in business in the first place?
How will it stay in business accepting anyone, yet not marking up the costs for actually paying?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Saturday August 09 2014, @08:04PM
Perhaps the basic problem is that Emergency Rooms shouldn't be part of a business, but should instead be a government service. I'd, personally, go a lot further and say that ALL basic health care should be a government service. Insurance is the wrong model to use, and so are commercial hospitals. When hospitals start thinking more about profits than about providing services, then that is clearly the wrong model. There are good reasons why they were originally charitable institutions.
OTOH, there are definitely medical procedures that should be optional, and thus only available to those who can pay. The line is fairly obvious, but not easy to draw. If the action of providing the service benefits society, then society should pay. This clearly applies to all vaccination programs, treatment of communicable diseases, etc. It's less clear, but still true, that it benefits society to enable people to remain employed. Then there are the vaguer cases. Treatment of the aged? I'm in favor of it, at a bit over a basic level. But some contribution by the person should be expected for more than a basic level of service. Etc.
Clearly the paperwork needs to be cut drastically. Accounting rules and justifications for procedures, etc. are carried far beyond the point at which they are advantageous. Cutting this back is facilitated by making all basic services available for free. And this can't reasonably be done in a system in which most services are only available through a commercial entity.
Do note that I am aware of the level of governmental intrusion that this creates. But that level is less than is already present for over 90% of the citizenry, and at least you are getting some benefit in return.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 10 2014, @02:30PM
"but not easy to draw."
Its not as complicated as some make it out to be. If the victim were "lucky" enough to have a hurricane recently go thru, and a National Guard combat medic came across the victim, would the combat medic treat the victim? Yes? Check.
On the other hand if the combat medic wouldn't get involved (I need a class 3 airmans medical cert, some woman wants birth control pills, etc) then make your own alternative arrangements.
I'm not claiming prenatal care should be excluded, that would be an economically dumb move. But at least in terms of making a big list of things they will treat, you could pretty much just pick up a combat medic handbook.
I have considered the whole problem of what we'll do after the existing unsustainable medical system collapses, and have a couple outcomes. 1) Everyone goes on medicaid and possibly some buy better insurance than medicaid, but categorically all residents (almost certainly not just citizens) are put on medicaid. 2) The "system" mostly collapses and the national guard literally takes over for emergency services, just like they do right after a hurricane 3) We give up because Americans can't run/manage a healthcare system on our own like adults and as part of some kind of nafta-like bullshit we let the Canadian medical service expand into the USA. 4) More likely some combo of all of the above for some time period or another. So in the short term the natl guard will be your ER, in the medium term we'll let the Canadians rebuild or "manage" the rebuild for us, and in the long term as all money goes to the 1% anyway, we'll all be on medicaid.
About a fifth of the US population spends at least some time every year on medicaid so before declaring its impossible you merely have to explain why a modest quintupling is impossible if every other spend were abandoned. At current cost growth rates, a 5x growth is only like one decade away anyway.
(Score: 2) by monster on Monday August 11 2014, @01:03PM
Medicaid does not need to collapse, you can improve it with more funds and personnel. But then you end up with... European-style Social Security (oh noes! The commies!)
For non-hating-government guys, having the government giving healthcare directly, cutting the middlemen (the insurance companies) instead of combining forcing to be insured and giving subsidies to those who need them to be insured is a no brainer. But as Paul Krugman says, why the ACA is the way it is has more to do with what could be done than with what should be done.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Saturday August 09 2014, @08:53PM
That's the second time you've been scathing about "do-gooders". Does that mean you are a "do-eviler"?
Look, this is not a problem of the US health system being too "humanitarian". Other countries manage to be able to treat everyone at a fraction of the cost per capita of the US system. The US problem is one of too much lobbying from people that want to keep healthcare as a profitable business, rather than an indispensable public service. Set up a system where healthcare isn't financing shareholder's wallets, and it'll be a hell of a lot cheaper.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by twistedcubic on Saturday August 09 2014, @10:00AM
And guess what an American pays when he/she goes to see a doctor in France? $20? I would think this hurts tourism, because if I lived in a country with universal health care, I would never risk visiting a country without it.
(Score: 1) by twistedcubic on Saturday August 09 2014, @10:07AM
Oops, Bayonne is not in France. My bad.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 09 2014, @11:46AM
You went to Wikipedia? ;-)
It defaults to France..
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Saturday August 09 2014, @11:08AM
I'm Australian and very few people I know travel anywhere, Europe or otherwise, without insurance.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Kell on Saturday August 09 2014, @12:00PM
Too right. I went back to the US on work and got food poisoning; ironically, from a place I used to go to to every day for 2.5 years when I lived and worked in the US. Since it was a work trip, I had insurance through my employer. As I was wheeled away in the ambulance, I went clutching my insurance documentation to my chest. I was in hospital for two days, and at the end got lumped with a $10k bill. It's horrifying. Even with a decent salary there was no way I could have paid that if I hadn't been covered. Who keeps that kind of money lying around?
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 09 2014, @12:43PM
Assuming they're anything like mine, I'm going to say "Your employer."
My workplace pays their top staff hundreds of grand a year, and they constantly fiddle the books so their minimum wage staff are underpaid. I'm owed almost two weeks wages at time of writing...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 11 2014, @12:37AM
http://biblehub.com/1_timothy/5-18.htm [biblehub.com]
But instead, 'the love of money is the root of all evil'
http://biblehub.com/1_timothy/6-10.htm [biblehub.com]
comes into play and the entry-level workforce is apt to be
underpaid or not paid at all.... :(
But of course, that is if you believe these two statements
as truth or not....
(Score: 5, Informative) by BasilBrush on Saturday August 09 2014, @09:02PM
In Europe we do a lot of foreign travel without insurance. So long as it's within Europe. The countries have a mutual agreement where they'll give each other's citizens medical treatment as if they were resident. So for example I broke my knee skiing in Austria, and an operation and a week in hospital didn't cost me a penny, then same as it wouldn't have cost me a penny at home in the UK.
Actually I had to pay a modest sum for the ambulance, but that was it.
I find it amazing that so many American's can be persuaded to think that "socialised healthcare" is a bad thing. It's great! I'd hate to be American, and have to worry about health cover.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by youngatheart on Sunday August 10 2014, @02:29AM
People in the US believe that whatever we pay for through the government ends up costing more than it did when it was independant. It may not be 100% true, but we've learned that our government doesn't do a lot of things very well and we don't trust it when it says "it is for your own good."
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Sunday August 10 2014, @08:18PM
And it's certainly not true in this case. American's spend 2.5 times as much on healthcare per capita than the British, and yet lots of Americans go untreated, whereas the British NHS treats all comers.
The belief has been indoctrinated in the American public by the lobbying of private businesses that make money from healthcare. The American public are in general perfectly happy having the government provide police, fire, education, roads etc.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by youngatheart on Monday August 11 2014, @08:19PM
I hate to argue with you, because I think we agree in spirit. I think the US healthcare system needs an overhaul, and I think it needs to be government mandated. I think we should fund the overhaul with taxes as well. So I think we agree about quite a bit of stuff, but pretty much everything you said managed to be wrong.
You're making a prediction with certainty about something that is impossible to predict, so you're just wrong to start with. Your guess is likely to be wrong as well, even if you didn't consider it a certainty because the US is quite different from the UK in a variety of ways that have a significant impact on the comparative cost of healthcare.
Americans (note that isn't possessive) do spend 2.4 (rounding up?) times UK (your numbers come from the comparison with the UK, not with the isle of Britian) spending. But NHS doesn't handle illegal immigrants beyond emergency services (for which they charge the full rate,) so they don't treat "all comers." Yes, that's relevant because we have at least twice the percentage of illegal immigrants and both countries provide similar service, with every US citizen being on the hook for twice as many illegal immigrants as the average UK citizen.
The belief that government should stay out of our business goes back pretty much to the settling of the continent, well before the country was founded and it has taken a huge amount of argument to get Americans to accept most of the examples you listed and they pretty much are all examples of why Americans don't trust our government to handle anything.
It is only recently that the US agreed to education as a government provided public service, and most feel our schools are terrible as a result, and our comparative test results show that to be a fair assessment. Road services are trending more and more toward being put back in private hands because toll roads are faster and in better shape. Police are pretty much detested nationwide (perhaps unfairly in most cases, but most deservedly so in a few,) and while I don't know of anyone calling for them to become private, you're referring to federal government while our police are typically state police. The federal law enforcement agencies are some of the most hated branches of government right now. The only thing I'd say we're happy with the government providing for us from your examples are the fire departments, and those aren't provided at a federal level at all, in fact many of them are volunteer organizations and are all very locally controlled.
There are a lot of reasons for the difference in what Americans pay, but probably the biggest difference is that the government doesn't tell doctors or lawyers how much they can charge. Check out http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddhixon/2012/03/01/why-are-u-s-health-care-costs-so-high/ [forbes.com] for a reasonably good article explaining that conclusion.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday August 09 2014, @11:32AM
You pay your travel insurance. Obviously travel insurance including 3rd world couriers like Syria and the us costs more that normal stuff, but a 2 week trip to the us will only cost $300 for travel insurance for a typical family.
(Score: 2, Informative) by mgcarley on Sunday August 10 2014, @02:55AM
Insurance quote for 42 days travelling around India and various other parts of Asia (but the policy includes all countries except US/CA): NZ$161.43
Same company, same dates, same coverage - but adding the USA to my itinerary? NZ$428.20.
Over 2.5x the cost. For a single person.
That's messed up.
Founder & COO, Hayai. We're in India (hayai.in) & the USA (hayaibroadband.com) // Twitter: @mgcarley
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday August 10 2014, @11:50AM
It is, but the extra money is tony compared with the cost of a typical flight, let alone hotels.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 09 2014, @11:40AM
Given the first two comments above the question then is: what would he have paid had he gone to a general practitioner (a doctor's practice) instead of to the emergency room. It will still be much more than the EUR 20,- in France, but maybe ten times more, and not several hundred times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 09 2014, @11:46AM
If it's just to consult for a cut after a few days and it's not a life threatening situation, why not go see a simple doctor, instead of clogging the emergency line for people who really need it ? Wouldn't this be cheaper too? Or is it just the only possible way with the state of the American health system ?
(Score: 2) by dcollins on Saturday August 09 2014, @02:34PM
At least with my most recent doctors, the wait time for a visit can be on the order of a week or thereabouts (this in in NYC, and I have health insurance). So if something is wrong for a few days, and you start to suspect that something might *really* be wrong, I'm frequently in this dilemma: (a) wait a week or more and hope it's not worsening or causing more damage in that time, or (b) go to an emergency room and get it looked at today? It's a shitty, anxiety-provoking gamble to have to take, and likely wrecks my productivity for a week. So far I've always chosen (a), but I'm halfway young and been able to shake off everything so far. Certainly that can't last forever. And if you're betting on (a) then you may as well just skip the doctor's appointment in the first place.
(Score: 2, Informative) by watusimoto on Saturday August 09 2014, @08:42PM
Here in Luxembourg (where I am living at the moment), we have been able to get an urgent appointment with our family doctor the same day, 100% of the time. If one of our kids wakes up sick, he can be at the doctor by 9 or 10AM. This has always surprised me. I'm even told that the doctor will come to us if we are too sick to get to his office, but we have yet to test this.
There is a lot of good in American healthcare, but once you've seen how other places deliver care, it's hard to not think that something is really broken in the US.
(Score: 2) by Ken_g6 on Saturday August 09 2014, @03:56PM
Exactly. This is why "Urgent Care" facilities exist. They cost a little more than regular doctors, but they can see you fairly quickly.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday August 09 2014, @10:27PM
This made my list of the understatement of the year. On top of the list, provisionally, but I think this one will be hard to beat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Ken_g6 on Thursday August 14 2014, @07:40PM
I got insurance this year, but before that I was going to see doctors without insurance. Going to see my primary care physician cost a little over $100. I think the one time I went to urgent care, it was about $300. A little more, but not $9,000!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bucc5062 on Saturday August 09 2014, @12:03PM
IN the US a hospital is required to take in all patients to an ER room, regardless of whether they can pay or not. This becomes the validation for charging massive mark up for supplies. Yet, do bandages cost the same to other patients admitted for some illness, but need a wound covered up? IF a nurse cuts her finger is she charged with $1000 for cleaning and bandaging her own wound? The doctors in the ER round, are they paid by the patient or are they on staff and paid a salary?
It would seem that the ER is more a loss leader approach to hospital care. Most folks that come in for other issues carry extra costs that are covered by insurance. THis would be were the bulk of the income occurs. When the hospital buys a box of bandages from a supplier I cannot believe they are paying $8 for a single piece. Somewhere this seems to become a scam and the excuse is "We have to take care of these people no matter what". Well, if the ER was empty they still have to pay the doctors, nurses, staff, they still have to but stuff for other departments, how do the justify this level of graft.
Pardon the pun but, this makes me sick. I'll just make sure I don't take it to the ER.
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 2, Interesting) by hellcat on Saturday August 09 2014, @01:26PM
one - the ER plays the game with insurance companies where they negotiate pricing. They ask for a lot more than they ever expect to receive. The insurance company then works to code the event into some category, reducing the amount. The ER is then happy with the new amount, which can be several factors of 2 smaller.
two - the ER has to stay in business. If you go in with a hammer-cut, it's in their best interest to do whatever they feel is necessary to stave off a lawsuit. If the ER is busy, and all they do is tape up the finger, then that's appropriate. But they also had the time to give him shots, presumably without reviewing his medical history. I'm guessing he told them he hadn't had tetanus shots in the last 10 years and they went on his word. It's very unlikely they had access to his medical records going back 10 years.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Saturday August 09 2014, @06:02PM
Yeah, ER's are exorbitant but they are counting on those who have insurance to pay. But even then the insurance company may not pay the entire bill as I found out a couple times.
In 2002 on my first cross-country motorcycle trip I burned the hell out of my leg in Oklahoma when I tipped the bike over at a rest stop while trying to get off. Something caught on my pant leg and left my bare flesh up against a hot pipe. I was left with severe 2nd degree burns bordering on 3rd degree. I cleaned them out as best I could but could not keep them from getting infected. In Albuquerque, NM I found myself in some pretty awful pain and was running a fever. I continued on to Grants, knowing that there was a prison there meaning there would be an ER nearby which would be easy to find. There, it was properly cleaned out, ointmented, and bandaged. My insurance paid the ER bill in full but only paid half the fee of the ER doctor, claiming that it was excessive. I ended up being billed by the ER doctor for the remainder, a bit under $100 which I paid. The insurance also reimbursed me in full for the expensive, non-generic (because the patent had not yet expired) antibiotics.
Fast forward to 2007 when I had just completed the last of three projects at work that somehow all needed to be worked on at the same time. I had shortness of breath, felt sick, and nearly passed out. I drove myself (foolishly) to the local hospital ER. After drawing arterial blood and running some EKG's, the doctor came to the conclusion that did not have a heart attack and that what I was feeling was due to severe stress. In this case, the insurance paid about $4000 of the $5500 ER bill and all of the doctor's bill. The hospital did not bill me for the difference.
I'm hoping that Obamacare will fix much of this problem in the US over time. However, it is not a complete fix. For example, at least in California, illegal immigrants are not entitled to the state-sponsored Medi-Cal coverage. And then there are those who aren't eligible for that who refuse to buy a policy from an insurance exchange. The only way these crazy medical costs are going to drop to something reasonable is when everyone is required to have health insurance by enforcing the existing law with some big teeth and then subsidizing hospital ER's for those who don't.
There is also another solution. The government can require all hospitals to operate as public utilities, requiring them to justify their fees. At the same time, it can prohibit the for-profit practice of medicine. Many hospitals and hospital systems are non-profits, Kaiser Permanente being one of the more successful ones.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 10 2014, @03:19AM
America has semi-free market medicine. If ERs are expensive, but doctor appointments take a long time, what do you do for time sensitive medical issues that are not an emergency? Hence, birth of the Urgent Care clinic.
Urgent care clinics tend to be open 7 days a week, but not 24 hours a day. You can walk in, and wait hours to get served. But, they don't have to find out what is wrong with the patient right away.
"He says he waited a few days for it to heal". Sounds like he could have used an urgent care clinic.