My dad died of a heart attack. There was an extra $3k charge on his hospital bill because he was brought to the ER "after hours". I now tell people to try to die between 8am-5pm.
It’s a little of both that and their board members frequently being the same caliber of evil as health insurance companies, but they’ll sometimes reduce the bill when insurance doesn’t cover things if you ask.
This. My MIL didn't have insurance or had terrible insurance when my fiance was younger, had 8 kids... she'd call the hospital billing department and say, "I simply can't pay this," and keep saying it until eventually they reduced the bills. A lot of those crazy charges went away. It wasn't cheap, but it was nowhere near the initial bill.
ETA
*Copying and pasting this from a comment I made in response to someone asking why she had eight kids:
Well the first four she thought she could afford. And then it turned out that her sexually and physically abusive, lying piece of shit husband had been lying about being employed. And had squandered every last penny of the the sizeable inheritance he got from his father.
I'm not sure about the fifth, but the last three we know for a fact were rape babies. My fiance witnessed this happening multiple times. His father would hide or destroy her birth control, and he told her if she got an IUD he would rip it out of her body. If you knew some the things he did do to her and the kids, you'd know this wasn't an empty threat. I'm sure she could have found a way to prevent pregnancies but she was completely mentally broken at that point.
Then he skipped town when the last was a few months old. I'm not sure what happened with child support or anything, my fiance got a check for a grand or so when he turned 18 from the govt which I guess was some part of it that was supposed to have been paid when he was younger?*
It disappeared to you but that dumb charge with a made up cost was then shown to the government for a tax break, as though that money ever existed or was ever lost.
Looking into it more, it looks like it is harder now to write-off all the made up numbers as bad debt to count towards non-profit status, but it is still done. This aspect wouldn’t matter as much if the pricing was consistent or based in reality, then it would be much clearer when a hospital is operating as a nonprofit or just putting the pressure on the unemployed or people filing bankruptcy with inflated bills.
Not to be too real but the idea that women have a choice in the matter is a relatively newfangled idea to a lot of people, and not even true anymore in many states
I spent a year helping out families that had both in their background. It's multiplicative in effect because one had 16 kids and it's was only a few bigger than some of the others. I think minus one family having 3 the next lowest was eight and that family was headed by a doctor.
i love the double standards of extreme charitibility when a woman could have made bad choices, but if it's the fathers fault, there's zero. good job reddit, never change.
I am a dude. I also like getting my dick wet. I am making no other estimations of the FIL in this example other than he probably liked sex.
There is no smoking gun here. You didn't catch me in a web of misandry or anything. Either laugh at the statement or don't. Upvote it or downvote it. Whatever. But beyond that, there isn't anything else for you to find here.
It's probably due to millennia of societal thinking that having children is important for the future of their kind due to the ease of death and need for bodies for war/manual labor. It's what shaped many national/cultural/traditional/religious beliefs.
Now that people live longer and infants don't die as often, it's no longer necessary to keep this belief. But it still remains in society, because it's not easy for many people to think outside of their national/cultural/traditional/religious beliefs.
Also some groups of people want extra voters and workers to replenish their resources while they retire, so they continue to push these beliefs to increase their population.
You can read old stories about women who swallowed glass and other terrible terrible things because they didn't want to be pregnant again. It's sad we are returning to that world.
Yes, especially among older generations. Not that long ago, the infant mortality rate was ridiculously high, so having a big family was a way to hedge bets against your kids all dying. And, for farming families, it was a way to get cheap labor.
The thing is, though, a lot of women (a while back at least) were raised to want kids and be mothers. Not often being introduced to the idea of something beyond just being a caretaker.
Things change, of course, but we can still see this happening even today.
You may be overestimating the choice many women, especially in older generations and in rural areas, actually had/have in the matter. If a 16 year is expected to marry and start having kids, it’s not likely she’s going to have a whole lot of options to do anything else, and she’d frequently be ostracized and ridiculed for trying to
Well the first four she thought she could afford. And then it turned out that her sexually and physically abusive, lying piece of shit husband had been lying about being employed. And had squandered every last penny of the the sizeable inheritance he got from his father.
I'm not sure about the fourth, but the last three we know for a fact were rape babies. My fiance witnessed this happening multiple times. His father would hide or destroy her birth control, and he told her if she got an IUD he would rip it out of her body. If you knew some the things he did do to her and the kids, you'd know this wasn't an empty threat. I'm sure she could have found a way to prevent pregnancies but she was completely mentally broken at that point.
Then he skipped town when the last was a few months old. I'm not sure what happened with child support or anything, my fiance got a check for a grand or so when he turned 18 from the govt which I guess was some part of it that was supposed to have been paid when he was younger?
Whether it be the choice of the father or the mother, why are you thinking you have a say in the choices they make? Isn't it their right to do with their bodies as they deem fit?
It's a tax on people who don't have the time or intelligence or wherewithal to call the hospital and yell at them. Like most of our health care system.
It’s just like cable/internet. If dedicate an hour or two one day a year to call Xfinity and complain about my bill, threaten to not renew etc then they throw discounts at me and significantly reduce my monthly bill. Why does our healthcare system run like fucking Xfinity?!
My mom worked in the patient accounts department of a major hospital for 35 years and she always told me this method sounds bananas but it really does work
In fact they’re often the same people. Theres no rule that says you can’t own a hospital inc and an insurance company. There is plenty of overlap. Makes sense if you don’t care about people and no ones watching anyway.
Ok but there’s still an element of “ask for a million dollars so they’ll settle for $1000”. People will spend all their effort negotiating down the egregious charges so they don’t bother with the small up-charges you get nickel and dimed for
Our Healthcare system is plagued with three way battle between Health Insurance, Drug Companies and Healthcare Providers. We're just stuck in the middle and used as leverage. That's why you need to tear it all down and start from scratch.
This is true. I broke my foot while between insurances and the bill was somewhere in the $1000s (Maybe $3000?). I can’t exactly remember but they charged even another bill just for the Orthopedist to show up and say “ Yes it’s broken.” Anyways, I called the hospital and said I had no insurance and they lowered the bill by so much. The main hospital bill dropping to the hundreds. I remember being so surprised by that. I then went to a podiatrist who took care of my foot without insurance and it wasn’t that expensive. And they did Xray’s and casting in the office. Sometimes it’s really better to have no insurance in certain circumstances. Doctors used to offer Pro Bono services and we may have to go back to this system for non-complex medical issues.
When we had kids born in hospital It was clear when checking out my high deductible insurance wasnt going to cover the initial X thousand. Front desk said the hospital would bill us later for that when we checked out, never sent the bill…
Healthcare in a country without social health sounds fucking terrifying. All that stress and worry.
I go to the hospital. Give my name and address, get patched up and never speak to anyone about payments or insurance coverage or anything. Fuck that i just survived something im not a fucking car crash to be negotiated on repair costs.
I was just telling this story elsewhere. But I got accidentally pregnant at age 37 after a lifetime of infertility. My boyfriend and I had only been dating 5 months. We decided to get married because there were potential health issues and they wanted to do a lot of tests and scans, and the insurance I had didn't cover any maternity issues. Yes, that is correct, we were in a position where marrying a person we'd known for less than 6 months was the less risky course than an unknown amount of medical debit.
(It's now 14 years later, we have a healthy teenager and are very happy together, so the gamble did pay off in our case)
My wife's a dentist but never my as those opportunities. Nearly everything has to be pre-authorized.
Before Medicaid administration in our state was privatized she could work on patients and provide necessary work without pre-authorization if she was willing to risk it not being approved. Obviously she had all the X-rays and pictures to show what she did was required. Almost never had the work or her diagnosis questioned
Once it was administered by a corporation she could no longer work the same way. She could only do a deep cleaning one one quadrant at a time and it had to be pre-authorized. Both the insurance company and her know that the patient will rarely return for the other three quadrants to be cleaned. It's a win for the insurance company but not the patient. All her work has to be submitted in advance and she has to fight for a lot of necessary work.
Not true. But even if it takes 5 hours or longer at times, it better than getting a bill for thousands of dollars or being stuck fighting an insurance company.
They have tablets now at hospitals for filling out paperwork that has a built in credit card swipe on the tablet. It was the most distopian thing I've seen.
This is basically how it works. The hospital sends the insurance company a wishlist and then the insurance company says "fuck that" and sends them a list of what they'll actually pay for.
Well and also because hospitals are greedy and know that insurance will pay out a heck of a lot more than someone who has to pay straight out of pocket. It's a very fucked up system of care providers trying to maximize profits by charging for everything they can, and insurance providers trying to maximize profits by denying everything they can.
My old boss had a heart attack while in the states, the hospital billed his travel insurer just under 400k, his insurer negotiated the bill down to about 130k
I used to work for a doctor's office and they basically told me this exactly. They have to pad the claim so they actually get paid what they think they are owed.
I think a lot of American businesses especially in medicine are just trying to test the limits of legal ways to bill people without consent. Be it random price increases in medicine, hidden fees, or just errors to see if you notice.
If you ask anyone who works at a hospital they will say the insurance companies REFUSE to pay full price for ANYTHING, regardless of what it is. So they HAVE to charge over-inflated prices just to negotiate down to what they were hoping to get in the first place.
If you ask insurance companies they will say that hospitals give patients a ton of stuff they don't REALLY need to try and make extra money so they HAVE to refuse to cover whatever they think they can get away, while also refusing to pay the hospitals asking prices with to avoid getting over charged.
It's a battle of 2 greedy ignorant clowns trying to get as much money as they can.
Well, it helps that the hospitals can write off whatever the insurance companies wont pay as a loss...Its a nice tax evasion scheme (at least for the +1/6th owned by corps that pays taxes)
Partly that, partly the fact that service was rendered. Not enough to save (if that was even possible in the situation) but they did do things, they did use hospital resources, they are the focus of medical professionals time. There’s a good chance they have to just eat that, but it’s not the default position
When my son was born the hospital (HCA) billed my insurance $30,000 for a 1 day stay in the hospital. This amount did not include any of the services that were delivered.
Hospitals are also now being bought up by large national corporations. They may retain the same name and otherwise downplay the relationship but they are being corporatized and used as profit maximizing investments for their owners.
The vultures are circling and we’re either the carrion or soon to be
That's and only insurance companies can negotiate with the hospital that chooses to not negotiate with the patients. Its starts and ends with the "administration-ization" it went through, replacing healthcare leaders with healthcare care faculty. Just like chaos the college and university systems did when the professors lost control of the curriculum. One day they woke up and started chasing ever-growing profit margins.
Yes, I just mentioned this. Hospitals will just raise prices for no reason. Insurance companies aren't incentivized to push back on arbitrarily inflated costs, because it results in higher premiums for the patient thus resulting in higher gross income.
Medical facilities and pharmaceutical companies share some of the blame on the current state of healthcare.
You can't go to 2 hospitals who will both perform a procedure the same or have the same costs. Some will even be backwards giving less care, but charging more.
There's not really a standard in medical procedures. All they really care about are their mortality rates. My grandpa got hip surgery after already being on his last leg of life, the doctors just kept pumping full of drugs and wanting to keep him connected to machines against his wishes, because if he died shortly after the surgery that would look bad for the hospital. They pushed my dad and aunt to allow him to keep receiving care to keep him alive. They started to pull back on that I think after the "bad look" had passed.
So they kept a good outcome rate and got richer doing it. My grandpa wasn't even lucid for most of that time.
little bit of this and a little bit of that. Medicare uses a prospective payment system based on what the average cost of a patient of a certain caliber should cost (and if Medicare does it then the insurance industry follows). If the hospital comes under that amount the hospital profits and if the hospital goes above that then that's a loss on the books for that patient. This is meant as a way to encourage the hospital to make "efficient use of resources". This also means that every service the hospital provides has to be billed for or they lose money. In this case keeping the person alive for organs costs extra resources (cause not only do you have to keep the organs preserved your limited on the drugs you can use so no to taint the organs).
So, the hospital includes a line item for the service under every patient because if you don't bill one patient then you can't bill any patient.
This is why if you don't have insurance you need to ask for a line-item bill cause in general no one is going to take the time and resources to do that unless it is requested because it is wasted effort in the normal order of business.
This is why you also bill everything then you can reduce the bill once it becomes bad debt, or you can apply assistance as people qualify but not billing isn't an option.
the people who own hospitals and hte people who own insurance companies are often the same people. IE billionaires or investment groups own controlling shares in both.
Hospitals say "we have to charge more because they never pay us", insurance companies say "we have to deny more because they over charge", and both play the blame game while both raise prices and everyone loses.
In reality hospitals would sue insurance companies, companies would pay up and be fined for not paying and continue to pay on time without denying shit unnecessarily.... IF both parties weren't playing the same game to help each other out.
Look Jesus, Sabbath or not, pulling it out in front of a child was terrible advice for catholic priests AND I don't see how it saves them from the well either.
Everything was much bigger in Biblical times, especially needles, except for camels, which were really tiny back then. Or so conservative Christians tell me, anyway.
They're more of an Indian thing, but look up step wells. It's just a giant pit, not the Lassie-type well you are probably imagining in your head. If the water table is high, or you could pump it up into a reservoir I can see it happening.
I understand the argument but the quote is out of context. The priest wasn’t arguing pre-rabbinic Jewish theology, he was saying he was too busy on Sunday. The Pharisees in Luke were watching him because he was about to ‘work’ on the sabbath, (ie healing a disabled man).
Taking random quotes out of the bible without context and claiming they mean something else is a common but vulgar thing to do to if you’re a Christian.
The quote should reflect the point OP was making: that whether you’re busy (or closed as in the case of the ER), people still die (or have medical emergencies).
Oh my God I cannot believe someone used a quote that is only tangentially related rather than completely applicable. What is reddit even coming to these days, don't people know their servers are limited and to watch how much digital ink they carelessly spill?
Ugh, after my mom died, my aunt organized her funeral at her (aunt's) church. The lady we were working with was acting like SUCH a bitch about it, complaining that the priest was super busy and travelling soon. She also very rudely told us she wouldn't be able to "squeeze [me] in" to read a poem during the service. I fully regret not going off at her, but I suppose that's better than regretting going off at other people.
Let me guess, she donated a lot to the church (tithes, more monetary donations, baked goods, volunteer) but now that she died, their $$ from her dried up so why should they come to her? She won't be around to help them anymore.
Sorry for your loss.
I'm not atheist, but I'm anti clergy, sometimes anti church.
My Grandma died a few years ago over Christmas. When I got back to work my manager was mad at me for calling out over the Christmas period. I told him why, explained that I'd contacted both managers covering the Christmas shifts who okayed it, and he flippantly said I should have planned things better. He was a real asshole.
I was in high school at the time and didn't exactly want to advertise that it happened at school. They had pulled me out of classes to try and push me into a support group when my parents divorced, and I didn't want a repeat of that. He lived in a different state at the time, and my mom and I had to go clear out his apartment, etc.
The week before we left, I told all of my teachers that I would be out the following week due to a family emergency in CA. All but one teacher was okay with it. The one who wasn't starting laying into me about how irresponsible it was for my parents to take me out of school for a vacation in the middle of a semester. She continued and said she wouldn't be giving me any notes or access to the slides and I would have to figure it out with a classmate, because she wasn't going to "reward" this. I waited until she finished, looked her dead in the eye and said, "My dad died. We have to go clear out his apartment before the complex chucks it all." She looked like a fish with the way she opened and closed her mouth after that one.
Had to deal with the damn counselors trying to shove me into a support group again, but damn, that felt nice.
Sure did! She actually printed the slides out and gave them to me. After the major test we had on the material, she gave us a chance to correct any wrong answers with our notes. She saw that I had the slide print outs on my desk for this and said nothing, lol.
My uncle died in a car accident in March in Arizona. I live in a northeast state. I flew to Arizona, but was not able to get a flight back for a couple days after the funeral. Meanwhile, a coworker was on a road trip with some friends. Their car broke down and everyone at work treated it like a big joke and were telling him to take as long as he needed. I was subjected to chastisement and incrimination that I had lied about being able to get a flight back after the funeral. It was even suggested that my uncle never died. I was out a total of five working days.
Why the fuck does USA can pull shit like that and emergency is an emergency.
Unless you know people going. To ER for a cold or a pain that has months of evolution but they'd decide to go to ER at 3 am because there's lees people .
My dad once went to the ER at Kenedy hospital nj around 1 am with a broken leg from a hocky accident. He waited in the waiting room till 9 am because they said ER was closed and they have no doctors till morning. So apparently some ERs claim to have a closing time and will even not staff doctors at these times.
They might have needed to wait for swelling to go down. I broke mine and they needed to wait about 13 hours to get a clear picture so they could see how bad the damage was.
This is where I think taxes should be reformed. The only tax should be the death tax. Charging all these taxes every year, etc etc is compounding and inductive to wealth accumulation. There would be a greater net benefit for both society and individuals if taxes were paid post mortem. The hospital bill then would be a tax benefit.
Structure it where inheritance is capped, philanthropy is a viable option and the rest goes to the state.
Dies with +$1billion
Max $5mil inheritance to individual and $100mil to family,
The remaining goes to the state with options for up to 50% going to philanthropy.
We can track money - we know where the wealth is, the Panama papers, etc - it's just a matter of enforcement so write the rules of the game so such that isn't a viable option.
Oh god, I’m so sorry for laughing but your last sentence made me gasp and chuckle. I am sorry for your loss though, OP. I hope you are healing and don’t get any more outrageous bills.
Haha, no worries! That's why I put it there! Dark humor is a heavy coping mechanism for me. And thank you! It's been nearly 20 years, and medical billing has only gotten more ridiculous, I feel.
Assuming they charged your dad, at least there's comfort in knowing you don't have to pay that $3k.
inb4 someone tries to correct, no, in the US, when you die, your debts die with you if you are the only debtor for said debt. I.E. if you co-sign with someone and that someone dies, you're still on the hook as a cosigner, but in terms of healthcare where almost nothing is cosigned, the person who received that care is the only person on the hook for that debt. When they die, that healthcare debt dies with them.
It's a common scam for debt collectors to go after surviving family for medical debt of those who died. You do not owe them anything. The best they can do is go after the estate of the deceased.
My mom handled it all at the time because I was 17, but this knowledge did come in handy after mom died years later. A few of her creditors tried to bully me into giving them money, but I kept telling them to get a Ouija board if they wanted to bug mom about her bills, lol.
As a European, this is utterly shocking. Like, I've read some horror stories, but this is just... pure evil. And all these stories are coming out now that make me wonder why shoot-outs and murders aren't more common in the U.S. -- and also why people aren't far more radicalized.
They staff the ER at all times anyway. It’s not like they’re playing for on call. Maybe they had to call in a doctor but then you’d be paying the doctor.
ER staff does get shift differential usually but that’s like a dollar or two and hour at most in cases that I’m aware of.
this is some evil shit. my grandmother passed in the middle of the night, like 4 am or something. she lived in a nursing home. she could not be moved and retrieved by the funeral home until officially pronounced dead by their designated doctor. you know when the doctor clocked in?
7 am. they made us sit there for hours and wait because the doctor refused to come any earlier even though he was called and aware.
My condolences. I worked hospice care, which for many of my patients was the first consistent home care they’ve ever had.
I was always asked why would they now be getting all this attention, and my response is that dying at home is cheaper. The government will help cover it. But
Americans are trained from birth to believe everything is great and to ignore the non patriotic claiming otherwise so basically Americans experience something akin to what North Koreans go through.
Also a lot of these people are super fucking dumb or evil so they will gladly accept abuse if it means the other sports team (yes our politics that affect our lives is like sports here) suffers.
My dad recently received an organ donation. First thank you and your father for your amazing gift. You saved lives. I’m disgusted you had to pay extra. Recipients can’t pay anything for organs but if someone has to pay it should be split by the recipient families if nothing else as a Thank you for the sacrifice.
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u/Scared_Ad2563 Dec 11 '24
My dad died of a heart attack. There was an extra $3k charge on his hospital bill because he was brought to the ER "after hours". I now tell people to try to die between 8am-5pm.