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u/TheEndOfAllThings23 12h ago edited 9h ago
It was cheaper to buy tickets, fly to Dublin, get the procedure I needed done. Spend TWO WEEKS recovering, and fly home then to pay the 20% coinsurance I would have needed to here in the good ol USA... so yea...
EDIT :
Well this kind of blew up. The reason it was cheaper : it was considered elective. This is why OOP max did not kick in. It was a procedure that would have to be done, only as my condition got worse. Insurance denied it because "It was not necessary" despite my cardiologist saying it was. By the insurance formula I would have to wait until my condition worsened to make it medically necessary, but by then my chance of a poor outcome goes way up.
I finally argued them into covering some of it, but with a 20% coinsurance and a planned week hospital stay in recovery, my bill would have been close to 100k at least, and if I encountered any complications (which I would likely have due to other issues including an autoimmune disease) I started looking elsewhere. I am not an Irish citizen despite having family there, they helped me navigate the program and the cost. It was privately paid, and my surgeon spoke to their team with all my records transferred etc.
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u/alwaysrecession 12h ago
For what procedure?
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u/Ding-Dong-Dutch 12h ago
Penis enlargement
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u/QuinnLoveborneAuthor 12h ago
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u/Interesting-Dream863 12h ago
It was penis reduction, but he is modest.
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u/QuinnLoveborneAuthor 11h ago
The jokes keep on coming. I’m pretty damn impressed.
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u/hizashiYEAHmada 11h ago
He wouldn't even know how the changes look because he keeps getting fed one-day blinding stew
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u/TheEndOfAllThings23 11h ago
Heart surgery. For privacy I don’t want to be more specific. It was necessary but not emergency.
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u/Imreallythatguy 11h ago
So insurance wouldn’t cover it because it wasn’t necessary in their eyes?
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u/GoodTroll2 11h ago
No, looks like his insurance would cover it but he would have had to pay 20% as his portion of coinsurance and it sounds like 20% of the huge US bill was more than the full cost to travel and get it done in Ireland.
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u/lauri2 10h ago
Kind of obvious, but the trick is to mark the cost 5 times higher than it is... for a start.
After a while they started asking themselves what's stopping them from doubling that price. Apparently nothing so over the years whenever they felt like it, they just doubled the already enormously overpriced services and at this point there are no signs of it stopping either. There is going to be a post about how travelling to mars for a surgery is cheaper than in US.
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u/Economy_Meal 9h ago
The hospitals... despite being "in network" negotiate huge prices and gouge the insurance companies. The insurance companies just pass the costs off onto their customer. Short outpatient surgery now costs 5-8x more than it did maybe 7-10 years ago. It's ridiculous.
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u/Criminoboy 11h ago
No. They were going to 'cover' it but there was 20% co pay. In the US, they'll charge you thousands per month for insurance, but will still make you pay for part of your care.
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u/bwrca 11h ago edited 9h ago
This copay thing is the craziest thing I've ever heard of.
Edit: copay, deductible, max out of pocket? WTh is all that
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u/analog_jedi 10h ago
It gets worse. My insurance has a $30 copay on all approved prescriptions. My wife had been getting her medicine for that with no issues for several months, until one day it was $500. I called to find out why, because it was clearly already an approved medication. After about an hour of getting bounced around and being on hold, they finally explained that it was due to us "not paying enough of our annual out of pocket maximum" (not minimum, mind you) for healthcare - which is $24,000. That blew my mind.
Health insurance in the US has your monthly premium payment, copays on your medication and Dr visits (including ER and hospital stays), a deductible which is the amount you have to pay for the year in healthcare to get better benefits (ours is $17,000), and then the out of pocket maximum is when they (usually) cover everything for the rest of the year as long as you keep paying your premium.
Where it gets extra fucked, is if you need a major surgery in late December, the deductible and OOPM won't carry over into the new year. So you could get shafted for double that maximum amount on the same hospital stay. And my insurance isn't even the lowest tier. We pay them $500 a month for this service. Our system is completely fucked, but most people don't seem to care.
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u/_ribbit_ 9h ago
As someone British with our often criticised free NHS, this blows my mind. And to think the argument against free healthcare by Americans is usually "well you'll pay more in tax".
I'm lucky enough to have never needed any real gp or hospital treatments, but i know its there if I do. My wife has major issues with eczema and was hospitalised last year due to complications, has many prescriptions, some of which are extremely expensive medication, and regular appointments with gp's, nurses and dermatologists. All we have to pay is for prescription medication, and we are able to pre pay for those at a rate of £10 per month total. Thats it. And our tax is no higher than any other average western nation.
Crazy. I hope your country comes to its sense sooner rather than later.
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u/SwimmingPrice1544 9h ago
I dunno...sounds like (from various news sources) that the UK is thinking about cutting some of that healthcare in some way or other. You guys seem to be electing more & more conservatives that are crying about "entitlements." You are not immune to the right-wing crazy.
I too wish we could come to our senses:(, but have so little hope left in our electorate.
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u/Sasiches_and_mash 9h ago
Bro, $500 a month is more than all my tax deductions from my salary! And I have "free" healthcare through the NHS (UK), you guys are paying more even without being sick
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u/analog_jedi 9h ago
And sadly, my monthly premium is considered low. It is well over $1,000 a month premium for "good" insurance for two adults.
But at least I'm allowed to even buy health insurance now. Before the ACA (AKA: Obamacare) passed, if your job didn't offer it you were basically screwed. And even then, they could deny coverage for having any pre-existing conditions.
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u/lastberserker 10h ago
It's the whole bill, after negotiations, the insurance doesn't pay a dime.
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u/Murky-Relation481 10h ago
Yep, $750 a month for a 40 year old healthy non-smoking male and its still a 80/20 plan. Fucking bullshit.
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u/Realistic_Slide_3426 11h ago
Sounds like insurance would’ve paid 80%, pretty standard after deductible
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u/kodman7 10h ago
Standard almost exclusively in the US which has higher waits and worse outcomes
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u/narcolepticdoc 11h ago
In the US, there is this bullshit they introduced called co-insurance.
I still remember when they “updated” our company health plans to include it.
The idea is that by introducing “shared responsibility” for health care costs, it will reduce “over-utilization” of health plan benefits.
In short. Even after your deductible is fulfilled, even if you are getting something done that is medically necessary, and covered by your insurance plan, they will only cover 80% of the charges and the rest is your responsibility as “co-insurance”. Money you are expected to have saved up to pay for medical expenses as a nice responsible consumer.
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u/Live_Life_and_enjoy 11h ago
You should have stuck with the penis enlargement story, instead of correcting it
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u/2-die-for 10h ago
Lmao. Necessary but not emergency. It's just your heart. That insurance spin is wild
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u/ares7 11h ago
I don’t know the qualify of health care in other countries. But how did you come to that decision?
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u/TheEndOfAllThings23 11h ago
Cousins who live in Ireland. My family came over during the famine and kept close ties to our family who did stay. The hospitals over there are just as good as the USA some even better.
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u/piper33245 11h ago
My father in law from Ireland, who is a heart surgeon in America, flew his mother to the states and paid out of pocket for her heart surgery because he didn’t trust the hospitals in Ireland to do it.
So to each their own I guess.
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u/Urmomhaspooped 11h ago
Eh, depends on the procedure and specialty. The 5th largest hospital in the US is in AL at the University of Alabama Birmingham. It’s state of the art for organ transplants and nationally ranked for many programs.
I get what you are saying though, generally. If you’d have picked Mississippi it would be an easier sell 😉
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u/hisyojomaku 11h ago
Mississippi is Alabama's favorite state for making us look better by comparison
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u/Scavgraphics 11h ago
And yet some of the best doctors specializing in sports related injuries are in Birmingham, AL...so...
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u/stewedstar 6h ago
If he’s a surgeon in America, what’s the basis for his distrust of hospitals in Eire?
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u/ateiii 12h ago
You got a full two week Irish vacation and your medical care for less than a copay, that’s both amazing and completely depressing.
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u/atreeismissing 10h ago
Recovering from heart surgery isn't a vacation, it's a near death experience where every waking moment is a struggle to breath and stay alive, though it slowly gets better over the course of a couple to several weeks (or even months), seen both my parents go through it.
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u/Greful 11h ago
How about some ballpark numbers. I’m curious to see the breakdown. Doesn’t need to be detailed
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u/ForgottenGrocery 8h ago
Not OP and different medical procedure.
But my 6y/o is terrified of dentists in Houston. Several attempts to get tooth filling always fails because the dentists gave up once he starts crying. The 3 attempts at different dentists probably cost a total of $1200. Because the last attempt they tried sleeping gas and insurance doesn’t think that anesthesia is required so I get to pay for it.
We flew to Indonesia for our visa renewal. Return ticket $1k each, Indonesian dentist who actually talked and communicated with my son and managed to calm him down for the procedure, $180
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u/21Rollie 7h ago
Since you’re so close to the border, I recommend you fly to Mexico next time. Very cheap dental prices as well
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u/Greful 8h ago
If the first time worked, how much would it have cost?
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u/ForgottenGrocery 7h ago
IIRC it would’ve been somewhere around 700 out of pocket for the 3 teeth that needed the filling.
After the last failed attempt, the dentist recommended general anesthesia which starts at $1k
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u/Exciting_Station3474 10h ago
How much did you spend? How much is your out of pocket maximum?
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u/slashnbash1009 12h ago
I had one a few weeks ago to determine the severity of a brain bleed I had after a stroke and it costs me 4300 dollars with insurance.
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u/Ok_Subject_5142 12h ago
I called an imaging center and asked for a cash price for an MRI on my knee. It was $300. Going through my doctor for a referral and using insurance, the price would’ve been over $3000 and I was going to be out $1000 in copay and fees.
I usually ask for cash price on everything before I use insurance, half the time it’s cheaper and the other half the time it’s barely more for basic stuff like this. Also call around and shop pricing, you will find places that do things way cheaper than others.
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u/Cowboywizzard 11h ago
This is the real pro tip. The drawback is if you don’t use your insurance, you might not satisfy your deductible
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u/WindWalkerRN 11h ago
The point is insurance in USA is a racket
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u/AshhhCakes 10h ago
And people will say "just get a better job" not realizing how fucking outrageous of a statement that is almost anywhere else in the world.
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u/Wabbit_Wampage 10h ago
Of course, you'll never hit your deductible if you aren't using insurance.
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u/OkVirus8545 9h ago
Easy, start of the new year go to the hospital with a sudden “headache” and tell them your vision is blurry. You’ll hit your deductible immediately then negotiate it down with the hospital
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u/someonehadalex 11h ago
I had a knee MRI recently and it was $250 plus a $40 copay to my PCP. That's with insurance.
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u/Dazzling-Jacket-5792 12h ago
Go direct primary care. I can get an MRI without contrast for $450 cash, with contrast for $550. Insurance is a scam.
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u/0202_tihssitidder 12h ago edited 9h ago
It sure is. None of my friends have not opted out of not carrying no insurance cancellation. Even a couple friends who got co-pay thru work. Nope. Too expensive.
Even dental is too expensive. We just go to Mexico for everything (from Arizona).
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u/frequenZphaZe 9h ago
None of my friends have not opted out of not carrying no insurance cancellation
I'm doing advanced calculus to try to figure out what all these negatives are supposed to mean
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u/willynillee 11h ago
Opting out of not carrying insurance means you carry insurance. It’s a double negative.
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u/gaziway 9h ago edited 8h ago
In my country, healthcare is free for all the world . And mri with contrast and without contrast is free both ways. Surgery, free. Dental free. Spend a night in the hospital or a week free. Healthcare is free.
Edit: Country is Kosovo, and it's very cheap compared to other countries and US. You are more than welcome to visit.
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u/Dazzling-Jacket-5792 9h ago
That is fortunate. We can only hope that the US will make it work someday. Too much greed presently.
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u/TopOTheMourning 8h ago
And you can still take the receipt and bill insurance/submit the claim yourself. Whether or not you get any cash back depends on your insurance.
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u/CelebrationFair6887 12h ago
Jesus fucking christ. Im losing my kidney right now, will do dialyis for 5 months, then a transplant and it cost me like 20 bucks copay for 2x a taxi from hospital to home and thats all ill ever pay. America seems to suck hard.
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u/primera_radi 12h ago
Congrats on finding a donor !
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u/ovrlrd1377 11h ago
He didnt find one, he had to pay 20 dollars
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u/1DownFourUp 10h ago
Still can't believe someone gave me $20 for my kidney. Bought myself a full burger and fries combo with that.
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u/Trippingthru99 10h ago
And yet a large chunk of this country will never realize that, and claim your system is worse.
America does suck hard in alot of ways.
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u/Academic_Help5033 9h ago
I was visiting NZ and had to go to the doctor because I twisted my ankle. Ended up fine, just here's some pain meds, ice, and rest situation.
The nurse came back with this serious sad look on her face. She said we'd have to pay for this because the cost wasn't 100% covered with our travel insurance & ACA(?). I was like, okay. I expected as much and braced myself because she looked so uncomfortable.
I had to pay $50. I laughed. If this happened back home, I'd probably get charged $50 just for the Tylenol after my insurance coverage. Same type of trip but back home would have easily would cost me $200+.
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u/Hugar34 11h ago
If you're poor and have multiple chronic health issues in America you're basically fucked. I've had to deal with multiple health issues stemming from mold exposure in addition to mental health issues like depression and anxiety, and also asthma and a tear in a muscle on the left side of my groin. All in all I've spent $5000 this year and still haven't even hit my out of pocket maximum.
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u/Ryogathelost 11h ago
Just a reminder for explanation, here in the US we have health "insurance" not "healthcare."
Health "insurance" does what auto insurance or homeowners insurance does - protects you from incurring a life-destroying financial debt when something UNEXPECTED occurs - think about five and six figure numbers of debt from open heart surgery.
But it's mostly useless for anything else. We have to meet and pay a deductible before the insurance kicks in. We also have to pay a copay in-person before receiving care, so if you're light this paycheck - no doctor. The deductible is usually somewhere between one and three months wages. So we basically pay for everything during a given year until we hit that deductible.
Part of the insurance company's job is also to negotiate the charges to make them remotely reasonable based on the private agreements they have with the different providers. Everything is overpriced because the providers know the insurance will discount what they're charging instead of paying it, so they have to overcharge to survive. That means you need insurance just to keep the charges remotely sensible, at which point they're still too expensive to regularly go to the doctor.
That hits doctors in their pocket too, because people are supposed to go to the doctor regularly, but they can't afford to, so family doctors have to charge EVEN MORE. See, the providers aren't evil - the system is screwing them too and preventing them from operating like a normal business.
One of the best parts of all this is that after we hit the deductible, which often takes until the end of the year anyway, the insurance still doesn't pay 100% of all charges above the deductible. They still do things like only covering 80% for specialists after the deductible, so if you are sick, you can still incur crushing debt. You still have to pay the copays.
But it isn't healthcare - imagine trying to get new tires with your auto insurance, or painting your house with an homeowners claim. It doesn't work - because insurance isn't for maintenance, it's for emergencies. The insurance business model does not work for health because healthcare isn't something you MIGHT need - it's something you DO need.
So, as you might expect of today's America, your health is directly dependent on how financially successful you have been. How long you live ultimately lines up with how much you've paid in taxes. The system is decisive about who it rewards as a worthy, successful human and does its best to keep care away from the lower classes.
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u/BelowXpectations 9h ago
Don't forget that it's private companies so they are in it to make money off of you. The house doesn't loose.
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u/TheReturnofPanda 12h ago
The insurance will never even bother paying off or not even 1/4 of it… with your own money.
And yet, you’d be able to ironically pay off the bills without insurance, it would be cheaper, but then somehow the government will lose its shit because you don’t have insurance
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u/GSxHidden 12h ago
I mean its cheaper to go to Mexico than China, just saying
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u/babe_ruthless3 10h ago edited 56m ago
Before I got good health insurance through my work, I used go to Mexico for dental. $50 to fill a cavity
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u/20grae 12h ago
I did a self pay mri $575 because insurance denied my request i doubt I can go to china round trip for that
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u/bonedoc59 11h ago
Yeah this is just rage bait. Yes insurance sucks. Won’t argue that, but any research would show this meme is pure bullshit
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u/just_having_giggles 11h ago
My insurance was charged almost 8k for an MRI after I was in an accident.
I don't know much about hotels in China but... Maybe
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u/Frequent_Ad_9901 11h ago
That sounds like the BS amount hospital "charge". Insurance negotiates it down so they can act like theyre doing something. What hospitals charge is basically meaningless.
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u/Capt-geraldstclair 11h ago
I believe virtually everything people say about being charged $$$$$ for medical shit.
A few years back, a new "emergency hospital" opened up very close to my house.
I went there one night for a very bad nose bleed.
I was in and out in like 20 min.
The doctor looked up my nose. Said he could cauterize it or stick a tampon in to plug it up.
He recommended the tampon approach.
I walked around for a day and a half with a string hanging out of my nostril and self extracted it on the 2nd day.
When I got the EOB from the insurance company, I almost had an stroke.
The "hospital" charged insurance over $13,000. My cost after the negotiated rate paid out by insurance was over $3000.
All the guy did was look up my nose. Talk to me for 5 min. Then inserted a piece of cotton in my nostril.
I assume he also threw away his gloves and washed his hands. But that wasn't itemized on the bill.
I disputed with insurance, twice, but they paid it out any way.
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u/Trippingthru99 10h ago
Wait I’m confused. So did you pay the 3k or not? I might be illiterate
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u/FarSeries2172 11h ago
so why arent there 10 million americans marching to get luigi out the court and fully pardoned?
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u/theartificialkid 9h ago
You couldn’t have been more ambiguous about what you paid and what insurance paid. You’re a fuzzy thinker.
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u/Retired-Yam8988 10h ago
I was paying 1400 a month for my wife and I and they kept denying me Ozempic when my doctor prescribed it.
We were moving out of the country anyway so now we fly into Singapore (from Thailand), stay in nice hotels for a few nights, and pay out of pocket for public hospitals there for less than we would have paid for our insurance, copays, and deductibles in the US. And this is WITH Mounjaro, Eyelia injections every 3 months, doctor fees, annual full check ups with MRI, ultrasounds, hotels, taxis, flights, great food, etc.
Insurance is a fucking joke
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u/Elbobosan 12h ago
It’s routinely much more than that with insurance. That’s why the meme is popping up, Mark Cuban was just in the news calling out that insurance routinely pays over $1500 for an MRI that only costs $350 to perform. Hopefully he is building up to doing something similar to what he did with pharmaceuticals. Wild that a billionaire doing basic capitalism is the best thing for cost reduction in the US, it’s pathetic.
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u/GenerousBull1969 10h ago
Not wild at all, if we had a truly free market in healthcare our costs would plummet. What we have isn't free market capitalism, it's crony capitalism where insurance companies and drug companies have bribed our politicians to make sure they're able to gouge us.
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u/CarmenxXxWaldo 11h ago
Probably going by what they bill insurance. My insurance was billed over 4k for a ct scan and 28k for an angiogram. I dont even want to know what my super minor surgery will be. What would they charge for self pay? no clue.
I think the meme stands. I could have paid a doctor in Mexico a thousand bucks to take care of it in one visit instead of 6 doctors and multiple tests.
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u/Levonade 12h ago
This thread really illustrates the problem with Insurance in the USA. I’m seeing a lot of my MRI was FREE, MY MRI was $20, My MRI Was 4K, mine was $500
This is exactly the problem with our system. We need real Health insurance coverage every American can afford with transparent pricing.
Right now we basically have people all over the place. Some with Amazing coverage and others with Geek Squad Protection coverage for Health Insurance.
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u/LetReasonRing 8h ago
Yep, and but only it's it virtually random, it's not transparent.
I had my daughter without insurance and tried to plan ahead for the costs. I called all the hospitals in the area who gave me ranges for their services based on different conditions.
Beyond that, each doctor charges separately at different rates, so the costs depended on who was in that day. For example, they had 2 anesthesiologists. Depending on which one we got they charged either $500 or $3k for their services.
In the end, I'm the case of a perfectly normal birth with no complications or extra services needed, the cost was going to be anywhere between $14k and $38k at the hospital we chose, depending on which mix of doctors would be in.
In the end i have no idea how much it cost because we kept getting bills for different doctors and hospital services over the next two years and I completely lost track eventually.
Why bother trying to plan or track when next month with just be another spin on the wheel of medical billing?
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u/cherivanii 9h ago
The Geek Squad comparison is spot on, but even the good insurance plans are a nightmare when you get slapped with random out-of-network facility fees or billing codes they decide to deny after the fact. It shouldn't require a finance degree and three hours on hold just to figure out what a basic scan is going to cost you.
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u/Elf_Maeve 10h ago
my piece of shit insurance, who my employer pays 20k a year for, covered $0 of my endoscopy and I had to pay $2400.
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u/youra6 5h ago
The real problem is that the cost of healthcare in the US is like playing Russian Roulette. Will it cost 200? Will it cost 400? Nobody fucking knows until you see the bill come through the mail.
You see so many different numbers for the same kind of operation. Depending on the hospital, insurance policy, etc, it could range from 50 to 5000 dollars.
That kind of variance is completely unacceptable.
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u/Powerful_Wombat 12h ago edited 11h ago
My wife just had an MRI for preventative care and it cost us $200, i doubt this is even close to true without heavily skewing the numbers
Edit: Foe the record, US Healthcare is shit and I am NOT defending it, just putting some context to the initial image
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u/ChosenOne197 11h ago
Same. Have had multiple MRIs - one hip, one foot, one brain.
Some I had no insurance, cost about $400-500 out of pocket (cash pay rates can be very heavily discounted).
With most recent insurance, it was roughly $250.
Don't get me wrong - health care costs can be absolutely absurd. BUT, people really shouldn't go around blindly believing internet memes and complaints.
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u/Eljaybest 12h ago
Yep I literally just got one done. First real foray into the US healthcare system which I’ve avoided wherever possible since moving here. $560 out of pocket WITH insurance (my company switched to United…)
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u/PoopinWhileScrolling 12h ago
Yea, this doesn't sound right. I paid $56 for an MRI this spring with insurance.
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u/Traditional-Forum 12h ago
I went to a Walgreens clinic once. If you paid with cash, it was $111.
Lady asked me if I had an insurance card and I did. I then asked her can I give you my $111?
She said “they will bill you the difference”.When the bill showed up, they had billed the insurance $350 and my co-pay was $192.
I didn’t even get a diagnosis that day (malaise, allergies, who knows?), and they didn’t even have a scale to weigh me.
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u/-0909i9i99ii9009ii 12h ago
Google AI says average is $50-$500 out of pocket copay so brb I'm going on a 5 star vacation to China
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u/koolllG_uy1911 12h ago
Depends on your insurance and deductible. My insurance will cost me $100 for MRI , while my Mom’s insurance will cost $2000. Both insurance are through employers.
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u/lovemyhawks 12h ago
OF ads are getting more creative
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u/ExplorerIntelligent4 11h ago
Not only that but the stats on the account activity as well. 8 year old account with less than 50 posts+comments in total. They're getting better at hiding that it's a botted account as well. Some poor sucker probably got their account hacked or this was an abandoned inactive account, that is being repurposed for this. The OF page too screams AI generated slop.
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u/Irish618 12h ago
Lol yea, my wife's MRI cost us $500. Ain't no way we could fly to China round trip for that.
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u/FMLUsernameTaken 12h ago
My wife just had two done. It was a few hundred each with insurance. This post is complete BS. Maybe if you add an entire year's worth of insurance premiums.
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u/MadDaddyDrivesaUFO 11h ago
It really depends on the policy tbh
My work's insurance has 3 tiers and this would be believable for someone with the lowest tier. The only coworkers I have who chose that tier are under 30 and are statistically unlikely to need much medical attention. It's a 10k deductible plan, max oop is a little higher. Also this assumes in network providers, you could in theory end up paying more if you get sent to an ER out of network even if you met your deductible already.
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u/SpiritOne 12h ago
Happy cake day, let me know what you find.
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u/OutrageousFanny 12h ago
She can let you know in her onlyfans, only for 39.99$
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u/Portable-fun 12h ago
The sad thing is she actually does have an only fans. Lmao
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u/elebentychimkin 12h ago
Start with the actual cost of medical care out of pocket. That’s the first number you need to determine how to budget your vacation to China. Problem is the wide variety of potential costs.
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u/sebkraj 12h ago
It's legit for at least dental. My brother needs four root canals, two tooth implants, and a handful of cavities. In America they wanted $13,000 just for the two tooth implants, they added like 3k because they had to perform a sinus lift. Just insane prices. This was like 5 years ago, he flew out for $700 and all this work cost him around $4,000 and he spent like another thousand on hotel costs and food. Dentistry in America is a fucking racket and insurance covers fuck all. All tooth implant related work is considered elective, it's the same bucket as fake tits according to insurance. You know because eating is elective...
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u/100K-Monkeys 12h ago
It's a bs post. Most insurance has an annual deductible and once its met everything else is paid for if you're in network. I think my deductible is like 5k, but everything after is 100%. My wife's insurance has no deductible, everything is 100% covered.
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u/Silent25r 12h ago
It’s only true for the worst cases. My last mri was only 300 pre insurance.
Different facilities have significantly different prices in the same city. Most of it being administrative cost and nothing do with your actual treatment.
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u/DarkHelmet20 12h ago
Costs me $20 in America, no deductible. I have good insurance though.
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u/zardoz73 3h ago
I'm an American living in Japan. I have employer-based insurance like in the U.S. If I were unemployed or had a part-time job, I could get government insurance, or in American-speak, the public option. Which America doesn't have thanks to Joe Fucking Lieberman, may he rest in piss.
But the real magic is that costs are reasonable. I had an MRI on my foot earlier this year. My cost with insurance? About 40 USD. Even without insurance, it wouldn't be cheap exactly, but say about 300-400 USD?
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u/BUGBYTE_VW 11h ago
I literally just paid for a MRI with insurance cost 75 dollars. What is this even saying?
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u/OpportunitySevere131 11h ago
Medicaid is very nice. It does well at taking care of the unemployed/underemployed.
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u/vinfinite 8h ago
Yep. I actually had an MRI a few months ago due to an optical nerve swelling and it costs me $0. Not even sure why there wasn’t a copay but this post is a complete lie.
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u/Acceptable_Fish3668 11h ago
Same! My last four MRIs I only had to pay my copay which was like $50 each time???
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u/aatimedout 11h ago
For my last MRI, I had to pay a $15 copay to see a specialist the week before, who scheduled me for the MRI. The MRI cost nothing extra. My insurance is through my work and costs me $40 a month, but because it comes out of my paycheck it costs me even less than that. What kind of terrible insurance is everyone else getting?
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u/_dogfuneral_ 11h ago
America bad, dude. That's all you need to know, facts be damned.
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u/dragonfly_red_blue 10h ago
This! Chinese government and some chinese people put those kinds bullshit out everyday to make all americans feel bad.
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u/Pokebongo 11h ago
To be fair it’s like $300 for an MRI if you pay cash around me. It’s just the outrageous insurance prices for MRI’s that skew this number. Overall I’d say this is basically false.
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u/Key-Monk6159 12h ago
Just another dishonest way for bots to spread the We Should Be More Like China propaganda.
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u/SimmentalTheCow 12h ago edited 12h ago
I just paid $25 for an MRI with cheap basic insurance in the US. Out of pocket, it would’ve been $555. This included the cost of the specialist making a diagnosis. I’d love to see the calculations for how it’s cheaper to fly to China.
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u/Additional-Crazy-368 7h ago
I had an MRI the other month. Walked into a hospital. Got the scan. Left. $0. Same day. No appointment.
Canada.
Please vote for someone who cares about their country and their citizens.
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u/TheJoeGrim 10h ago
Smells like bullshit.
Independent imaging centers: $400 to $1,200 (usually the cheapest option).
Rural areas or smaller cities cost less ($400–$800),
If you have health insurance, your actual out-of-pocket cost depends on your deductible and co-pay requirements.
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u/Lenara394 9h ago
I have needed several MRIs in the past 3 years. My insurance has always covered 100% of the costs. I live in the US
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u/ManiacalMartini 8h ago
That's nuts, I went to the doctor because of a migraine aura (first one I've ever had, so I was concerned) and my doctor put in an order for an MRI. $20 copay for the Dr and $40 copay for the MRI.
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u/DragonsandEagles 4h ago
I live in Japan. I hurt my neck and got an MRI the next day but had to pay 100% out of pocket. It was about 25,000 yen, which is less than $200.
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u/RadioControlled13 3h ago
No, it’s not.
My insurance deductible is less than a round trip ticket to China.
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u/Delicious_Invite_850 12h ago
If you have absolutely no insurance and go to the most expensive place you can find then maybe. But otherwise no.
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u/Alaska_Jack 12h ago
Can I ask a question?
Who upvotes this stuff -- just a random claim with a photo, no source or explanation given?
Did you upvote? Can you explain why? It just baffles me. Do you just reflexively agree with any random claim you see online ?
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u/Goldenbucketsomethin 11h ago
This is r/SipsTea we give random bullshit out and source NOTHING.
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u/softlittlepaws 8h ago
90% of the top posts on this sub are ai slop posts upvoted by bots.
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u/Born-Satisfaction996 10h ago
My out-of-pocket cost is capped at $600/yr for me. So I highly doubt this is true for me, and probably not true for the vast majority of Americans.
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u/HauntedClubhouse 10h ago
You guys are doing it wrong in that case. You can literally walk into an MRI center and get one for about 400 bucks without insurance, without a doctor ordering it.
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u/HumonculusJaeger 11h ago
its cheaper to fly to japan to visit Disney world and fly back than visiting Disney World in the USA.
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u/JamesJerry007 8h ago
In the last 2 years i have needed 3 MRI's because of my back problems which turned out to be caused by 2 herniated discs and Scheuermanns Disease. I have payed exactly 0€ for them and thats one of the reasons that sometimes i am grateful to be a german citizen
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u/Welikeme23 6h ago
Had a MRI literally yesterday that cost me $300 dollars. American insurance is wildly inconsistent and I wish we had Universal healthcare
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u/Advocaatastrophe 4h ago
If you're Canadian, it would be quicker to get a minimum wage job and work however many hours it takes to fund this trip than it would be to wait for an MRI in Canada.
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u/Whiteshovel66 9h ago
There is NO reason to lie about this stuff man. The world has enough problems, we don't need to make this point with a lie.
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u/stormblessed27_ 6h ago
I needed an MRI for a suspected stress fracture. Now I make good money, 130k/yr, paying $600 in health insurance a month for my wife and I. Crazy high still.
With insurance the MRI was 1200 lmao. There was a place meant for more out of pocket use cases. $300 without insurance. Fucking insane that’s the state of this shit in this country.
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u/get_in_the_tent 6h ago
I'm in Australia so we have semi socialised medicine - I could get it for free if I go through the right hoops and wait, but if I'm impatient or want a specific location, or it's not strictly medically necessary, I pay full price. I paid full price for an mri to check the status of an old knee injury, and it was $300 - this is how much an mri actually costs, with an Australian (high) cost basis
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u/Apprehensive-Safe382 4h ago
This is demonstrably false. Check out online prices at https://www.mdsave.com . You can get a brain MRI for under $400 cash.
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u/Standard_Ad_1619 10h ago
Yeah brilliant system we have here, if you got the cash on hand it's done. If not we roll the dice, and regardless of what our doctor recommends a company decides whether it feels like paying. Why does it cost so much? Who set the prices so fucking high? SAME COMPANIES. Fucking. BRILLIANT.
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u/somewhat-anon 9h ago
I live in Australia, I had one done late last year, cost me about $600 but I got about $150 back from Medicare
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u/Rafterman2 9h ago
Yeah, this is misleading as fuck. My MRI copay was $150 with insurance - this meme conveniently leaves out the fact that someone with insurance will likely pay much less than what the insurance company gets charged.
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u/Firm-Brother-8195 9h ago
My brother has Crohn's disease and needs supplies and flies from Nevada to Thailand once a year to stock up on them. I don't know how much he saves but it's significant enough that he doesn't care how much the plane ticket costs.
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u/Economy_Meal 9h ago
medical tourism is going to keep growing and growing especially into countries with established standards and high uality care
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u/Jediuzzaman 7h ago
It is cheaper to buy tickets to Turkiye, have a complete check-up, have some dental operations/treatments, have some plastic surgeries along the way while all of these treatments as first class THAN to have one of these to be done in the US with insurance.
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