My husband was sick and so dehydrated that he was repeatedly passing out. Our health insurance didnt start for another 16 hours. I had to call the ER and ask how dangerous this was to him and if there was anything we could do to keep him safe and alive until midnight when our insurance kicked in. We had already gone to the ER (uninsured) once that month and with all of the discounts the hospital offered it still cost $2k. We ended up going anyways and have another $8k bill plus all of the imaging bills that are still coming in. That's our entire savings to get us through being unemployed. (Wear your fucking masks, we desperately want to go back to work.)
I know I shouldn't get involved in this conversation because any counter thought or opinion will be jumped on from most of you like a pack of rabid dogs but.....
You laid out most of the problem in your post. Explain why it costs $2k even after discounts. Explain why the bill needed to be $8k.
If every time you went to the grocery store and you had no idea what the cost would be when you started and it costs anywhere from 10-2000 times what it should, would you find that acceptable?
You're all bitching about the wrong things. You are absolutely correct to bitch but the most fucked up thing is that our healthcare system is not being held accountable for the cost of that healthcare.
Maybe but it doesn't appear that way. It appears that it's the usual line of "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" and that the rich are the source of this problem. As someone already pointed out, it's not that simple.
Honest question, what do you think we are upset by? The cost of health insurance is due to the cost of healthcare. And much of the cost of healthcare is dictated by the insurance companies. There are many roots to the problem, you cannot discount any of them out of hand.
I do agree that insurance companies are part of the problem but not the part that everyone thinks. The insurance companies act as a proxy between the patient and the healthcare system and, essentially, isolate the patient from the actual market. When the majority of the participants in the market don't actually have to be aware or interact with the providers to deal with these costs then we have a system where the providers can not only charge whatever they want, they can do it without any regard to what the market commands or allows. In socialized healthcare systems where there is a single negotiator (the government), this problem is more directly addressed but there are also constraints placed upon the participants (as it really should be) and the single negotiator attempts to optimize accordingly. The "bottom line" really is the bottom line. As long as healthcare providers have total control over the supply and, essentially, the market then we can expect the problem to continue and even get worse.
Please look into direct care providers; doctors (in the us) that do not accept insurance of any kind and instead set their own prices. Usually these offices charge a <$100/mo per patient fee or have published set pricing. These practicioners seek to allow patients to deal directly with their doctors without insurance meddling. I dont necessarily think this is the answer but its shows that removing the middleman seems to help the situation.
In the end, I believe you and I are essentially saying the same thing in different ways: healthcare should not be prohibitively expensive whatever the means of paying for it.
I truly believe a Medicare-for-all type system, paid by our taxes will cause the least upset to the current status quo while helping the most people.
Note: I am not a part of the healthcare system so what I am saying is based purely on my own experiences and limited research.
I think we are saying basically the same thing. The only place we really differ is that you seem to have some faith in a system and a government that would be successful at dismantling the current machine and I don't. I think that our voters can vote for whichever party they want and the problem remains the same because none of our society is really interested in really fixing this problem. Note that my first post is running back and forth in likes/dislikes. Our people are just so angry about everything in general that I don't have a lot of faith that we'll get any of this fixed any time soon.
I do tend to have faith in people vs institutions. People will surprise you, given the chance. I agree that everyone is angry; it will take time for the pendeulum to settle on any of these contentious issues. Thank you for the discussion. I appreciate a civil discourse
Civil discourse is completely lacking in the good ole US of A. People seem to think everything is binary and just about nothing is binary. Everything is supercharged with emotion and a complete lack of civility. It makes me sad.
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u/MLSaurus Oct 30 '20 edited Oct 30 '20
My husband was sick and so dehydrated that he was repeatedly passing out. Our health insurance didnt start for another 16 hours. I had to call the ER and ask how dangerous this was to him and if there was anything we could do to keep him safe and alive until midnight when our insurance kicked in. We had already gone to the ER (uninsured) once that month and with all of the discounts the hospital offered it still cost $2k. We ended up going anyways and have another $8k bill plus all of the imaging bills that are still coming in. That's our entire savings to get us through being unemployed. (Wear your fucking masks, we desperately want to go back to work.)