Shitty physical therapist twice raised what I owed per visit because of their clerk’s incompetence. Not just for future visits but retroactively for visits I already had. (Edit: I should say this was possibly fraud and if I had a lawyer it may have been worth pursuing).
I knew I was screwed when the clerk pronounced tier as tire. Oh well, lesson also learned for me: Always conduct a three-way, recorded conference call with provider and your insurer before provided service.
Another fun fact; Per KFF, 50% of Americans forego medical attention for free of medical debt. Naturally, this snowballs leading to them inevitably going anyway for a more costly, complex procedure. Our system is top-heavy with specialists for this reason, lacking adequate preventative care and rapid accessibility.
They want essentially 200 bucks fee to give a script for antibiotics
And you can’t them with oit a script. Now just for a basic medicine you need a provider, prolly make you go to urgent care, then receptionest needs to file your insurance, they do some reviee or bullshit.
Anyway or you could go pharmacy, check with them and get what you need. This ain’t rock science cast majority of time.
Wasn’t tele medicine supposed to save money? Does it?
Insurance companies make money on gross revenue as base rate. So they have every incentive to increase revenue then demand higher premium justified by higher payouts.
Then they will maximize this profit by deny claims to “expensive losers”
This is their core business…
Between my wife and I we make 200K a year. We have a roommate to help pay bills because between her chrones disease and our kids health issues we can’t afford to live. She has been without her chrones medication for 6 months because the hummers was causing problems and the new prescription has been in limbo between pharmacies not wanting to deal with it or her insurance and her insurance continually sending her to pharmacies that don’t accept her insurance. Medication that is easily affordable and available in other countries is dangled just out of reach while she suffers.
Went to a clinic to get birth control, had to convince them I wasn’t interested in using it to control whether or not I gave birth, when I finally got a prescription it turned out it would cost over $100 for the medication.
‘group bargaining’ is a giant lie in the united states. the idea that groups of insured people can bargain for cheaper healthcare. a complete fabrication.
my monthly insurance costs were cut by 75% when i dumped my corporate health insurance program and signed on to my wifes plan, where she makes far less than i do but the benefits are amazing. because its a government job.
and i work in the healthcare industry!
its all a giant fucking scam designed to rape the american people of money.
private insurance companies only profit when human beings suffer. how many other industries get to do that?!
Group bargaining works, it’s just that people heard “we’re going to use our position to lower consumer costs”, but what they said was “we’re going to use our position to lower costs”. They have no motivation to pass those savings on, considering you probably get a plan partially subsidized by your employer so it’s cheaper than what you can get alone, and you’re legally obligated to buy insurance.
Look at what the government can essentially dictate as the procedure costs because they’re big enough that their “accept our terms or don’t see our patients” is a compelling threat, particularly when backed by the tax ramifications of saying no. They’ve got leverage and no particular profit motive, so they can tell a hospital “a surgery suite costs you $250 an hour, the surgeon $150, staff another $500, and material $100, with recovery costing another $250. We’ll pay 80% and you can bill the patient the remaining $250. If they have gap insurance they’ll pay and they can’t dispute because we payed”. And the hospitals invariably just accept it, rather than lose tax status and ~60% of their patients.
only profit when human beings suffer. how many other industries get to do that?!
Defense contractors, daytime talk shows, and reality TV. 😛
ProPublica is doing a story and was asking for these on Bluesky at least. Wanted people to share their stories.
My wife has a rare disease. Requires expensive drugs monthly. We hit our max out of pocket early every year.
Bye money. forever. until I die.
Sometimes you don’t need anything crazy to describe how shitty our healthcare system is.
I went in for a $10,000 surgery. Told them to bill my insurance and I came out with a bill for almost $30,000! Insurance barely paid $7,000 left me with the rest
Just paying good money all these years and now I am concerned that I might be fucked over.
They appear to be targeting more complex and high cost patients with these tactics while mandane shit just get push through without too much drama.
But there still issues like residual billing which are technically illegal but some how still happen.
Point being, if you have not been fucked over like these horror stories, do you trust these people when you will need them?
I don’t.
Had to go to the er for a staph infection, no insurance. In short I’m in about 8k worth of debt to the hospital. I was in the er for about an hour. 8k for an hour get fucked integris, so I never paid it out of principle
My childhood friend needed an operation, her family made a commercial for the local TV station trying to raise the money, but she died before they could get enough.
I don’t have any because I know I can’t afford to go to the Dr. so I don’t.
I went to the ER once because my heart was acting weird. Turns out it was a benign issue, but they kept me over night to be safe. $10k copay. Insurance covered almost nothing. I paid $10 a month for 5 years and eventually they called me and said they would take $2000 if I paid it all right then.
Once upon a time there was a man who was very, very, very, very, very glad he never had to deal with the American healthcare system. He lived happily ever after.
A friend of mine was feeling ill, but didn’t go to the hospital because he couldn’t afford it. Once the leukemia started advancing though he only lasted a week.
Where’s the one guy who had “good” insurance but still almost died because his employer was being bought out when he got sick
