(08-31-2023, 11:09 AM)Have at ye Wrote: [ -> ]I'm glad MM is helping you deal with medical payments. For a guy who's grown up in a country with universal healthcare (in a system which is highly imperfect and somewhat inefficient, but still) it really boggles the mind - not only are you insured (which costs serious money), but you have to pay additional fees because insurance does not cover the entirety of it? Whoo boy.
In some cases, these bills have been paid by both medical insurance, and where they involve my car accident, car insurance as well. The parts that are not paid, I then argue them down to a discount, before I pay. In the United States, health care is quite insane. Big Pharma is basically a legalized, institutionalized drug cartel who also has it's hand in the medical system's training. They charge whatever they like because apparently nobody else in the world has the skills or knowledge to make these drugs (Canada, Mexico, India, etc. apparently don't count.) and of course our government has a legalized form of bribery for those with money called "lobbying", which is basically every politician's dream, and downfall. So the medical establishment, along with Big Pharma, they have this all wrapped up, and then of course the insurance companies are making bank being the intermediaries, and meanwhile, people STILL can't afford health care because even after insurance, the bills are frequently just insane.
Here's a specific example.
I got rear ended by a drunk driver. I had my blood pressure checked at the scene of the accident, and it was very high. They wanted to take me to the emergency room for it, I declined. I knew that would be an insane bill. The next day, I went to an urgent care center to get checked out. The totality of what they did there was to check my blood pressure, tell me it was high, ask me some questions, give me a pill to bring it down immediately, and then write me a prescription for a blood pressure medication. The bill for this visit, after insurance: $6.75. Not bad at all, right?
Then I ran out and went back for a prescription refill. New nurse checks me out, orders an EKG to check my heart. I can't stop coughing while they're trying to do it, so they don't do it. I decline the pill they try to give me again, as an emergency measure, since the stuff they prescribed didn't do a damned thing, because last time, the pill made me spend all day useless and drugged out, and I hate that feeling. So instead of adjusting the prescription, the new nurse insists I go to the emergency room, right then. Even wrote me a referral to the emergency room. Total bill for this visit: $800+ before insurance and negotiated discounts, and I ended up paying $415 out of pocket. They did not a damned thing.
So off to the emergency room I go after that, thinking they know something I don't. I get there and the doctor is looking at me like I am crazy for coming in over blood pressure. She draws my blood, runs some tests, and then prescribes me a different BP med and refers me to a primary care doctor. Bill: $3,800+ before I have insurance and negotiated discounts, and $1,100 out of my pocket afterwards.
This kind of thing just stuns me. This is exactly why I have been avoiding the medical establishment since 1997 when I got out of cancer treatment. And now they seem to have decided that I need to be on BP meds forevermore, and I need to see a cancer doctor (since I haven't been checked since 1997, of course) and furthermore I need to get screened by a different doctor for something completely different because I happen to be 50 years old now. I also had someone harping on me to visit a neurologist to get an insanely expensive scan of my brain after the car accident. The last time I got such a scan, they sent me a bill for $14,000. And that was more than 10 years ago, when $14,000 was roughly the equivalent of about $30,000 today. I ended up arguing them down to a "mere" $7,000 bill, which took me years to pay off. And the bext bit? It was a scan that I didn't need, or want, ordered by the doctor to give himself legal cover in case I decided to sue him, and it was administered while I was high as hell on painkillers I didn't want them to give me. I wish I had sued them, looking back.
This is all casually routine for the medical establishment. Even with insurance. And it's all based on the fact that the medical establishment, the insurance industry and the pharmaceuticals are making insane amounts of money every year doing this, and our politicians would rather make laws that force us to have insurance that basically does nothing while STILL paying insane amounts of money, because they got "lobbied" by one, two or all three of those above industries to do so.
So even though my own father was medical doctor, I don't really like the medical establishment, big pharma or the insurance industry. I try to avoid them at every opportunity. Otherwise, it's like flushing my money down the toilet for nothing in return, most of the time.
I'll probably be working until my last breath, and then arguing with whoever comes to take me home that I just need a little more time...