I know the feeling, when my kid was born we had to spend 5 days in hospital and it cost me £10 per day in parking. Daylight robbery.
And you should see the price of a pack of biscuits in the hospital shop!
It only cost me a bankruptcy and a foreclosure. You can’t put a price on health, unless you’re an insurance provider.
Hell yeah $22k in one night and that was 16 years ago.
You get the friends and family rate?
I unfortunately had no insurance and needed to go to the er cause I had a staph infection on my leg. 1 visit, I was there 1.5 hours. The dr drained/cleaned the infection gave me antibiotics and now im in debt 6k
Make it make sense. I’m fighting it, trying to get a lower number
Many year ago I lost my job and just as I got a new job but before my insurance could kick in, my appendix ruptured. I had to get surgery and was in the hospital for 3 days, the bill came to something like $25,000.
I negotiated with the hospital, they reduced it to $11,000 and set me on a payment plan. After I paid off the $11,000 they sent me to collections for the other $14,000. Those fuckers.
I refused to pay it and it tanked my credit rating, which made it difficult to get a home loan five years after.
Gotta get shit in writing. Then you could’ve disputed it.
Well if we say the doctor was getting paid a very generous $300 an hour for that work, that’s $450.
Plus seeing the front desk person for a few minutes, we’ll give a generous $50.
So that’s $500 for some very well paid employees.
We’ll throw another very generous $50 in for the antibiotics, making it $550.
Double it so the hospital can take a very large cut, and your total is $1100.So even leaving massive profit margins with those numbers, you still got ripped off an extra ~$5000.
Not to mention the cost of the ride there! My mom had to go to the ER a few years ago. We called 911 and an ambulance came to our house and transported her to the local hospital. After she got out, she got a bill for the ride for $2800 (which is actually pretty cheap for an ambulance ride). Then, a few weeks later, she got another ambulance bill for $2800 from a different ambulance company. It turned out this second company was the one affiliated with the hospital, and this made them feel entitled to bill people for a ride even if a different company’s ambulance showed up and actually provided the service.
My mom was all set to pay this second bill because she’s from a generation where they just pay any bill that shows up no matter what. I was like no fucking way are you paying this, and I called up this ambulance company and allowed myself to get really angry on the phone. They threatened to send it to collections but they never did, maybe because I yelled “fucking do it!” to them over the phone. Just the shittiest pieces of corporate shit I’ve ever encountered, sending out completely illegitimate bills to old people because they know some fraction of people will just pay it.
glad I live in a country which has universal healthcare because when i learned abt how much an MRI scan costs in the USA I was gobsmacked. one of the richest countries in the world yet doesn’t have universal healthcare
I had a loved-one have to be intubated and was on life-support for around 3-weeks. The total bill in the end was over 2 million USD.
Fortunately I was unemployed at the time and had state-subsidised low-income healthcare so I paid very little out-of-pocket. If it had happened when we were working it probably would have cost us over 50k in deductibles and out-of-pocket costs.
Do not ask me to make it make sense. I have lived in this “system” my entire life and I hate every moment of this dreamworld nonsense.
My wife and I had a baby last week via elective caesarian in the Australian public system. It was a fantastic experience. The doctors and surgeons were amazing. The midwives were amazing and super helpful. We were there for three nights and nothing was ever a problem when we needed something. The only charge was the cost of a new birth control implant (the actual implantation was free).
They have also been doing follow up home visits to check how my wife and our baby are going since she was discharged, all still free.
one of the richest countries in the world yet doesn’t have universal healthcare
We’re working on that … the “richest country in the world” part, not the universal healthcare part.
Fun fact, the stay itself isn’t entirely covered in my country. Being in the hospital costs like 20€/night (regardless of what procedures and tests they do, those are fully covered).
That’s a pretty decent rent for a room, probably also including meals?
Yeah. I think it must be partially covered, otherwise Id expect a higher price. Wifi is extra though (unless you have eduroam hehe)
The ridiculous thing is that many TV shows make it look as if it is not that expensive and it’s fully covered by insurance.
In Friends for example, Joey needed to only do one acting thing and get covered for anything and for a long time.
I mean, this is just a given.
Half a day in the ER in the Nordics might cost the same as a night at a cheap motel in the US. While the same time and treatement in a US ER could pay for a weekend in some of the more expensive hotels in the world.
If you have the right membership card, stays that are normally $400k are brought down about $5k! There’s also special perks hidden like the McDonald’s secret menu that bring it down further if not eliminate it if you ask for the right thing. Best system in the world right?! (/s)
You have to watch the news constantly to make sure to time your hospital stay during times when your local state or employer isn’t in the process of repealing your right to life-support.
