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I know this will get downvoted to oblivion, but these stories are just anecdotal. Thousands of people utilize medical care in the USA without much fanfare.

kranner 7y ago
I wouldn't shove even the odd catastrophic error under 'just anecdotal'.
contravariant 7y ago
Thousands seems a bit low... Besides even if 0.1% goes disastrously wrong financially then that's still a lot of people.
JadeNB 7y ago
It should get downvoted; it's heartless. Given the hundreds of millions of people in the US, the fact that thousands, or even millions, of people successfully seek medical care doesn't demonstrate much. One or two people whose lives are ruined by rent-seeking in a life-or-death matter is too many (I think one wouldn't ignore several cases of food poisoning at a restaurant and respond that hundreds had eaten there without incident); I suspect that the actual number of people affected by this sort of catastrophe is at least in the thousands. Unless you're one of the people affected (and probably not even then), you have no right to dismiss the suffering of those who have been.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
One of the “pleasures” of working in a cube farm is that you get to overhear a lot phone calls. I hear a lot of people spending hours and hours arguing with providers and insurance over billing mistakes. Based on this I believe it’s pretty common. My girlfriend got hit with a $300000 bill after a surgery. It was a mistake (several actually) but it took her almost a year and literally 100s of phone calls to clear this.
cletus 7y ago
Only a minority of people get murdered too. Most people walk around alive and happy. In Australia, the number one reason for personal bankruptcy prior to the Hawke Labor government introducing Medicare in the 1980s was unexpected medical expenses [1]. insurance is the USA is largely tied to having a job. You can buy your own insurance but it's terrible in comparison to better employment-based health insurance and the reason for that is exactly why we need a public safety net. Company insurance plans a) form a group and b) have negotiating power with insurance companies. The first part is really important. Being diagnosed with diabetes and then having diabetes-related medical expenses be excluded from personal insurance as a pre-existing condition is Bad. Really Bad. The only way insurance works is if you consider the total expenses of a sufficiently large group of people. Companies, unions and government organizations are the only way to get this in the US. [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-18/bob-hawke-what-did-australia-have-before-medicare/11124180 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-18/bob-hawke-what-did-au...
dannyr 7y ago
Anectodal. Getting hit with surprise medical bills is very common among my network. Personally, I went for a physical and hospital billed me over $600 for it. They apparently performed things that are not covered by my insurance. No matter how much you insist, hospitals won't tell you how much things would cost or if something is covered or not. I try to be proactive about my health but surprise bills sometimes scare me out of visiting hospitals/doctors for checkups. Or even if I go, I'm always worried about getting surprise bills weeks later.
- findyoucef 7y ago
  The same thing just happened to me. I scheduled a physical which is considered preventative which means it's free and covers things like the general blood panels..I go in, they order a blood test and a couple weeks later I got a bill for $800. I called the insurance and they said the doctor billed me as a "visit" and not a physical and I would have to call the doctor to have them change the billing code. So I did that but they wouldn't change, they said that because it was my first time at this office that they have a policy that all first appointments are billed as visits. keep in mind that this was stated no where and this was the first I was hearing about it. Anyway they refused to change the billing code and I'm stuck with $800 bill.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Make it clear you are not going to pay and will dispute anything that shows up on your credit report. It’s obvious you’re never going back to them at this point so burning bridges is perfectly ok. Remember, medical bills don’t mean anything on their own and doctors want to get paid.
  - cyril_figgis 7y ago
    Here's the dirty little secret: in the kafkaesque industry that is 21st century medicine, a bill is like an offer to pay. "$800 is what we think you owe us," isn't even quite the right explanation. It's more like, "we think you're an $800 sucker who will cough up that number because it appears on this official-looking piece of paper." And if you call one of them up (any of them: doctor, insurance, hospital, whatever) they're going to either: a) tell you to talk to one of the other two, or b) exactly what they think you need to hear so that they maximize their conversion rate, i.e. so that you send in your real money for their fake bill. Did you put down your signature on a piece of paper stating to the effect that you owed them $800? Do they have in writing your acknowledgement that you supposedly owe them $800? No? Then why are you acting like it? Collection is their problem, and right now they're playing a psychological trick on you because on works on people like you. patio11 has some good comments on collections. I'm not going to dredge them up but anyone sufficiently interested can do so.
yardie 7y ago
1:25 emergency room visits results in medical bankruptcy. That doesn’t sound anecdotal to me.
coldtea 7y ago
Anecdotal can mean both "rare stuff that happened to some extreme outlier" and "personal experience of millions of people which don't have stats available, or official statistics push under the carpet in different creative ways".

kranner 7y ago

I wouldn't shove even the odd catastrophic error under 'just anecdotal'.

contravariant 7y ago

Thousands seems a bit low... Besides even if 0.1% goes disastrously wrong financially then that's still a lot of people.

JadeNB 7y ago

It should get downvoted; it's heartless. Given the hundreds of millions of people in the US, the fact that thousands, or even millions, of people successfully seek medical care doesn't demonstrate much. One or two people whose lives are ruined by rent-seeking in a life-or-death matter is too many (I think one wouldn't ignore several cases of food poisoning at a restaurant and respond that hundreds had eaten there without incident); I suspect that the actual number of people affected by this sort of catastrophe is at least in the thousands. Unless you're one of the people affected (and probably not even then), you have no right to dismiss the suffering of those who have been.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

One of the “pleasures” of working in a cube farm is that you get to overhear a lot phone calls. I hear a lot of people spending hours and hours arguing with providers and insurance over billing mistakes. Based on this I believe it’s pretty common. My girlfriend got hit with a $300000 bill after a surgery. It was a mistake (several actually) but it took her almost a year and literally 100s of phone calls to clear this.

cletus 7y ago

Only a minority of people get murdered too. Most people walk around alive and happy. In Australia, the number one reason for personal bankruptcy prior to the Hawke Labor government introducing Medicare in the 1980s was unexpected medical expenses [1]. insurance is the USA is largely tied to having a job. You can buy your own insurance but it's terrible in comparison to better employment-based health insurance and the reason for that is exactly why we need a public safety net. Company insurance plans a) form a group and b) have negotiating power with insurance companies. The first part is really important. Being diagnosed with diabetes and then having diabetes-related medical expenses be excluded from personal insurance as a pre-existing condition is Bad. Really Bad. The only way insurance works is if you consider the total expenses of a sufficiently large group of people. Companies, unions and government organizations are the only way to get this in the US. [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-18/bob-hawke-what-did-australia-have-before-medicare/11124180 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-18/bob-hawke-what-did-au...

dannyr 7y ago

Anectodal. Getting hit with surprise medical bills is very common among my network. Personally, I went for a physical and hospital billed me over $600 for it. They apparently performed things that are not covered by my insurance. No matter how much you insist, hospitals won't tell you how much things would cost or if something is covered or not. I try to be proactive about my health but surprise bills sometimes scare me out of visiting hospitals/doctors for checkups. Or even if I go, I'm always worried about getting surprise bills weeks later.

findyoucef 7y ago
The same thing just happened to me. I scheduled a physical which is considered preventative which means it's free and covers things like the general blood panels..I go in, they order a blood test and a couple weeks later I got a bill for $800. I called the insurance and they said the doctor billed me as a "visit" and not a physical and I would have to call the doctor to have them change the billing code. So I did that but they wouldn't change, they said that because it was my first time at this office that they have a policy that all first appointments are billed as visits. keep in mind that this was stated no where and this was the first I was hearing about it. Anyway they refused to change the billing code and I'm stuck with $800 bill.
- Retric 7y ago
  Make it clear you are not going to pay and will dispute anything that shows up on your credit report. It’s obvious you’re never going back to them at this point so burning bridges is perfectly ok. Remember, medical bills don’t mean anything on their own and doctors want to get paid.
- cyril_figgis 7y ago
  Here's the dirty little secret: in the kafkaesque industry that is 21st century medicine, a bill is like an offer to pay. "$800 is what we think you owe us," isn't even quite the right explanation. It's more like, "we think you're an $800 sucker who will cough up that number because it appears on this official-looking piece of paper." And if you call one of them up (any of them: doctor, insurance, hospital, whatever) they're going to either: a) tell you to talk to one of the other two, or b) exactly what they think you need to hear so that they maximize their conversion rate, i.e. so that you send in your real money for their fake bill. Did you put down your signature on a piece of paper stating to the effect that you owed them $800? Do they have in writing your acknowledgement that you supposedly owe them $800? No? Then why are you acting like it? Collection is their problem, and right now they're playing a psychological trick on you because on works on people like you. patio11 has some good comments on collections. I'm not going to dredge them up but anyone sufficiently interested can do so.

yardie 7y ago

1:25 emergency room visits results in medical bankruptcy. That doesn’t sound anecdotal to me.

coldtea 7y ago

Anecdotal can mean both "rare stuff that happened to some extreme outlier" and "personal experience of millions of people which don't have stats available, or official statistics push under the carpet in different creative ways".