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In the US, a 2 week stay in the hospital will cost you upwards of $50,000. Even if you have insurance, understand it will be a significant cost to you. If you’r

In the US, a 2 week stay in the hospital will cost you upwards of $50,000. Even if you have insurance, understand it will be a significant cost to you. If you’re uninsured like 20 million Americans or underinsured like 80 million, going to the hospital means automatic bankruptcy. Every day our broken healthcare system will force many people to choose between all their families assets and getting care. This should not be a consideration, but often is. If you are traveling to the US, please make sure you get as much travelers health insurance as possible.

jumbopapa 7y ago
It is my understand that it is highly unlikely an uninsured person would ever pay anything close to the billed "price." Same is true for insurance companies. Edit: Some are telling me this isn't true, but what does a hospital have to gain from someone filing bankruptcy? Why would they charge such high prices that no one can afford? I would think that some money is better than no money.
- taurath 7y ago
  Unfortunately that isn’t much of a factor in reality, and I have the receipts in my filing cabinet to prove it. Insurance/“cash” can “negotiate” but at the end of the day the average hospital stay is near $4000/day.
  - MandieD 7y ago
    Good God. I had a small surgery in Germany about 10 years ago that is usually outpatient, but I passed out afterwards, so the doctor had me admitted for overnight observation. Total bill for surgery, lab and the stay in a room with another American lady who was on bedrest with triplets (!!!): 1400 EUR, which my American insurer paid with absolutely no arguments. This was the full retail, premium “private patient” rate - most Germans wouldn’t have even seen a bill that size. A friend in the US had the same procedure outpatient, and it was $6000, $1200 of which she was responsible for. On the upside, they gave her 30 Vicodin for the post-op pain and no follow-up about said opioids, where I only got a week's worth of Tramadol (much less potent) and a follow-up with my regular doc who wanted to know at what rate I was taking them. My friend was slightly tempted to sell her leftovers...
- Retric 7y ago
  Bankruptcy results in them getting as much money from you as possible as well as funds from the government. Further, as most hospitals are local monopolies they have little incentive to change. It’s a win win for them as long as they can receive significant amounts of money. Actual poor people are a slightly different story and often left alone fairly easily.
- gen220 7y ago
  There are many complicated reasons that a hospital would charge more than people can afford. One factor is that it looks better on their balance sheet to have uncompensated medical costs. This is exactly why insurance companies never pay the full price, and why nobody pays the difference. It’s accounting magic to make hospitals etc look like nonprofits and claim subsidies. That being said, there’s been a trend in the US recently, where hospitals have very aggressively gone after unpaid bills of the uninsured, because some administrators see it as money they’re leaving on the table. It’s more prevalent in rural areas, where there’s often only one hospital to go to, and consumers have no choice but to go to the hospital with a terrible reputation. In some cases, they’ve convinced the judicial system to garnish the uninsured person’s wages, to get “their money back”. IMO it’s clearly illegal and it won’t last much longer, but yeah the system is crazy. :/
turk73 7y ago
So what's your plan? Socialized medicine? I mean, it's working out so great for those Chinese folks, right? Making everyone else pay for you is no better of a solution, it's just shifting the costs around someplace else, which honestly is selfish of you to decide how I should deploy my ever-dwindling supply of cash reserves. I have two kids to put through college but Bernie and all his Democrat pals want to confiscate as much of my money as possible to pay for someone else's stuff, probably the 20 million illegals who showed up here unannounced, or maybe just swindle the money the way Democrats have done for DECADES. It's coming to the point where guys like me might as well take up arms against people like YOU and just put and end to it. Get my drift?
- bschwindHN 7y ago
  > confiscate as much of my money as possible to pay for someone else's stuff _You_ get healthcare as well. It's not just "someone else", it's you, your family, your friends, and everyone you care about. No one should go into a spiraling life of debt because they broke an arm or got sick at an inopportune time.
- leesec 7y ago
  Please remove this nonsense ^^
  - seneca 7y ago
    Just downvote comments you don't think add to the discussion. That's what the feature is for. It's not up to you to censor the comments section, and your comment is even less useful than the one you're replying to.
    - lp251 7y ago
      Threats of violence should have no place on this site.
      - ta999999171 7y ago
        Don't insulate yourself from the reality of other people's opinions, because for every one comment you see, you can be assured there are many others not writing it, or on this site. It's actually very informative, to me. Sorry you don't see it that way.
goatforce5 7y ago
Unrequested anecdata: my partner got a bad case of the flu (and epiglottis) a couple of years ago, and ended up spending 10 days in hospital - 7 in ICU, 3 on a normal ward. Total cost: $0. Thanks Canada! (Having said that, if you're visiting Canada you'll need to check your health coverage. Medical coverage is provided to Canadian residents, not just anyone who happens to be in Canada at the time.)
- jtbayly 7y ago
  She probably already had an epiglottis. At least I hope so.
  - goatforce5 7y ago
    Epiglottitis. Oops. And it's a he.
- Nuzzerino 7y ago
  Before implying that Canada has the final answer to health care, note the other side of the tradeoff from a recent report published Dec 2019: "Fraser Institute has—for over two decades—surveyed specialist physicians across 12 specialties and 10 provinces. This edition of Waiting Your Turn indicates that, overall, waiting times for medically necessary treatment have increased since last year. Specialist physicians surveyed report a median waiting time of 20.9 weeks between referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment—longer than the wait of 19.8 weeks reported in 2018." Source: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wait-times-for-health-care-in-canada-2019 https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wa...
  - pbourke 7y ago
    1. the Fraser institute is a right-wing think tank. They very much have an axe to grind here. 2. "medically necessary" does not tell you anything about the severity of illness or appropriateness of waiting. There are many medically necessary things for which it's okay to wait some time. In the Canadian system, things are dealt with at the level of urgency appropriate to the severity of the issue. Yes, it's not perfect, but it does result in generally better population-wide health outcomes in Canada than the US.
gentleman11 7y ago
If the healthcare industry could help cause coronavirus to spread in the USA, it would be worth billions. It would never happen, but the incentives happen to be very strange and I bet a movie could be made about a scenario like it

jumbopapa 7y ago

It is my understand that it is highly unlikely an uninsured person would ever pay anything close to the billed "price." Same is true for insurance companies. Edit: Some are telling me this isn't true, but what does a hospital have to gain from someone filing bankruptcy? Why would they charge such high prices that no one can afford? I would think that some money is better than no money.

taurath 7y ago
Unfortunately that isn’t much of a factor in reality, and I have the receipts in my filing cabinet to prove it. Insurance/“cash” can “negotiate” but at the end of the day the average hospital stay is near $4000/day.
- MandieD 7y ago
  Good God. I had a small surgery in Germany about 10 years ago that is usually outpatient, but I passed out afterwards, so the doctor had me admitted for overnight observation. Total bill for surgery, lab and the stay in a room with another American lady who was on bedrest with triplets (!!!): 1400 EUR, which my American insurer paid with absolutely no arguments. This was the full retail, premium “private patient” rate - most Germans wouldn’t have even seen a bill that size. A friend in the US had the same procedure outpatient, and it was $6000, $1200 of which she was responsible for. On the upside, they gave her 30 Vicodin for the post-op pain and no follow-up about said opioids, where I only got a week's worth of Tramadol (much less potent) and a follow-up with my regular doc who wanted to know at what rate I was taking them. My friend was slightly tempted to sell her leftovers...
Retric 7y ago
Bankruptcy results in them getting as much money from you as possible as well as funds from the government. Further, as most hospitals are local monopolies they have little incentive to change. It’s a win win for them as long as they can receive significant amounts of money. Actual poor people are a slightly different story and often left alone fairly easily.
gen220 7y ago
There are many complicated reasons that a hospital would charge more than people can afford. One factor is that it looks better on their balance sheet to have uncompensated medical costs. This is exactly why insurance companies never pay the full price, and why nobody pays the difference. It’s accounting magic to make hospitals etc look like nonprofits and claim subsidies. That being said, there’s been a trend in the US recently, where hospitals have very aggressively gone after unpaid bills of the uninsured, because some administrators see it as money they’re leaving on the table. It’s more prevalent in rural areas, where there’s often only one hospital to go to, and consumers have no choice but to go to the hospital with a terrible reputation. In some cases, they’ve convinced the judicial system to garnish the uninsured person’s wages, to get “their money back”. IMO it’s clearly illegal and it won’t last much longer, but yeah the system is crazy. :/

turk73 7y ago

So what's your plan? Socialized medicine? I mean, it's working out so great for those Chinese folks, right? Making everyone else pay for you is no better of a solution, it's just shifting the costs around someplace else, which honestly is selfish of you to decide how I should deploy my ever-dwindling supply of cash reserves. I have two kids to put through college but Bernie and all his Democrat pals want to confiscate as much of my money as possible to pay for someone else's stuff, probably the 20 million illegals who showed up here unannounced, or maybe just swindle the money the way Democrats have done for DECADES. It's coming to the point where guys like me might as well take up arms against people like YOU and just put and end to it. Get my drift?

bschwindHN 7y ago
> confiscate as much of my money as possible to pay for someone else's stuff _You_ get healthcare as well. It's not just "someone else", it's you, your family, your friends, and everyone you care about. No one should go into a spiraling life of debt because they broke an arm or got sick at an inopportune time.
leesec 7y ago
Please remove this nonsense ^^
- seneca 7y ago
  Just downvote comments you don't think add to the discussion. That's what the feature is for. It's not up to you to censor the comments section, and your comment is even less useful than the one you're replying to.
  - lp251 7y ago
    Threats of violence should have no place on this site.
    - ta999999171 7y ago
      Don't insulate yourself from the reality of other people's opinions, because for every one comment you see, you can be assured there are many others not writing it, or on this site. It's actually very informative, to me. Sorry you don't see it that way.

goatforce5 7y ago

Unrequested anecdata: my partner got a bad case of the flu (and epiglottis) a couple of years ago, and ended up spending 10 days in hospital - 7 in ICU, 3 on a normal ward. Total cost: $0. Thanks Canada! (Having said that, if you're visiting Canada you'll need to check your health coverage. Medical coverage is provided to Canadian residents, not just anyone who happens to be in Canada at the time.)

jtbayly 7y ago
She probably already had an epiglottis. At least I hope so.
- goatforce5 7y ago
  Epiglottitis. Oops. And it's a he.
Nuzzerino 7y ago
Before implying that Canada has the final answer to health care, note the other side of the tradeoff from a recent report published Dec 2019: "Fraser Institute has—for over two decades—surveyed specialist physicians across 12 specialties and 10 provinces. This edition of Waiting Your Turn indicates that, overall, waiting times for medically necessary treatment have increased since last year. Specialist physicians surveyed report a median waiting time of 20.9 weeks between referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment—longer than the wait of 19.8 weeks reported in 2018." Source: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wait-times-for-health-care-in-canada-2019 https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wa...
- pbourke 7y ago
  1. the Fraser institute is a right-wing think tank. They very much have an axe to grind here. 2. "medically necessary" does not tell you anything about the severity of illness or appropriateness of waiting. There are many medically necessary things for which it's okay to wait some time. In the Canadian system, things are dealt with at the level of urgency appropriate to the severity of the issue. Yes, it's not perfect, but it does result in generally better population-wide health outcomes in Canada than the US.

gentleman11 7y ago

If the healthcare industry could help cause coronavirus to spread in the USA, it would be worth billions. It would never happen, but the incentives happen to be very strange and I bet a movie could be made about a scenario like it