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I've never understood the meaning of the "retail" rates. How many people are there who can afford to pay these rates and also don't have health insurance?

pessimizer 16y ago
I had a bad asthma attack while uninsured and got hit with a bill that took me 7 years to pay off.
- mikebike 16y ago
  Yipe! Were you able to negotiate the bill down at all when working out a payment plan, or did the hospital end up charging you the full amount?
  - pessimizer 16y ago
    Didn't negotiate a thing. I was pretty naive about that sort of thing at the time (really was still until the last few years, and I'm 35 now) and didn't know that bargaining was an option. I was just unemployed, broke and 22 and had a giant bill that I didn't know what to do with. I thought a bill was a bill and a debt was a debt, and had never even had a credit card in my life. Soon after that, I got a $9 an hour job at a factory and started making payments...
- wmeredith 16y ago
  7 years and a bankruptcy drops off your credit rating...
cookiecaper 16y ago
Zero, obviously. People either let them lapse where possible, declare bankruptcy to get Constables off their backs, or spend years paying $50-$100/mo. Things like this happen even to insured people. Due to a communications snafu between the doctor and the insurance company, my mom, who has "good" insurance from BigCo, is paying for her annual mammogram $50/mo now, and will be doing this for the better part of two years. My parents paid on an ER visit I made in my late teens until I was 21 or 22 because of another such insurance oversight. These happen all the time because that's how insurers make money. The insurance model is based explicitly on not paying out. For something that's universally utilized like health insurance, that generally means you have to deny a lot of claims to keep acceptable margins. Homeowner's insurance works fine because most people aren't burglarized often and most peoples' homes don't burn down, so people make modest monthly payments and one claim in a lifetime more than pays for itself. Likewise, car insurance is not used too often by its patrons. Health insurance, however, is used (at least) several times a year by almost every individual. As such, insurance is a terrible model for health care, since the entire concept behind insurance is that more people are paying for the coverage than are using it. The continued feasibility of medical insurance depends on people not getting medicine.

pessimizer 16y ago

I had a bad asthma attack while uninsured and got hit with a bill that took me 7 years to pay off.

mikebike 16y ago
Yipe! Were you able to negotiate the bill down at all when working out a payment plan, or did the hospital end up charging you the full amount?
- pessimizer 16y ago
  Didn't negotiate a thing. I was pretty naive about that sort of thing at the time (really was still until the last few years, and I'm 35 now) and didn't know that bargaining was an option. I was just unemployed, broke and 22 and had a giant bill that I didn't know what to do with. I thought a bill was a bill and a debt was a debt, and had never even had a credit card in my life. Soon after that, I got a $9 an hour job at a factory and started making payments...
wmeredith 16y ago
7 years and a bankruptcy drops off your credit rating...

cookiecaper 16y ago

Zero, obviously. People either let them lapse where possible, declare bankruptcy to get Constables off their backs, or spend years paying $50-$100/mo. Things like this happen even to insured people. Due to a communications snafu between the doctor and the insurance company, my mom, who has "good" insurance from BigCo, is paying for her annual mammogram $50/mo now, and will be doing this for the better part of two years. My parents paid on an ER visit I made in my late teens until I was 21 or 22 because of another such insurance oversight. These happen all the time because that's how insurers make money. The insurance model is based explicitly on not paying out. For something that's universally utilized like health insurance, that generally means you have to deny a lot of claims to keep acceptable margins. Homeowner's insurance works fine because most people aren't burglarized often and most peoples' homes don't burn down, so people make modest monthly payments and one claim in a lifetime more than pays for itself. Likewise, car insurance is not used too often by its patrons. Health insurance, however, is used (at least) several times a year by almost every individual. As such, insurance is a terrible model for health care, since the entire concept behind insurance is that more people are paying for the coverage than are using it. The continued feasibility of medical insurance depends on people not getting medicine.