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Total Cost of Her Covid-19 Treatment: $34,927.43
- Userno1122 7y agoPure madness. How are you supposed to pay that?
- sumofi 7y agoNot having health insurance is not an excuse. In Germany you are required by law to have it.
- tetromino_ 7y agoIn Germany, does your health insurance cost >$600 per month for 1 person if your employer or government doesn't subsidize it (for example, if you are self-employed and earning more than minimum wage from it)? Because that's the case in the US.
- NicoJuicy 7y ago7,4 € per month for everyone ( Belgium) https://www.cm.be/lid-worden/cm-bijdrage https://www.cm.be/lid-worden/cm-bijdrage Eg. Going to a doctor for a blood check costs 1€, 14€ is paid by the insurer
- t0mas88 7y agoSimilar to Germany here: Insurance costs around € 100 per month per adult, kids under 18 are free. If you have a low income (below roughly 40k per year) you effectively pay less all the way down to zero (if your income is below about 14k per year), because the government pays part of your premium for you.
- Faark 7y ago> 100€/month/adult God I wish, it's about double that [0]: 162€ (health insurance) + 32€ (statutory nursing care insurance) for those making ~1k€/month or less. Not counting any gov support. Btw ~870€ seems to be the max, if you earn ~4700€/month or more. And from what I remember there is a way to opt out of the public system and switch to private insurance, but this is kind of discouraged by being hard to switch back and requiring significant income in the first place. > (german) https://www.tk.de/techniker/leistungen-und-mitgliedschaft/informationen-versicherte/veraenderung-berufliche-situation/freiwillige-krankenversicherung-tk/haeufige-fragen-zu-beitraegen-fuer-freiwillig-versicherte/beitragshoehe-freiwillig-versichert-nicht-erwerbstaetig-2006970 https://www.tk.de/techniker/leistungen-und-mitgliedschaft/in...
- sumofi 7y agoMine costs around 700. But that's based on my salary. I hit the upper limit. It is always reasonable and affordable.
- bcrosby95 7y agoYeah, I have 3 kids, and my employer pays $3k/month for our health insurance.
- martin_a 7y agoIn Germany? I doubt it.
- martin_a 7y agoNah, it doesn't. There are upper limits for the national health insurance which is based on a fixed percentage of your monthly income. I've passed that border this year (earning around 66 k€/year) and from now on, I will not have to pay more, so my procentual share actually goes down from now on. If I'd marry now, my wife and any children would also be covered by my percentage, it's called "family insurance". Pretty fair after all. (Some limitations apply, but if my wife would stop working, she would be covered through my insurance.)
- redis_mlc 7y agoIn the USA, acne and pregnancy are often disqualifying conditions. Services are often "out-of-network." So it doesn't matter if you pay the pemiums or not - you get massive surprise bills.
- dangus 7y agoI agree that the US health system is beyond fucked up, but the statements in this comment are dramatization and not accurate on their own without a ton of qualifiers and clarifying statements. “Out of network” doesn’t mean your health insurance plan doesn’t pay for anything. It usually just changes coinsurance rate. Anyone who has a major expensive hospital event while insured will just hit their maximum annual out of pocket amount and that coinsurance rate won’t matter. That’s not a good thing but it also means that this comment is misleading, implying that being out of network means that the insured person just has to foot the bill and that their insurance company dips out. The whole point of the insurance network is that your health insurance company is encouraging you to take your routine doctor’s visits and scheduled non-emergency procedures to a place where they negotiate. And acne and pregnancy aren’t disqualifying. What are you even saying they’re disqualified for? That’s a vast exaggeration.
- yread 7y agoIt seems maximum "maximum out of pocket" is 8200$ [0] I find it strange that it's not tied to salary. For people earning 30k/year 8200 per year is a lot. https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-limit/ https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-li...
- rmrm 7y agoFew things you might not be aware of: 1. Even in the event of Emergency visits to in network hospitals, one is often charged out of network fees if one of the doctors present is out of network. Which one is not notified of and has no say over, regardless. So going to an in nerwork hospital (which is the best one can do to align to their plan) means nothing. 2. When charged out of network, it most certainly does not mean only the coinsurance rate changes, you are also charged 10 to 50× more. So you are charged say 40% of $5000 rather than 20% of $300. Again, at an in network hospital. 3. Out of pocket max differs dramatically in network to out of network, in some plans going away completely in out of network scenario. What you are saying above is not just a minimization its completely misleading and wrong.
- morelisp 7y agoIn Germany insurers are required by law to provide a minimum standard of coverage comparable to some of the best employer-provided healthcare in the US, insurance costs are heavily regulated and progressive, all employers are required to cover part of the cost, treatment price is heavily regulated, and no one can be rejected. Absolutely none of this is true in the US.
- dangus 7y agoThis person is actually going to pay less than many people who are insured precisely because they’re uninsured. Someone who is insured in the US is not allowed to negotiate. This person can call the billing department and say “I can’t pay” and watch that bill plummet. The 50% or so of Americans who get their healthcare from solid employers will exhaust their deductible but otherwise be generally fine. Then there’s another chunk of people on Medicaid and Medicare (government healthcare for elderly or poor) who would be fine in this situation. The group of people in the United States who are screwed fall into a few categories: hourly workers who aren’t offered insurance or who are offered bad insurance from their employers, or business owners that have to self insure. The ACA (Obamacare) attempted to help this situation by making health insurance mandatory and essentially going the route of Germany, but the mandate has been handicapped by numerous compromises in the bill itself, court rulings, and political turmoil. Also the high unregulated cost of drugs doesn’t help. It was not able to defeat the for-profit health insurance industry. It’s wild to me that these political parties that claim to be pro-business don’t support separating healthcare coverage from employment. This is probably because of status-quo lobbying and a desire to keep people wage enslaved until retirement age.
- vsareto 7y ago>This person can call the billing department and say “I can’t pay” and watch that bill plummet. I don't think it works this way that often. It might just get sent to a debt collector. They might give you a lower fee, but it won't be by that much.
- dangus 7y agoI think it works that way, you think it doesn’t work that way. So in that sense there’s no way to know based on “trusting random commenters.” But I can tell you this: there aren’t a lot of ways in which that debt collector can collect. They can’t take your home, they can’t take your car (as if the uninsured person even owns their car outright), and I don’t even think they can garnish wages. The statue of limitations on debt is as short as 3 years in some states, and it won’t even affect your credit score beyond 7 years. If that person never answers the phone and never admits to the debt, it basically just goes away on its own from my understanding. Even if they decide to settle, that debt collector purchased the debt for pennies on the dollar. That person settling is not paying anything close to the full cost. The hospitals know that a bill going to collections is already a lost cause, and is basically written off as charity care.
- umvi 7y ago> In Germany you are required by law to have it. Obama basically made this happen, but the net result was that all of healthy young adults (the kind that least needed insurance) were forced to start paying for insurance to subsidize the unhealthy older adults (or pay a penalty). So basically it was just a disguised tax targeting the young and healthy.
- morelisp 7y ago> the net result was that all of [low risk group] were forced to start paying for insurance to subsidize the [high risk group] This is literally insurance. Obama's plan failed because the public option was removed, employers and states refused to play along, and the Supreme Court undermined even the part you're complaining about. It was also not a great plan begin with, compared to European programs.
- leetcrew 7y agonot really. most forms of insurance are not mandated by law and try to charge people something like the expected value of their claims over a certain period plus a profit margin. if health insurance were allowed to operate more like other kinds of insurance, healthy young people would pay a couple hundred bucks a year and old people would pay tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. an eighty year old buying health insurance is the equivalent of someone with five DUIs, multiple at-fault accidents, and a ferrari trying to purchase car insurance.
- alkonaut 7y agoThat’s like saying home insurance is a tax on people whose homes don’t burn down. Isn’t the whole point of insurance to have everyone (sick and healthy) pay for the few?
- umvi 7y agoInsurance implies you have a choice in the matter (i.e. it is optional), but in this case (Obama-era health insurance) it wasn't optional. So why not just call it a tax, which is what it really was? To me it sounds very similar to social security tax - the young being forced to pay to subsidize the old.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- verylittlemeat 7y agoThey tried that in the US with Obama's mandate. You had a choice of getting of getting health insurance or paying a penalty roughly the same cost as getting the insurance. Trump getting rid of that mandate is one of the few things I'm grateful for in his presidency. No longer am I forced to pay for terrible insurance that had high copays and ridiculous deductibles. I'm a low income worker and in exchange for almost 7% of my income I get 1 free doctor checkup a year and catastrophic coverage. Sorry but $2000 cash is worth a lot more to me than an imaginary $100,000 hospital bill. Anything less than $2000 I spend on my health in a year is cash money in my pocket. Being "rational" about insurance is a luxury for wealthy. I would rather dispute the cost with my hospital and let the debt go to collections where I can reduce it even further.
- what-the-grump 7y ago2.5 percent of your yearly household income or $695 per person ($347.50 per child under 18), whichever is greater. Not sure how you get 2k?
- surewhynat 7y agoWho in this entire thread is saying anything about Obamacare? Look at what other countries are doing, do you hear them having "obamacare?" Stop comparing your current medical system to worse systems. Start comparing it to other, better systems. Look at Canada and the UK. You would pay EVEN LESS than you do now.
- dangus 7y agoThe bill is crazy, but this person won’t have to pay a 10th if it if they call the billing department. Being uninsured is actually something of a blessing in the United States in this situation. If you have health insurance (often with bad coverage and high deductibles), you’ve agreed to waive your ability to negotiate and to pay whatever bill they’ve sent you. Not so for the uninsured. The whole billing system in the United States is beyond fucked up.
- xiphias2 7y agoTo me this sounds like buying fake watches on the street in Thailand. We both know that the price is to be negotiated, it's just a joke price. But healthcare is not a joke even there.
- Krokku 7y agoI dont get it. What is the price then? It depends on my negotiating skills and how many friends in high places i have?
- Krokku 7y agoYou could buy 0.018 Tomahawk missiles for that or treat 54 people for every Tomahawk missile fired. All of the Tomahawk missiles fired since 2001 would have provided 119.000 people with free Corona treatment. I am thinking that countries with free healthcare care more about keeping their own people healthy than dropping missiles and misery on other countries people.
- CPLX 7y agoThat math only makes sense if you take the medical industry’s insane pricing model as gospel. If you had a straightforward nationally run healthcare system the math would be way more favorable still.
- lidHanteyk 7y agoWe know that a good rule of thumb in the USA is that health care costs are roughly twice what they ought to be. So just multiply by two: We could have treated around 238k people.
- pwdisswordfish2 7y agoWhat’s the rule of thumb on the pricing of military equipment?
- vidarh 7y agoMuch more than twice. The per capita cost (across all Americans, not just those eligible) for Medicare and Medicaid is higher than the healthcare costs of most other developed countries before you even factor in private insurance.
- surewhynat 7y agoOther countries have price caps on their procedures. This makes sense to make the price for a procedure the same across hospitals. It's the same work. Marketing and Sales people should not be involved in the pricing structure of healing a broken leg.
- 7y ago
- moosey 7y agoAfter this is over, the saddest possible outcome is if America returns to the same systems, having learned nothing. I don't expect it at all, but I've been more surprised in the past.
- krapp 7y agoUnless there are millions of deaths in the US from this, a return to the status quo seems like the most likely scenario, as people will assume the scope and danger of the pandemic was overblown by the media all along.
- zamalek 7y agoThings would stay the same even with millions of deaths. "Socialism is nothing more than communism" and "communism is evil" are two concepts that are deeply embedded here.
- krapp 7y agoI don't know... once you can measure the scale of an event in Holocausts, all bets might be off the table.
- beamatronic 7y agoEmbedded in certain geographic and demographic sectors. Always remember the Republicans have a demographic problem that cannot be overcome long term.
- twomoretime 7y agoOn the other hand, this is sort of a once in a lifetime (possibly once in an era) event and the reforms that would have made this easier to deal with aren't necessarily good for "regular" conditions... Much like people's sudden views on UBI, especially those claiming that the upcoming stimulus is somehow proof that we need UBI or that it works - we're in a national emergency where hundreds of millions of livelihoods are threatened, any experiment we do now won't necessarily translate back to peacetime life.
- alexhutcheson 7y agoThe face values on medical bills in the US are like a bizarre joke - to a first approximation, no one ever pays them. Everyone with insurance gets insurer-negotiated "discounts" to around ~10% of the listed cost. It's tougher for people without insurance - my understanding is that you can negotiate with the entity that sent you the bill to get significant reductions, but I don't have first-hand experience doing this. Even so, it sounds exhausting, since a single doctors visit will often result in bills from 2-3 separate entities (doctor, lab, radiologist, etc.), so you'd have to negotiate with each of them individually.
- Havoc 7y ago>Everyone with insurance gets insurer-negotiated "discounts" to around ~10% of the listed cost. That whole setup is downright cruel & evil. Pretty much guarantees the most vulnerable get fk'd.
- t0mas88 7y agoWelcome to America, where the dream is that everyone can make it but reality is that large groups of people really can't.
- afterburner 7y agoBut won't you be so proud when you sign up for a health plan! You can exclaim to everyone "well I did my due diligence and I signed up for a great plan! why didn't you??" Meanwhile people in non-US countries are thinking "I don't have to think about any of this shit, at all."
- mgkimsal 7y agoYou'll 'sign up' for the only one your employer offers, because so few people ever consider getting direct coverage, partially because... if you have an employer that offers insurance, you can't effectively buy direct (you can't deduct the expense if you're 'eligible' via an employer, whether you take it or not). insane...
- 7y ago
- timavr 7y agoCapitalism got COVID-19 and knocking on socialism’s door pretty hard to get life saving treatment.
- habanany 7y agoTesla cars are way more expensive and non essential
- xyst 7y agoIt’s a shame that the only candidate that wants to tear down this ridiculous health system is getting the boot by the party he is aligned with. The health system in the US is only accessible to those with money. It doesn’t have to be this way. I am not saying socialized healthcare will cure all ailments, but it would definitely be better than the current privatized system.
- adrr 7y agoMedicare for all doesn't give people a choice between private insurance or government insurance. It's a non-starter, i am happy with my insurance like tens of millions of people in the US. Government option gives us a choice proposed by the front runner. Everyone wants to compare us to Canada. Canada gives you a choice and 25% have private insurance. Edit: going to vote me down for just listing facts.
- m_ke 7y agoMillions of people are about to lose their "chosen" insurance when they get fired from their jobs.
- erentz 7y agoYou’re wrong. In Canada and most countries with government single payer insurance you can buy private supplemental insurance that covers more elective or less necessary things the single payer doesn’t. I haven’t seen a Medicare for All proposal that bans that.
- adrr 7y ago"About 27.6% of Canadians' healthcare is paid for through the private sector. This mostly goes towards services not covered or partially covered by Medicare, such as prescription drugs, dentistry and optometry. Some 75% of Canadians have some form of supplementary private health insurance; many of them receive it through their employers.[63]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Canada If a quarter of spending is paid by private, it isn't single payer.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- MaupitiBlue 7y agoSend the bill to China.
- onetimemanytime 7y ago"Treatment" I guess but if she was hooked to ICU machines it could have reached $1 million in no time.
- stevespang 7y agoHospitals and Emergency rooms are "licking their Chops" and sharpening their teeth $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ at the massive wave of sick people expected . . . The uninsured are screwed . . . which coincidentally are all those millions standing in unemployment lines right now . . . Hospital bills are the #1 cause of bankruptcy filing these days . . . go figure. About 10 years ago I went to hospital emerg. room for shot of antibiotic in my butt, got bill for $2,000. Went and complained and wimpered and they sent me to office way in back of hospital with beastly lady with reputation, known as "the grinder". Took like 12 visits and calls, had to show my IRS tax filing showing I was not making any money, they finally reduced bill to $200. Interesting that most States Attorney Generals actively arrest contractors and common folk for allegedly "price gouging" during any crisis, but our upstanding "pillars of the community" doctors and lawyers NEVER get visited or arrested for shaking people down everyday.
- lawn 7y agoThe amazing thing to me is she didn't get any advanced treatment. She didn't even had to spend the night there.
- BooneJS 7y agoIMO, this current crisis exposes a very strange dichotomy: government is essentially shutting down parts of the economy over shelter-in-place orders, but when people lose their jobs and (for some) employer health care, the government doesn’t deal with the repercussions. Look, I think shelter in place is a great idea for humans. But this is a case of doing the right thing for the masses hurts the individual. Sad times.
- JohnTHaller 7y agoI can't wait until my $5,000 a year insurance with a $7,000 deductible here in the US comes up with a reason why it shouldn't be covered. Fun Related Fact: I donated a kidney to my Dad in 2000. The Affordable Care Act is what finally made it so it was no longer a "pre-existing condition" that insurance companies could use to deny me coverage for anything semi-related to kidneys.