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Wow I'm sorry that happened to you. Truly. Yes I am paid for the work I do, but I wouldn't expect to be paid for the work I am supposed to but dont do. warnin

Wow I'm sorry that happened to you. Truly. Yes I am paid for the work I do, but I wouldn't expect to be paid for the work I am supposed to but dont do. warning this will be a bit graphic/gross A bit more context on my event: I had an abscess on the upper part of my jaw that had my entire face swollen and a fever of 102+ when I went in. I was shaking all over with chills and sweating like I was in a sauna. They let me sit there in agony and never checked my vitals. Not my temperature, not my blood pressure- nothing. I begged them to lance it, anything. Ice for the swelling, even. Nothing. It was so bad after being in the hospital 4+ hours I went home and the abscess grew so bad it drained out the bottom of my tooth root. I could very well have died. And they used a fucking tongue depressor and handed me a 200mg ibuprofen. That was why I was so upset with the bill. I get it there's doctors and infra to pay for, but not for doing nothing, especially when we had free clinics in that city that could have helped me had it been normal business hours. I've paid thousands for stiches and complained, but at least I got the stiches, so I shut up and paid. I had slag get in my eye that had to be dug out with a needle. My eye was numbed, they removed the shards (the slag cooled when it hit my tears and shards were embedded in my eye). That cost me a grand total of 750. The penicillin eye drops they prescribed? 500 before I think it was goodrx where they have deals on scripts and I think I got them for 50. Point being they make this up as they go and there's zero reason for it to ever change. Edit for more color- the abscesses event was at an ER in a hospital that most definitely had the capability to at least get me to an actual doctor in the hospital side rather than keep me in ER. And this was before the prevalence of these new Emergency centers as I'd have gladly gone to one of those instead.

nobody9999 3y ago
Wow. That's horrific. I'm sorry you had to go through that as well. That's awful care. I had a similar situation (not in my mouth, but on the nape of my neck. A sebaceous cyst that was infected and swollen. This was only a couple years ago and I actually went to one of those "urgent care" centers. They took one look and said "nothing we can do, you should go to the emergency room." For which they charged my insurance company $1800 (of which I was billed ~$200 -- money those assholes will never get, I might add). So those folks aren't necessarily the best choice either. So I did go to the emergency room and was ushered into an exam room within an hour. They did examine it and me and actually got the on-call resident from the surgery department to open it up and drain it. It helped a lot, but they did a half-assed job and I had to go back for more cutting/draining. Even now, the sac that the sebaceous cyst grew from was not removed (GRRR!) and I will (probably this year) have it removed and the site closed up properly. That's much better than your experience, but still not that good. It was still a few thousand dollars, although my insurance paid most of it. But whatever hospital you went to should be named and shamed, because they didn't do (provide adequate care) what they were supposed to (and billed for) do. That was awful and you have every right to be angry -- but it's almost certainly not worth legal action -- and more's the pity. The bigger issue (IMHO) is less about quality of care (although as we've both experienced, that can be quite variable -- and that's certainly an issue) is the business model around health care in the US. Which makes accessing health care and understanding the costs much more difficult than it should be. I'm all for a single-payer system or, as they have in Germany (at least IIUC), private insurers that are non-profit by law. Unfortunately, that's unlikely to happen here -- as the insurance (and healthcare) lobby will push hard to maintain their profits -- sucking resources from the system that could instead be used to provide better care. And the current model also encourages consolidation, which harms small communities the most (see this joke[0] for context), since there isn't a whole lot of profit to be made, and hospitals have expensive infrastructure requirements. [0] source: https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/freebsd_fortunes/toc_id/1-0-2/s/75 https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/freebsd_fortunes/to... On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than $283 on the desk before the cashier. "Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That route never brought in money like this! What happened?" "Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!" Edit: Fixed formatting. Removed extraneous text.

nobody9999 3y ago

Wow. That's horrific. I'm sorry you had to go through that as well. That's awful care. I had a similar situation (not in my mouth, but on the nape of my neck. A sebaceous cyst that was infected and swollen. This was only a couple years ago and I actually went to one of those "urgent care" centers. They took one look and said "nothing we can do, you should go to the emergency room." For which they charged my insurance company $1800 (of which I was billed ~$200 -- money those assholes will never get, I might add). So those folks aren't necessarily the best choice either. So I did go to the emergency room and was ushered into an exam room within an hour. They did examine it and me and actually got the on-call resident from the surgery department to open it up and drain it. It helped a lot, but they did a half-assed job and I had to go back for more cutting/draining. Even now, the sac that the sebaceous cyst grew from was not removed (GRRR!) and I will (probably this year) have it removed and the site closed up properly. That's much better than your experience, but still not that good. It was still a few thousand dollars, although my insurance paid most of it. But whatever hospital you went to should be named and shamed, because they didn't do (provide adequate care) what they were supposed to (and billed for) do. That was awful and you have every right to be angry -- but it's almost certainly not worth legal action -- and more's the pity. The bigger issue (IMHO) is less about quality of care (although as we've both experienced, that can be quite variable -- and that's certainly an issue) is the business model around health care in the US. Which makes accessing health care and understanding the costs much more difficult than it should be. I'm all for a single-payer system or, as they have in Germany (at least IIUC), private insurers that are non-profit by law. Unfortunately, that's unlikely to happen here -- as the insurance (and healthcare) lobby will push hard to maintain their profits -- sucking resources from the system that could instead be used to provide better care. And the current model also encourages consolidation, which harms small communities the most (see this joke[0] for context), since there isn't a whole lot of profit to be made, and hospitals have expensive infrastructure requirements. [0] source: https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/freebsd_fortunes/toc_id/1-0-2/s/75 https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/freebsd_fortunes/to... On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than $283 on the desk before the cashier. "Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That route never brought in money like this! What happened?" "Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!" Edit: Fixed formatting. Removed extraneous text.