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Just don’t pay it. I wish I had been told this instead of flushing thousands upon thousands down the toilet in a futile attempt to keep the balance at $0. The s
by atdrummond 3y ago
Just don’t pay it. I wish I had been told this instead of flushing thousands upon thousands down the toilet in a futile attempt to keep the balance at $0. The system is designed to be adversarial and your best tactic as a patient is to delay, delay, delay and fight every single bill.
I have had seven operations for Crohns, a back surgery, and treatment for ongoing Leukaemia. I have lived in a half dozen different jurisdictions for health care and I’m only alive thanks to the excellence of the US medical system. Doesn’t make the financial side of it any less onerous, sadly.
- wskinner 3y agoWhat happens to the typical person’s healthcare costs when some people who consume extremely expensive treatments” just don’t pay”? What is the equilibrium here?
- flangola7 3y agoMost likely nothing, medical expenses are no where near at-cost like they should be. Even assuming that they go up, you can't expect anyone not to "consume" medical care. I'm not going to deny someone treatment because it might cost me a few more pennies or dollars, that would be comically villainous. The equilibrium would be treating medical care as a public good just like highways or firefighting, but insurance companies and hospital-owning equity firms actively expend resources to prevent that.
- qgin 3y agoThe economics of the system are so convoluted I'm not sure if anyone can answer. There is no equilibrium. But maybe finding the breaking point would push us to untangle the perverse economics of our current system and do what every other developed country in the world does (and spends less money doing, all total)
- atdrummond 3y agoNot sure but none of the medical care I’ve received should actually be expensive. Every medicine I’ve ever been prescribed is generic, every emergency procedure would have been covered by state funds had I not paid. The fact that very few institutions pursue me at all for these supposedly owed funds tells me none of them are close to teetering on the brink of insolvency. As someone who as also had healthcare in single payer (the NHS) and presently pays both the government (Estonia) and private insurance (Estonia and US), I have zero problem paying for the general upkeep of the country’s medical system. I simply refuse to believe that because some life saving care was “out of network” the cost to treat me actually ballooned from thousands to millions. It’s an artifact of a system that’s not designed for uninsured/underinsured participants.
- WeylandYutani 3y agoThe idea in socialised medicine is that we all share the burden- each to their own ability. Like any other income based tax.
- Madmallard 3y agoI imagine at some point UCLA or Cedar Sinai will just stop offering me services? I need to see nutrition but it isn’t covered by medicare so it is $600 for an appointment but it is integral to my actual condition so it seems like I am being screwed over. I cannot pay that and also eat, which sorta defeats the purpose of staying alive. I cannot do food banks because I have a mast cell disorder and what I can actually safely eat is complicated. I don’t have a clue how to navigate this.
- atdrummond 3y agoI have an ER bill of $100k+ owed to Stanford for the better part of a decade (amongst an huge number of other more recent bills) and they still see me for regular booked appointments and ERs. It works less well for specialist offices owned by doctors themselves but I’ve found the large hospitals are disinclined to outright deny service, for a multitude of reasons. Re: nutrition, is there a clinic outside your normal network that might offer that? You may have to wait longer but I’ve been able to see no-cost specialists in St Louis, Chicago and the Bay Area through various neighborhood clinics. I’m always happy to help too - feel free to drop me an email and I can connect you to some resources in your area. Most importantly, best of luck with all of this.
- Madmallard 3y agoI appreciate that. The nutritionist I saw is highly recommended because she has dealt with patients like me before. Is there some kind of bill deferring thing I could do in this situation?
- atdrummond 3y agoHave you talked to her finance team? Is she part of the major hospital networks you already visit? If that $600 isn’t your copay but instead the whole cost out-of-network, there is almost certainly a way to get that put on a 12 month payment plan or something similar.