3 ms·
$153,161.25 for a Snake Bite
- ryguytilidie 11y agoThis is the biggest problem I have with Obamacare. Getting everyone insurance isn't that impressive if the insured still have bills like this. Why not cut out the middleman, reduce the waste of giving insurance companies tons of money, and just make healthcare free?
- fleitz 11y agoIt's not a middle man, it's that insurance companies only cover so many things, so they bill everything and collect what the insurance company covers. To keep up the charade uninsured get bills like this, which they then take to some hospital board to get reduced to something 2-3X what an insurance company would pay.
- andrewpi 11y agoThis isn't the bill that an insured would get though. I believe the maximum deductible under Obamacare is ~$6000.
- pkaye 11y agoIf you look at the top of the bill, it seems like this person didn't ever get health insurance and the last minute applied for medicare in the hopes of getting covered. They probably are low enough income to get covered under Obamacare but probably thought they we never get sick.
- vtsrh 11y agoI got the impression that the person wasn't insured. Having glanced over some of the ( 14000+ ) comments, I haven't found any that would suggest otherwise. I really wish someone would clarify this.
- notjimhalpert 11y agoIn other nations, universal health care is actually cheaper for the state per capita than our system in the US. Source: http://www-tc.pbs.org/prod-media/newshour/photos/2012/10/02/US_spends_much_more_on_health_than_what_might_be_expected_1_slideshow.jpg http://www-tc.pbs.org/prod-media/newshour/photos/2012/10/02/...
- Veratyr 11y agoThe US actually has higher per capita spending on healthcare and pharmaceuticals than any other OECD nation and public expenditure is only higher in the Netherlands and Norway. Source: http://www.compareyourcountry.org/health?cr=oecd&cr1=oecd&lg=en&page=2 http://www.compareyourcountry.org/health?cr=oecd&cr1=oecd&lg...
- naner 11y agoThis same topic has 14k comments on reddit. Here is one of the attempts at explanation by a physician: https://np.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3dngld/this_is_the_cost_of_a_rattlesnake_bite_in_america/ct71jme https://np.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3dngld/this_is_the_cos...
- antonius 11y agoThe possibility of becoming poor and/or bankrupt as a result of an injury is the scariest part of being part of the American society. Hope this changes one day.
- slickwilli 11y agoSeems better than dying :/
- jschwartzi 11y agoGiven what a bankruptcy can do to your credit and job prospects, I might seriously consider dying instead.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- slickwilli 11y agoBecause he was going to die (more than likely) without intervention?
- leighmcculloch 11y agoUS health bills seem extraordinarily high, maybe 5x in comparison to other first world countries. Why is this?
- fleitz 11y agoBecause in other countries you pay these costs over time in taxes, and/or insurance, also you often receive lower quality care. eg. In a province of 4.6 million there are 2 MRI machines, and its a 2 month waiting list because they don't even bother running them 24/7.
- slickwilli 11y agoIt's a big shell game, hospitals send big bills because they can't legally bill people differently and they know insurance companies are going to be paying pennies on the dollar for their procedures so naturally they crank it up so those pennies from insurance companies will cover their costs knowing they will never see anything close to what's on that bill.
- foolrush 11y agoUnfettered, for-profit medical system. In short, capitalism. The same toxic structure is at work in the US penal system.
- maxharris 11y agoUnfettered Are you for real? Nearly every aspect of medicine in America is regulated: from the number of people entering training to become new doctors, to whether a procedure will be reimbursed and at what rate, to what devices and drugs will be permitted for sale, to whether or not physicians are allowed to unionize, or discuss what their procedures cost (they are not in either case). Whatever your ideology is, it doesn't change the fact that the health care is one of the most heavily regulated industries in our economy.
- foolrush 11y agoUnfettered in the capitalist sense and over-arching system, not necessarily administration thereof. Also remember that it is precisely unfettered capitalism that leads to layers of said administration, seeking profit at every turn. Turning over a few rocks and we can quickly see that the cost of administration of medicine, including devices, pharmaceuticals, etc. is also wound up in this dance of maximal profit at all cost. This doesn't even begin to examine the cultural role capitalism has played in the legislation the enshrines the administrative layers to preserve profits for the corporate entities. The last concern under such a system is the person and their health, or the ethical-societal implications, because such a model provides no such metric.