- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion@lemmy.ml
A couple were told they faced a $200,000 (£146,500) medical bill when their baby was born prematurely in the US, despite them having travel insurance which covered her pregnancy.
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If you paid protection money to another gangster but then they didn’t protect you what would likely happen?
Just out of interest: Would U.S.-Americans be allowed to found a non-profit health insurance organization?
Allowed to, sure. But it would quickly be crushed by the companies that have way more resources to draw on…
Yeah the better option is for a multi state compact for a public option. I know Washington has a bit of a public option. That said, you get no subsidies if your employer offers minimum contributions to the health insurance of their choosing.
Edit to finish the thought: we need universal single payer, but barring that we need public options and real choice, including choice over where to apply our employer’s contributions. It wouldn’t fix everything that universal single payer would, but it would enable you to have the freedom to not need to change doctors every time you get a new job.
Allowed? Technically yes, in the same way people are allowed to start local broadband co-ops or like grocery stores or whatever else.
The problem comes when you have to actually make people aware you exist and have a service or product for sale, and “compete” with the national/multi-national corporation who have infinitely more resources than you do.Just look at how Walmart and now Amazon have put just about every mom and pop shop out of business. They can move in, drop prices so low locally long enough to put you out of business because they have other areas locked down already and covering the losses. Then once they have the market locked up they can charge whatever they want because you have no other options.
Almost certainly there already exists a non-profit health insurance organization, they just don’t have the resources to advertise on all the major channels and across the interwebs like all the predatory ones do.
Travel insurance is a scam. I used to pay Allianz for cancellation insurance every trip but the one time I needed to claim it they denied it.
It’s not safe to travel to the US while pregnant or sick, they will take everything from you.
It’s not safe to travel to the US while pregnant or sick, they will take everything from you.
Until Trump they also claimed the baby as US citizen which is dangerous because they demand taxes from their citizens whereever they are on this world.
It’s just not safe to travel there ever
I’m certainly not going back until at least 2029. Let MAGA eat itself over the Epstein files and the next president reform the gun laws (as both sides are now talking about it) and then I’ll think about it.
🤦♂️
I love the 'Achually, you are supposed to beg the hospitals and rely on your insurance shady deals." Comments in this thread.
Just so we are clear, you know the US is the only country with running water that also charges it’s citizens to remain alive, right?
This is NOT normal. Not the amount, the situation.
Listen, I think we’re as barbaric about this as any reasonable person, but we really aren’t unique. Mexico, Egypt, and the Philippines aren’t doing so great, but they’re all modern nations with modern infrastructure in their urban areas. India has even worse health insurance than the US and while yes they’re still building out their plumbing systems, Mumbai and New Delhi are modern megapolises.
This is what’s so fucked up about being an American. Every time there’s a complaint about the system, some “good soul” comes out to explain how you avoid it.
Healthcare is expensive? Oh you have to negotiate with your doctors, your hospital, your insurance, and get it fixed.
Internet is too expensive? Oh you’re supposed to call them every few months to have them lower the prices by threatening to quit.
Oh, fast food is too expensive? Oh use the mobile app and take a picture of your butthole to get it back to normal!
Insurance company trying to evade one job it is supposed to do
You pay them to keep their lawyers on retainer
You get hired to help out a business in a emergency situation. You do nothing and get paid month after month. A couple years go by and finally the phone rings.
Hey man, we really need you right now! Come on in!
“Claim denied, I will see you in court.”
insurance
Some of them probably don’t even have the means to help, they just get lawyers to avoid accountability and write ridiculous terms for their policies, and in the EXTREME case they actually need to fix something they probably outsource it lol
“But what about helping our people Bob!?”
From what I’ve heard from Americans working in hospitals is that this bill is what the hospital writes but they only charge a small amount and declare the rest at their own insurance as a loss. So the couple would end up with a bill of a few hundred dollars, nothing more. This is common practice, is what those people told me. I don’t know if this is the case in every state though. But it sure is one weird fucked up system.
Insurance companies make deals with hospitals along the lines of “We’ll pay 1k for this procedure which should cost 300 bucks, or 40% of your standard rates, whichever is lower.” So the standard rate becomes $2500.
Then the insurance company will require a 40% “copay” based on the standard rates, and the patient ends up paying the $1000 and the insurance company doesn’t pay shit despite collecting hundreds a month in premiums.
If you tell them you don’t have insurance they’ll frequently discount the fee to the $300 it should cost.
And this is embraced because profit is capped to a percentage of payouts
Is that a legitimate business strategy?
I just send my customer a bill for a ridiculous amount, then my customer negotiates for something significantly less, and I can write off the difference?
There must be more to this. It’s too good to be true.
It is for the people who are getting paid, which is the insurance companies.
If it wasn’t, it wouldnt be the awful dystopian norm for the past 40 years here this stupid country.
I’ve also read stories from people who have negotiated how much of their bill they paid. Fucked up indeed.
Our first baby was born 5 weeks early and had to spend about 3 weeks in the NICU before we could take him home. Nothing major, just monitoring and a careful feeding regimen to make sure he would make it, as sensitive as they are when born that early.
My wife had to pay $30 for the 3 days she rented a bed in the maternity ward ($10/day). That was our total bill.
Second child we paid nothing.
Nothing negotiated, just how it works in my country. ✌️
And we have people in Canada that want to go to the American system.
Is made me realize there are a lot of people who will vote against their own interests as long as their neighbors can’t possibly get undue benefit.
Insane 😢
US health insurance pulled the same shitty tactic on me with my first born.
Both our kids were charged 6,000 to be born . . . Fun trick, where they charge the baby, since the mother has probably hit their out of pocket max, and that lets them jack it to the family max.
More Luigis please.
Can’t you declare bankruptcy for the kids then? Though that would probably fuck with the credit score? But I have no clue how that works.
I feel like you should be able to tell them to go fuck themselves, since children can’t sign contracts.
Oh, that’s the fun part of it - it’s your debt, but on the children’s insurance. They’re moving the care from one patient to another (to max out family out of pocket charges), but the parents are on the contract and can be sued.
After a nine month legal battle, Zurich has reversed its decision and told the BBC it was sorry for the stress caused.
Yeah, very sorry I’m sure. Oopsie, we accidentally fought a nine month legal battle to avoid paying out the exact thing the insurance is for
Arguing the care wasn’t covered because the baby wasn’t named in the insurance despite explicitly covering pregnancy-related care is ghoulish behavior. I can’t fathom how you can argue that seriously and not feel like a piece of shit.
“We’ve now strengthened and clarified our wording and guidance so other families travelling abroad at this stage of a pregnancy do not have to go through this experience.”
TLDR: the next couple is fucked
No, what this means is that they have increased premiums for anyone at 33 weeks of pregnancy and added something about premature births that will cost more if you’re traveling to America. Either that or put in specific language excluding coverage for premature births. Either way, insurance companies are a scam.
Like ‘hey, your baby is not covered, it’s 43 minutes under due’
Not trying to victim blame but do not go to America.
Also dont have kids
They’re Brits
I don’t see how the advice doesn’t apply. Do not go to U.S.A
Evwn Canadians should recons8der a US visit
Maybe your scummy government should’ve reconsidered their complicity with the US regime a long time ago.
Their virtue signalling because the big bully you were always friends with and help in their scumbaggery is now temporary bothering you.
hypocritesWhich government is my government? I don’t live in North America.
Ech, on re-read I see the problem … my apologies. I was typing too fast for my own good.
I meant that any Canadians considering a US visit shouldreconsider
It means Brits are the closest to the US with Canadians.
They love the banana republic.
Despite the temporary spat they will be back aiding them in their imperialist looting and mass murder
ah ok yeah I agree. Their elites seem to be quite “chummy” as brits would put it.
Ah yes, the United States – Don’t get sick or you will have to fight tooth and nail to get your insurance company to pay for necessary medical care. This is a story heard over and over again stateside. If the U.S. was truly the best place in the world to live, this would simply not happen. As a person who has worked in healthcare in the U.S. for over 15 years, I feel this in my bones. I am glad you could get legal help and have the right outcome based on what you paid for. I would love nothing more than to see everyone who comes to the U.S. receive medical care appropriately – Nobody asks to get sick :(
i’m glad the medical side tries to stay focused on patient care. i’ve a friend in Mexico where they check ability to pay before any treatment begins. she was bleeding out and they waited until after her card was verified before doing anything. lower costs, maybe. One thing that being married to an RN has taught me, the billing department sends insanely inflated bills which are step 1 in their insurance negotiation. I got a bill for over $600,000, I laughed while still in the hospital bed. bill got negotiated down to $150,000. Even if there is a ginormous bill, you can postpone threatened collections by sending them anything, like $10/month. it will reset their billing escalation cycle. debts more than 7 years old will get written off. if all else fails, bankruptcy isn’t all that bad. shuffle assets to trusted family. the amount of money they waste on greedy negotiations far eclipses any actual cost for treatment. don’t stress over the bills. stress kills. let some fat lawyer worry about not getting a new car this year.
I dunno - my ex burned all the skin off his hand once, the first question at the emergency room was “how are you paying?” and we waited there 5 hours before they saw him, during which time it got so much worse he ended up needing more treatment & therapy. No we didn’t have insurance or money back then. They eventually arranged temporary Medicaid for him as he couldn’t work with the hand so burned. Which left us without his income (I had just given birth too) so without much food.
Anyway - this was in the 1990s but I am absolutely sure we had to wait because we could not pay, even though it was an obvious emergency.
some are worse than others. I’ve noticed going to a prompt care is much faster than going to ‘emergency room’. depends a lot on location and how busy they are that day. i haven’t been seen w/o insurance since 70s when i broke my hand in a fight. doubt they ever got paid for that cast.
Not germane. Zurich Insurance Group is not a USian medical insurance company.
Just a stark reminder that all insurance, no matter where you get it from and what country it originates in, is 100% a scam.
That’s just blatantly false. I’m all for hating companies that gouge people to make money, but insurance isn’t inherently a scam. Insurance, when implemented properly, is paying a low regular premium to offset a risk you can’t afford should it hit. I’ve insured my house against burning down, because I can afford to pay a small amount once a month while a fire (while unlikely) would bankrupt me. Most likely, I’ll lose money in the long run by paying for that insurance, but that’s not the point. The point is that I can afford to lose money over a 30-50 year period, but I cannot afford to lose my house at any single point during the next 30-50 years.
It’s a nice ideal. Insurance can in theory help smooth out whatever life throws at you. But in the modern world, their incentives are to not
Yeah give me that line again after your house actually has burned down and you have to fight tooth and nail to get any money from the insurance company that you’ve been paying to for the last X number of years.
You are aware that the whole basis for my original comment (and follow-up) was that insurance isn’t inherently a scam, right? Any transaction can be turned into a scam if you refuse to hold up your end of the deal, but that doesn’t make the concept of transactions a scam in itself.
My impression is that US insurance companies are particularly bad about not paying up, and thereby scamming people. Luckily, I don’t live in the US, and don’t have any historical precedent that gives me reason to doubt my insurance company would pay up. The problem with insurance (and a lot of other things) in the US is a system that heavily incentivises squeezing consumers at every turn. The problem is not that insurance is an inherently a scam.
The US health care industry is a scam
i’ll bet you and all your neighbors 100/mo, your house won’t burn down this month. send payments on time or else. Meanwhile, i lend you your money to pay for your mortgage with interest. have some more Kool-Aid.
Why would I take that when I already have a running bet with my insurance company where I only pay ≈ 20 USD / month?
The whole point here is that I can afford 20 USD/month indefinitely. However, having my house burn down at any point would be absolutely detrimental to my personal economy, to the point of bankrupting me and likely preventing me from being able to afford a new house in the foreseeable future. I’m well aware that in purely economic terms I’m taking a losing bet. The point is that the consequences should the bet strike home are so large that I can’t afford not to take it.
Of course, you could argue that I would be better off saving that money and being “my own insurance”. You would be right, except for the fact that the house burning down is just as likely tomorrow as in 20 years. If I had enough cash to insure myself, I obviously wouldn’t need to take this losing bet, but I don’t.
big insurers have millions of your neighbors paying 20/month. all i know is, ‘the house always wins’. they are swimming in cash. my dad used to sell car insurance. when cards became mandatory, he had an influx of ‘card buyers’. pay one month and get a card. stop paying. because they bet the odds of getting fined for no card were a lot better than odds of getting in a wreck. house wins, sells you ‘uninsured motorist’ coverage. people gamble on many things. insurance is good when you win. they lose when you win so deny, depose … I don’t know the answer. just try to hedge bets and look for ways to break even for all us non-greedy shmoes. i don’t like most insurance co.'s greed. have insurance as required and savings also. i’d never pay for extended warranty on something under $10k. that’s some easy bets for them.
Yes, it’s a for profit business that makes it’s profit off of trying to have the most accurate odds they can. They charge you slightly more than they expect to lose on you (the house edge) and then they’re betting on every roll of the dice. That’s exactly how casinos earn money (though casinos try to compete on experience and payout, while insurance competes on price and payout).
The difference is that the casino is attempting to take advantage of your greed and wants you to stay there and bet everything you have. Meanwhile the insurer is selling relief from fear of financial ruin and is asking you to make scheduled bets that you want to lose every month. American health insurance has massive issues and should be replaced with something akin to the NHS before it was defunded, but nobody is losing their shirt buying homeowners insurance unless the area they live in is now being pummeled by the climate crisis like southern California or the gulf of Mexico.
Would government run insurance be better? Yeah probably. But in the era before modern insurance a major part of the draw of fraternal organizations was that they served that role.
I agree that the house is winning here (as always) and I also hate companies that squeeze us regular people for cash at every opportunity as much as the next person.
My point is that I don’t really see buying e.g. house insurance as a gamble as much as I see it as paying a monthly fee for the peace of mind it gives me to know that I won’t be financially ruined by a house fire or a burglary. It’s not about making money in the long term for me, it’s about mitigating the consequences of highly unlikely but absolutely devastating events.
I am well aware of that. This couple’s experience was in parallel to what occurs all the time with people who have insurance in the U.S.
I don’t think anyone was sick here.
So, your perspective is that pregnant people who have life-threatening medical conditions arising from their pregnancy through no fault of their own should have to pay out-of-pocket? Additionally, in it sounds like you feel that premature births due to life-threatening medical issues that the mother is suffering from and subsequent aftercare for the mother and premature infant should also be paid for out of pocket?
Use condoms.
Only $200k? They got a deal there.
“Why is no one having babies anymore?”
Gotta be al that avocado toast.
That’s one expensive citizenship
How’s the US still a country, how do people just put up with it.
Around 50 years of near constant propaganda from our media convincing people that the government paying for anything is destructive to the economy and that taxing rich people more that poor people is not fair.
And that Black people will get benefits if we have social programs, and can’t have that.
Bread and circuses still works.
Hope to die, survive till it happens.
Military Industrial Complex
I’m curious, what happens if you just don’t pay? What if you just go back home and never come back?
I would say the hospital would sell it to a debt collector in the UK. If it gets to court you could argue incorrect jurisdiction as the contract would have started in the US but that’s risking a lot on a technicality. You would also need to fork out for a solicitor, barrister and court costs. I think they did the right thing in shaming the insurance into paying rather than fighting the debt collector who has no shame.
Honestly if you never go back, not much. It wouldn’t even impact your credit rating, and your country likely doesn’t have the means to enforce it. I could imagine you get harassed by us debt collection agencies but they can’t do anything about it either. If you’re never returning to the US, it’s fine.
You could likely even still holiday in the USA. It won’t impact your visa as it’s not a criminal offence either.
I’m not a lawyer, and could be totally wrong, but I asked my dad who is also not a lawyer.
This guy is correct. IANAL.
After 7 years without any payment, most debt including medical debt and standard loans are discharged. The non-payment is key. Even sending a cent will restart the obligation to that debt
If the debt is large enough, the companies will use a myriad of tricks to keep the debt alive long after it is supposed to expire.
Like what?
They will actually make a payment in your name to the account and that will keep the debt alive for at least a year or two.
That would be fraud. I’m sure it happens, and it’s going to be hard to prove it did. This whole system is undoubtedly rotten, and I’m not excusing any part of it.
They are bringing back debtor’s prisons in some states, those debts they sell as unrecoverable are bought by shady companies, as in Utah, that sue for them in the big city, and if the defendant doesn’t show up they get a default judgement and then get the judge to hold them in contempt, and jail them. If they pay they get out right away. After they get out of jail the holder of the debt can just file for another action and contempt you again, as I understand it.
And they aren’t the only state either I hear, they were one of the first to end run around the prohibition, I think case law, on debtor’s prisons, over 10 years back.
TL;DR slavery
Utah still has the firing squad, yeah?
They just brought back that form of execution, and it’s an improvement over lethal injection as it is practiced, or the electrical chair or gas chamber.
Lethal injection could be humane, they choose not to make it so. Nothing would be more humane that a hot shot of opioids and benzodiazapemes and the like. They want them to suffer and use their other formulation that does cause pain even as it makes the person unable to show that pain, as I understand it.
The electrical chair is grotesque, as was the gas chamber as practiced that not only is disturbingly similar to nazi shit, but also operated as with the lethal injections.
So firing squad is much more humane, hanging is humane, guillotine, etc would all be better. Obviously though we can’t trust the system to convict the right people so we shouldn’t have the death penalty. But certain exceptions could exist, for people that would use corrupt influence to get their conviction overturned, cancelled, and do more harm, politically connected people, the super rich.
And yes, shady companies like these, are the perfect recipients of said penalty with due process as they would pay off higher ups to get it cancelled and abuse more people.
They can sue, and then try to seize your assets, at least inside the country. Most hospitals don’t, but some do. Garnish your paychecks too. Not sure how that would work in another country.
ICE gonna come to get ya
I doubt any of them have passports and probably couldn’t point to the UK on an atlas, so I think you’d be relatively safe.
I doubt any of them have passports
and do what? Ensure the U.K also denounces the U.S as an ally?
