Raped at the hospital
 

Here is a great article about something that has to be stopped. Hospital billing practices that are totally out of control. Most self payers are totally powerless to defend themselves. And many with insurance soon find they don't have adequate insurance. This whole health care industry is making me sick. And the fact that "non profit" hospitals are making HUGE profits but not paying a dime in local school taxes is just unbelievable!

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us | TIME.com

I was hit by a car riding my bicycle last year. medical bills were around 50k or so. my lawyer negotiated them down to 8k.
if you walked in off the street with no insurance, you would at least pay the 50k, if not more.

it is very frustrating to think how people can get screwed just because of no insurance.

"If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it's free"
-P.J. O'Rourke

If you had no insurance and offered to pay cash, it'd likely be a small fraction of the $50k "insurance price." If you had no insurance and couldn't pay anything, the bill might be $50k, but you wouldn't end up paying it and you probably wouldn't ever get denied a loan for having that collection on your credit report. The rest of us would pay for it though.

Follow the example of illegal aliens if it bugs you. Never pay, never care, never any credit.

Well, this will certainly go to BARF soon. And I'll help it along.

The health "industry" is such a disaster that you could almost agree with ObamaCare. The thing is, everyone is screwed. More so the doctors. What I want to know is why in the world didn't the HC industry step up instead of letting the government basically take it over? That can't be good. The HC folks had the golden goose and the egg.

Not so much next year. If the INSURANCE industry can't behave any better than how they do currently, I could easily become a Democrat.

And one personal experience that I just went through is that my B/C ins will get me some Celebrex for $325 a month (200mg) at CVS. Canadian pharmacies have it at about 60 bucks. Probably less if I was in Canada.

I want to know what I can get it for in Mexico. BTW, I think Celebrex is made in Australia, but I can't find where I saw that.

my mother in law just died at the end of last year. they paid out the #$$ for medical bills. they were self employed and had very little insurance. plenty of cash to pay bills.

You can get just about any prescription med down in Mexico for pennies on the dollar--legally. Have fun trying to bring it back across the border, though. Pharmaceutical lobbyists did a great job on that one.

All you need is a valid prescription from a US licensed physician to bring medications back from Mexico.

This is true, Tobra. The unfortunate part is in many places in the world, you can simply walk into a pharmacy and find what you need. No need to pay the intermediary (doctor) to tell you what med you need. I loved living in Qatar; anything and everything you could possibly want right over the counter, at pennies on the dollar compared to meds here in the U.S. Pharmacists were extremely knowledgeable and helpful, as well. And don't get me started on the fuel costs there...practically free.

but a real big bankruptcy

Do what the Amish do - turn over all of your assets to your kids at age 50. That way when you get old and sick you are essentially on welfare. (The Amish do not accept social security or medicaid/medicare).
I will not be giving my last dollars to these crooks.
But a big part of it for me is the no taxes part. Our local non profit hospital made 81 million dollars last year, and did not pay 1 cent in school taxes. That is just wrong.

Oh Can ada.

The whole "non profit" corporation concept needs to be abolished. So-called "non-profits" bring in billions and billions and pay no taxes.

Sure my taxes may be higher, but I never, ever have worry about medical bills.

American health care is FOR PROFIT. If you know that then none of this "rape" should surprise anyone.

Stay out of hospitals if at all possible.

Sounds like you should move to Qatar.

If you thick picking an oil for your air-cooled 911 was difficult, wait 'til you need to choose a medication for a serious medical ailment. One of the reasons why in America we have physicians as gate-keepers for medications is due to education and liability reasons. But hey, if pharmacists and individuals are willing to accept that responsibility, that's fantastic for everyone involved. I'd be all for it.

The issue goes much deeper than just the HC industry overcharging, it is the insurance companies and the trial lawyers fault as much as the "non-profits".

If you end up in the hospital the Doctors run 5000 tests on you because if they get sued they can say they ran them all. This would be the first thing a trial lawyer went after them about. These hospitals are getting sued 100 times a day by ambulance chaser lawyers

The hospitals charge you 100 dollars for an asprin because they know the insurance company will only reimburse them a penny. If they charged you a penny, the insurance company would give them nothing.

Then there the liability insurance doctors have to pay, the cost has chased many good doctors out of my State.

Then there all the people with no insurnace who sow up at the Emergency room for service, the hospitals do not turn them away they treat them and we pay for it.

It goes on and on and on.

Time magazine forgot to mention all that stuff.....conveniently to support Obamacare.

Guess I struck a nerve; sorry. America's health care system is broke, on all sides. Do we have great doctors? Absolutely. That's why most foreign countries (that have money) pay to have their doctors trained here. As to your scenario...if that ever happened, they have great doctors and a good working system there.

Case in point: While in Qatar, I did something stupid and broke a few bones in my hand. Went to the doc, he sends me to the next room for Xrays, bada boom, bada bing. I'm in/out in a couple hours. Fast forward a few years to when I'm living back home in AZ. Fall off my roof (don't ask how), break my wrist. It's a Sunday, so I go to the ER, wait a few hours to be seen (and I live in a SMALL "city"), they toss on an Ace bandage and tell me to go to a regular doc on Monday--charge me my $100 copay, and a couple grand to my insurance. Monday rolls around, I go to my doc, pay his co-pay, pay the co-pay to the "specialist" who does my Xray, and paid another co-pay to someone else...I don't remember who. Another $100+ in co-pays now, not to mention what they're going to charge my insurance provider.

Do you seriously not see a problem with this system?

One of the problems, gacook, is that we frequently compare our country to other countries. But it's not an apples to apples comparison. Sometimes it's not even an apples to other-fruit-variety comparison.

Meds are cheap in Mexico. OK, what type of product or professional liability do you (not the personal "you," but the generic "you") think goes on in Mexico? Got a problem? Go pound sand. What type of liability protection do you think an individual possesses in Qatar? Probably nothing, again.

We have an expectation in America: stuff is 100% safe or it wouldn't be for sale. Maybe not reasonable, IMO, but that's the way our society thinks. However, that's not the way the rest of the world (or even sometimes the rest of the Western world) rolls. It's often buyer beware in other places. That's part of the reason why stuff (that we're talking about in this thread) is cheaper elsewhere. Are we OK with adopting the rest of these foreign places' societal expectations?

To answer your last question, I'm all for fee-for-service. Isn't that the way the vast majority of business/consumer transactions occur in America? But most people are too cheap or too broke to accept it as a way of doing medical business.