Something is wrong with healthcare: ridiculous emergency room cost

What state are you from? What state where you in when you hurt yourself? What type of hospital did you go to for the injury (university hospital, religious based / nonprofit, or for profit)?

I do agree with your basic point though. Something needs to be done about the outrageous cost of care in the US.

Sorry this happened to you. Hope your recovery goes well.

Is your deductible involved?

I was in a car accident last summer. I was unhurt but an ambulance showed up as I think they thought I was on drugs. I said I was faint from dehydration from the effects of a long run at altitude. Anyway, I get taken to the hospital in an ambulance and they convince me to stay overnight for a stress test the following morning. Cost of the ambulance ride, a night in general care, and the stress test on a treadmill the next morning was 28,000 dollars. They said my car insurance would cover it but my car insurance only paid 5k.

I was lucky my health insurance covered most of it. The hospital was mostly empty and a staff internist told me that my ekg was perfectly normal for the amount of exercise I had just done. In other words, they saw me as an easy mark We need a patients bill of rights. Prices for services should be known and coverage should be established before a patient decides if he/she decides to embark on the financial titanic.

lol I got a small (half penny) puncture on my scrotum after falling on a fence post I was jumping on top of.

It required one stitch and a sonogram because there was a lot of bruising and they wanted to make sure the plumbing was not leaking.

Bill was 4,830

Co pay 350

It was in network but I pay for out of network emergencies like you.

Yes I have pics

25 years ago when I was 18, I volunteered a couple hours a week in MediCal billing (CA version of Medicaid). Oh the stories I heard from the billing dept! They bill a guy $7500, find he can't pay, oh well, make it $750. Everyone thought the whole thing was a complete joke, just taking money from whomever you can, palming it off on insurance ...

1) Nobody "forced" you to have an x-ray.

2) Yeah, health care costs were not rising AT ALL before Obama. (snicker, snicker)

Canadian here. All my hospital and standard doctor visits are fully paid for by government. An ambulance ride is like $250 with no insurance.

Only thing we get gouged on is dental work.

I was in AZ at the time. I'm actually from Vermont and checked with my insurance that no prior approval was needed for out of network in emergencies. The bill doesn't actually include an itemized list just the total cost. I'll have to call my insurance and find out why the paid such a small portion of the bill (only about 20%).

I don't really understand how the health care insurance system works but this convinces me the current one isn't working. Not sure what the right answer is though, but more competition for insurance companies and hospitals sounds like a good idea to me.

Luckily recovery is going well and I'm back to running and biking and he shoulder is fine. Just hope it doesn't happen again and if so I'm not going to the emergency room.

Due to insurance, you can't really get a menu and cost of services from a hospital. The cost of one x-ray should be a simple enough to determine the cost. I'm sorry that you got stuck with $1500 worth. And contact your congressmen and complain.

ThanksObama wrote:

I don't really understand how the health care insurance system works but this convinces me the current one isn't working. Not sure what the right answer is though, but more competition for insurance companies and hospitals sounds like a good idea to me.

Problem is figuring out a system that remotely lets competition happens because without competition, capitalism doesn't work. Health though has a huge drive towards monopolies. Providers have realized that competing with one another is stupid. It is a lot better to form a monopoly and gouge the insurance companies. Insurance companies realize that they don't have the leverage to control costs and the state boards don't let them set rates that make things work.

And if you really think the republicans can fix this, you are beyond delusional. They are too bond by ideological limits to do something that works. The democrats are probably can't do anything either.

Incorrect! The problem in the US is thinking that capitalism should have ANY role in healthcare. Single payer or some variant of government run healthcare is the only rationale solution. There are NO examples of successful / high quality capitalist/ for profit healthcare systems in the world. In contrast, there are many, many different forms of government run single payer and / or universal healthcare systems throughout the world that are cheaper for patients and that have better outcomes. We don't need to carbon copy any of these systems we can forge one that would work in the US. But ridiculous individuals (primarily on the right) in the US continue to put ideology above reality and insist that only the "free market" can solve our healthcare woes.

$1900 is actually pretty cheap for an emergency room visit. I wouldn't be too surprised if you haven't gotten the full bill yet (ie. the bill from radiology, the bill from the doctors group that employs the radiology tech, etc.). Emergency room visits are expensive because they have to keep the thing staffed 24/7 whether anyone is there or not. Additionally, most of the uninsured / Medicaid / Medicare patients end up paying nothing which makes the pricing higher for the rest of us who do pay. Obama isn't really to blame here, and quite honestly insurance isn't there to pay for every scratch and cut you get in life. It is there to protect you from bankruptcy if something catastrophic were to happen to you. As painful as $1500 is, imagine having a real emergency that costs $30,000 to $100,000. You will max your individual out of pocket in that situation (Usually $4000-$8000), but you won't go bankrupt. The only thing you can really blame on Obama is the mass consolidation that took place on the insurance side of the equation and on the provider side of the equation that has left us with a few groups that have consumer monopolies in many states.

Karl Hungus wrote:

Due to insurance, you can't really get a menu and cost of services from a hospital. The cost of one x-ray should be a simple enough to determine the cost.

There are vested interests who ensure that this is not simple (cf. German health system for even more ridiculous examples).

Well your politicians are in bed with big money. Pharma and doctors and insurances. Voting for a billionaire is your solution. Americans need education before healthcare

Obamacare sucks and whatever becomes Trumpcare will suck too.

The whole thing is broken.

It's the cost of having laws that force ERs to accept averyone regardless of their intent to pay and perform a myriad of unnecessary tests to rule out the possibility of an emergency. Reagan signed these bills into law, and today's Republicans will never repeal them, as most voters think it's unconscionable to treat hospitals as private property rather than public utilities. Only the free market can save us, but tragically the mass stupidity of the present day will kill us,

No one is more of a right wing free market person than I, but I'm afraid your right. You can't have a system where doctors and hospitals gauge all the non seniors to make up for getting next to nothing for medicare reimbursement and emergency room destitutes. It simply can't work. Also, you can't make insurance companies cover those with pre existing conditions and not think it doesn't make premiums sky rocket. I read that 5% of the people in this country consume 50% of the health care. It doesn't make sense that Warren Buffet has been getting essentially free heath care for the last 20 years while those making as little as 50k a year are paying through the nose to help cover those with pre existing conditions.

Single payer would at least put everyone on the same playing field.

Not saying it's right, but $1900 sounds like a pretty low cost.