Posted on 09/21/2021 7:49:53 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
Brittany Giroux Lane gave birth to her daughter, Alexandra, a few days before Christmas in 2018. The baby had dark eyes and longish legs. She had also arrived about 13 weeks early, and weighed just two pounds.
Alexandra initially thrived in the neonatal intensive care unit at Mount Sinai West. Ms. Lane, 35, recalls the nurses describing her daughter as a “rock star” because she grew so quickly. But her condition rapidly worsened after an infection, and Alexandra died early on the morning of Jan. 15 at 25 days old.
Last summer, Ms. Lane started receiving debt collection notices. The letters, sent by the health plan Cigna, said she owed the insurer over $257,000 for the bills it accidentally covered for Alexandra’s care after Ms. Lane switched health insurers.
Medical billing experts who reviewed the case described it as a dispute between a large hospital and a large insurer, with the patient stuck in the middle.
“The letters mean I’m constantly reliving the day, and that is such a hard space to be in,” Ms. Lane said. “I feel so frustrated that the hospital is making decisions about their own bottom line that influence our potential future, and the memory of our child.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dnyuz.com ...
Indeed, if that is the case then the hospital defrauded one or both insurance companies by accepting double payments, and the administrator responsible should be charged with that crime.
I once had two health insurance plans at the same time (2 full-time jobs with benefits) and I was told that using both for the same dental work (one for the work, one for the gold crown) was not allowed, I could use one or the other.
File a suit against the hospital for $257,000, since the baby caught the infection at the hospital.
“The reality is that the United States has universal healthcare”
Sad about your child and all of the financial distractions.
People will hate me for this, but look at the complexity of our “universal healthcare”. Maybe universal medical care would be be more merciful than what we have now.
Maybe not.
But you are one accident away from medical bankruptcy.
The baby’s debt. It died with her.
Sounds cold…but it’s the only way out of this.
No one will hate you but it’s a gross misconception.
Universal healthcare means someone else decides what healthcare is available to all Americans; the pencil pushers make the decisions using guidelines to allot $ to people who can be cured cheaply and have more working years. That is why fetal surgery is almost unknown in the UK, why several children have been refused to travel abroad for medical care and have died rather that let people in the UK know that these expensive options exist. That is why Canadian premies are treated in the USA and why for many years there were only 4 MRI scanners in Canada, why Canadian women had mammograms using Chest XRay units in the 80’s which missed so many tumors the American physicians in the joint study on mammogram efficiency withdrew.
The first thing that managed care does it make physicians sign that they will not advise patients of the existence of treatments not covered by the plan. It’s many times worse than being denied treatment because you can’t seek out something you don’t know about or ofter to pay yourself.
Always follow the money trail and realize that messy as it is we want the control to stay with the patient not the not so benign or altruistic Government.
Obamacare never solved this type of problem, because the entire paradigm of health insurance was not removed from being plans established for employers to all plans being large group plans any individuals can join, no matter whom they may or may not be employed with, and employers merely agreeing, or not, cover a certain dollar amount of whatever health insurance plan the individual was in. Then there would never be any need for individuals to be changing health insurance plans just because they were changing employers.
But, that great idea was never even conceived by those who argued for Obamacare nor most of those who opposed it either. Why? Because most folks could not get their minds out of the idea of employers controlling employees health insurance plans and into the idea of employers only controlling how much of their employees’ health insurance premium cost the employer was willing to cover.
Yep. Aren’t we all.
Nope. Because with good insurance, you can have a $500K medical stay, and wind up at your max.
Mine happens to be $8K out of pocket. Which I have hit a couple of times. One year my family had $167,000 in medical costs.
I paid $8K.
Nope. I’ve thought about it and believe that, at least for me, it would show a huge lack of faith to get any kind of health insurance.
It’s only $50.
We pay off the cards every month. :)
“we want the control to stay with the patient not the not so benign or altruistic Government.”
Guess we can hope for improvements in our minimum-government-intrusion scheme we have now.
No health insurance? Are you prepared for the $500,000 bill if you or Mrs. Cuban Leaf gets cancer or gets in a bad car accident?
My wife’s first husband died of Leukemia at the age of 29. It cost over $200,000 that the hospital eventually forgave. A lot of it was spent on last minute treatments that the hospital was explicitly told not to do, but they did it anyway.
A friend of ours had stage four breast cancer. She used the Gerson method and is now over a decade cancer free. Another friend used Medical Marijuana to avoid the second round of Chemo, etc.
And we’ve had two miraculous healings.
Thing is, you only risk bankruptcy if you request their services. We won’t need to.
blessings on your son and his wife and you too....so sad....
For a hospital to charge you, you have to agree to accept their services.
I treat medical stuff the same as I treat car repair. And it’s almost all DIY.
Funny story from 15 years ago: My big toe was really sore and bright red. I went to my GP and told him I guess I broke my toe because it’s really sore, but I don’t remember breaking it. He took X-rays and told me it didn’t look broken but just be careful on it.
So I went home, looked up “sore red big toe” in google and within 10 minutes I found out I had gout and that black cherry juice was a great cure. I went to the store and got some and three days later my toe was fine.
I’ve done that sort of stuff a LOT since then. I don’t use doctors. I use Google, and I trust the Great Healer.
Hope is not going to cut it...
Did you have health insurance while you were young and healthy?
Or have you never had health insurance because of your faith?
Frankly bankruptcy would be a form of theft. As an act of faith, you refused to pay in advance for your health care, (which is why you purchase insurance), and then when you get the services, you don’t pay for the services you received.
IMHO, that would be dishonest.
If you are refusing to get insurance because of your religious faith, how can you later claim that discharging any ensuing debt (and ripping off the people who saved you life) that results from your exercise of faith would be honoring to God?
If you are ready, willing and able to pay for all anticipated medical bills on your own, then clearly you don’t need to be part of an insurance pool.
If your back up plan is to get the medical treatment you need and then stiff the people who provided that treatment to you, then I really think you need to reassess your faith position.
I don’t think God would honor that.
Do you have home insurance or car insurance?
How about life insurance?
Is your home and car more valuable than your health and life or that of your wife’s?
Frankly bankruptcy would be a form of theft.
It’s quite possible that you are right. Streamlining the entire healthcare system would save billions every year.
So much paperwork & lost time in getting paid. So little open pricing.
The congress could eliminate much of it by requiring one standard form for everyone for starters.
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