Posted on 04/08/2006 12:31:47 PM PDT by UnklGene
As I saw this woman last week in a convenience store where I had stopped to get gas. She told the clerk that she could not afford health insurance because it cost too much but she bought two cartons of cigs and two cases of beer and I said that was enough to pay for health insurance and almost got my head handed to me. Most are uninsured because they want to be and there is NO hospital that will turn away a patient whether they have insurance or not. So we have a vast number who are riding the horse of the tax paying public for their medical care. There are NO uninsured in the United States.
Yes, many ILLEGALs and others use the ER for health care but many other people who don't have insurance pay their own way. Get your facts straight and stop using your emotions and "heresay" when you post.
Do you know how hospitals gouge them? They will charge $5,000 for a simple procedure ... the same procedure they will bill an insurer a couple of hundred dollars for ... so that one paying customer ends up paying for dozens of other uninsured folks to end up having the procedure for free.
This should be criminalized. The hospitals know they cannot turn away indigent patients and that those patients will not pay them. So they extort it from the folks who do pay their own way.
I am sure this will only grow worse in time.
Get the chip off your shoulder. He was just giving an example. What are you going to do when you need 50,000 dollars worth of health care? I know, ask me to pay for it.
That's true for most young people who are healthy, a decent catastrophic plan will only run you about what your cable bill costs. However there are a decent amount of people who do work full time and make about 100-150% the FPL who happen to have developed an illness like say diabetes. Now there premium just went from around the cable bill to around say the rent. For about at least 1 in 5 of the uninsured the choice is rent or insurance. The other 75% are either twenty and thirty somethings who think nothing bad will ever happen to them so why piss $80 bucks down the drain or they are children of parents who are to cheap or irresponsible to buy them coverage in which children are the cheapest to insure.
That's the problem. We are to busy paying for the illegals.
I've found the opposite.
For the same exact procedure (a non-cosmetic laser treatment for my daughter, which is covered by my insurance), the dermatologist charges me $200 if I pay in cash but charges the insurance company $800.
I'm not sure what the insurance actually pays him though; perhaps also $200. The $600 difference in the actual charge is so interesting though.
True. But after they admit him, then they will bill him for the full price of his treatment. All the doctors who treated him at the hospital (even those he never saw, like the pathologist, the radiologist, and the CRNA) will send him ginormous bills too. And if he can't pay them they will all take him to court and obtain a six-figure judgment against him. Of course, if he has a pre-existing condition he might not have been able to obtain health insurance at any price prior to this disaster, and he certainly won't be able to afterward.
Hospitals are another story.
* every bill
More and More I hear Big D thoughts on this forum. First of all if the person needed 50K worth of care, which is an unusual situation then they would have to arrange payment or do without. They may refinance their house or negotiate the rate down. Rare is the case that someone needs 50 k worth of treatment. It is an individual personal right to decide on the amount of risk they wish to engage. Going without insurance is a risk analysis. Like why pay $1300/mo which is a typical COBRA premium or pay out of pocket? Rarely do we go to the doctor and pay $1300/mo. Perhaps they bank a few thousand for a possible hospitalization.
I had a bladder surgery done and had insurance but the cost about $6000 was for an in/out procedure. I did not stay the night. Expensive but not beyond what a family can pay for. This was elective and I did have insurance.
But my insurance does not pay for braces for my son and I had to wait for 2 years to get the money available to pay for it.
Funny thing I had braces 30 years ago and it cost my father out of pocket $2000. I negotiated $4500. The amount of increase over 30 years was not that high. But doctor and hospital stays have gone up more than 130% in 30 years. Perhaps it is because people have insurance and since a 3rd party pays they don't price shop and the hospital increases the price. If the hospital has to keep with the price people can afford they won't overcharge as much.
My brother,who is uninsured, had a shunt for his heart. It was a one day procedure. He had prenegotiated the amount to a lump sum and paid upfront. The hospital did not know what to do. But his cost was lower than what the insurance company would pay.
Please do not assume that we personally pay for a responsible uninsured person. I will agree that our insurance companies does pay an inflated amount for the poor people who use the hospital for visits that would normally go to the doctor.
Bump for later.
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The 50,000 dollar situation is what I should buy my insurance for, not all the routine visits. But I can't. I can buy a 50,000 dollar life insurance policy that likely will never be used because I may cash it out when I retire. But if I get hit by a truck I have to have it. I have to have automobile insurance that I may never use.
Health insurance is nothing more than a method of political control. All this HMO, PPO crap and state and federally subsidized medical centers is costing us a hell of a lot more than a pay as you go - insure castastrophe system would.
And rightly so, I might add.
Last time I checked (about four years ago), it would cost me over $1000 a month to insure me and my family (wife & 1 child).
I know the price of cigarettes has gone up, but I doubt it's THAT much.
In the four years I've been self-employed, I've saved about $50,000.
When my wife needed wrist surgery, we found the price to be around $5000. When the bill came, they found out we were paying cash, they knocked it down to about $3000.
Don't assume that just because you check off the 30 bucks a month on your pay stub, that everyone is in the same boat.
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