Posted on 04/10/2008 2:38:01 PM PDT by george76
A patient was left with a phone bill of £127 after being left hanging on the line for 49 minutes to make a hospital appointment.
Wayne Marshall, 30, was left fuming after spending nearly an hour on the phone to the outpatients' department of Broomfield Hospital.
But he was gobsmacked when he discovered the two calls had landed him with a bill of £127 for just trying to rearrange his appointment.
"But when I looked at my bill online I was absolutely flabbergasted. I would have thought it would have been no more than a few quid even with all the time I spent on hold."
Now Mr Marshall is worried other people may be stung by the cost without realising.
He said: "I have spoken to BT and they have told me that there is no mistake. This is especially bad for elderly people if they do not have an itemised bill as they may be in the dark about how much it is costing them to make thses calls."
The outraged patient was charged £2.59 per minute for his calls
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
"Patient left with £127 phone bill after hanging on the line for 49 minutes trying to make an appointment"
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Free Health care ?
ht : JAMES TARANTO
Welcome to Hillary/Obama Care.
Ahhh, Government sponsored health care! It’s the only way to die...
Gotta love the Brits. (Note Didn't pass the U.S. oriented Spell Checker)
GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE.....
“all the effeciency of the Postal Service with all the sensitivity of the IRS !”
Hang on to your bippies.........this is coming to a town near you!
I think £127 is about $222. Was he calling long distance or something?
Ummmmm, was he calling from a hotel room? Or using MCI?
The Daily Mail is great, but...still consider the source!
Number Duration Cost (pounds)
0844 8220002 21:34:19 55.130
0844 8220002 28:17:02 72.270
0844 8220008 00:02:53 0.175
The phone system rang up the two calls as 21 and 28 hours. This is a British phone problem instead of a British socialized medicine problem.
Apparently, it is like calling a 900 number ?
I’m not convinced. The article said he verified that there was no billing error. I’m thinking maybe the 1/10s of a second were recorded?
Sounds like the hospital had a 900 number.
Maybe it's how the socialized medicine system supplements itself, charging people to call the hospital like a porn line. If that's what it costs to make a regular cal within Britain, Vonage has a huge market to exploit.
That needs to be a tagline on a T-shirt. www.thoseshirts.com is paying $200 if you submit it and they print it.
In fact, they claim that their systems have less paperwork than our own, and therefore they are cheaper administratively even if the treatments they provide are out of the 1950s.
Here's another item ~ patient costs to do business with them ~ national health care systems do not have to treat patients with any respect. That generates high patient wait times ~ all of which cost something.
Most of these countries also have tax systems which cost far more per dollar than do our own systems.
Health care now consumes about 14% of our economy. With Hillary Care, or Single Payer, or the British scheme, and so forth, that would easily zoom to 25% to 40%.
It is certainly the least costly postal system.
Now, about sensitivity, after more than a decade's worth of experience being involved in "collections" I'd suggest USPS is less "sensitive" than IRS if what you mean by "sensitive" is "good bedside manner", or "non threatening manner". I could call on the services of an armed officer of the law much faster (in the course of a case) than any IRS examiner.
It's not good to cheat on your postage.
thanks for the feedback. I will rethink my sarcsatic comment.
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