Something in hospital care is rotten in Denmark! Recently, I took my wife to the local hospital because a viral infection wasn’t resolving. She was there for no more than two hours. They did a chest X-Ray with a portable machine in the exam room and routine blood and urine tests. The prescription they wrote went to our pharmacy so it’s cost was not included. The bill they sent Medicare was $25,000.!
Medicare paid them less than $1,000. There is something radically wrong with this process, and if the $25k figure is right, I pitty the poor White Guy w/o insurance that gets stuck with the bill!
What did you actually wind up paying?
The US system is remarkably rule-ridden, legal-risk driven, and corrupt. The costs of actual delivery of medical services are through the roof compared to anywhere else on earth.
In some ways the US medical system is more “socialist” than many others, in that many interests have leveraged governments to create opportunities for those in favorable positions to tap it, and escalate costs of course. Or, better put, its a state-driven corrupt system befitting a banana republic.
To compare, I have been shopping for Spanish private medical insurance. They have that there, for those who prefer private to avoid the waits of the public system or people who do not qualify, such as retirees with incomes from abroad. For a retirement age couple, private free market “gold plated” coverage is under $300/mo.
The government-medical-pharma-legal complex is deep, handles 17% of our economy, is highly unionized, employs leagues of lawyers and is chock full of waste and fraud.
Sounds almost identical to my trip a few weeks ago, except I had a CT scan instead of an x-ray, which is more expensive. My total bill was $10,443. Go figure.
My son spent a few days in the hospital two years ago and had long term regular care afterward. The bills were insane. There were thousands of dollars in “accidents” They even tried to bill me for an appointment I supposedly had with a pediatric gastroenterologist. (I met the guy in an elevator with my son’s actual doctor.)
The bills started to clear up when I threatened to start billing them $200 an hour for forensic accounting services.
My wife holds an accounting degree. I can’t imagine how people who don’t can navigate the billing morass.