"We have to pass it so you can find out what's in it!" - Nancy Pelosi
Posted on 09/09/2019 11:30:49 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
Heather Waldron and John Hawley are losing their four-bedroom house in the hills above Blacksburg, Va. A teenage daughter, one of their five children, sold her clothes for spending money. They worried about paying the electric bill. Financial disaster, they say, contributed to their divorce, finalized in April.
Their money problems began when the University of Virginia Health System pursued the couple with a lawsuit and a lien on their home to recoup $164,000 in charges for Waldron’s emergency surgery in 2017.
The family has lots of company: Over six years ending in June 2018, the health system and its doctors sued former patients more than 36,000 times for over $106 million, seizing wages and bank accounts, putting liens on property and homes and forcing families into bankruptcy, a Kaiser Health News analysis has found.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Q: How much is their home worth....?
That might explain a lot.
Don't forget the Emergency Room patients who must be treated; and, then never pay their bills. Someone has to pay those bills; and, it is the person with health insurance.
If they are up to their armpits in debt because, for example, they bought a home in the mid six-figures, that might explain why they can’t afford health insurance.
“UVA is also immersed in the whole LGBTQP thing. Go to an appointment there and you will find yourself facing some student who’s there to “collect information”. That information will include sexual preferences information. I was recently asked, with unabashed glee, if I was sexually active with male, female, or both. Sickening and offensive. “
They can ask me anything...and I can give them any answer that I feel like, at least for now (and I do just that).
In my experience, it was routine process in the hospital accounting department to give a 60% discount for full cash payment on major surgery and specialty appointments. You had to ask for it in order to get it. No negotiation beyond that.
Of course they never expected very many people to take them up on that offer. I was fortunate enough that I could do so.
The net savings was way more than several years of insurance payments.
Thanks for sharing that.
all hosptials do this, Many people are bankrupted because of high healthcare costs that are not part of a functioning compteitive market.
Any time I’ve been in the ER, the billing person and cart was there promptly.
Obamacare has bankrupted millions. My niece was 1 of them, it’s not just UVA hospitals all of them are doing it.
We are Medicare and Tricare Life, we owe 0 on any medical bill. But if the IDIOTS don’t file right or on time they will try and use a collection agency. Tough luck, Medicare/Tricare Life have a time frame to file. And now they are not paying for duplicate test 1 run by Primary 1 run by Specialist. Just call Tricare and they fix it. Happened more than once.
Most hospitals now ask these questions for a variety of health reasons. 1 of the first do you own a Gun.
Answer NO, I own Several but I’ll never tell them that.
And if you are stupid enough not to get the copies of my Medicare and Tricare Life card to bad, you waited 1 yr to demand payment. They have a 6 month time frame. Now tell the Feds you are going to sue them.
Agree, I always tell people that there are 3 answers to the gun question:
1) No.
2) Yes, but I keep them unloaded and locked up.
3) None of your GD business
Answer #3 is what will get you red-flagged.
You would think the open fraud of such charges would prompt an enterprising prosecutor with public ambitions to go after the hospitals and physicians.
That is a different deal than attempting to negotiate for a reduced fee for cash. Even if insured and needing other than emergency surgery I will go to the surgery center in Oklahoma City or Wichita, Kansas. Their performance is excellent from what I have been able to determine. They are motivated by competition and free enterprise instead of having a monopoly. I had a procedure done in the same circumstances 8 years ago but it wasn’t cheap. In that case low bid was the last thing I wanted.
What if it is not elective though? What if it is an emergency and you have no choice but to be treated where you can as fast as you can and don’t have any means to even take care of your own affairs?
Pay or don’t pay your money and take your chances don’t you?
I am told that the reason negotiating a price lower than book if you are not already covered by insurance and a negotiated rate is that they need to support their book price so the medicare / medicade payments which are a % of usual and customary book price are supported at a high level. I don’t know how they get around the negotiated insurance rates.
“I’m going to say no.”
A truthful answer.
Before Obamacare, we had reasonably priced catastrophic medical insurance to cover emergency medical care. That doesn’t exist anymore.
Both industries (medical care and medical insurance) are both a complete mess due to market interference at both the state and federal level.
The choice people provided a list of surgery centers that would do the surgery for that price and the Oklahoma place was one of them. We went with the Seattle one because it was only 5 hours away. I would never have found them on my own.
Apparently self-employed people who pay for their own insurance are also as rare as unicorns. When stupid care started the people on the other end of the phone at blue crap acted like they never encountered a person who paid for their own insurance at full price, without subsidies etc.
One more year and I go to Medicare. I could get some service at the Indian health facility and even go to the Indian Hospital but a doctor I know says that the Indian Health Service is the final solution to the Indian problem. It is probably about like the VA though I’ve never been there. They have great equipment and maybe some good doctors but it takes forever to get an appointment and time means nothing at all. The tribes do something with the casino money and dribble some of it to health care but I think a lot of it lines pockets of the powerful. Manhattan was bought for beads, trinkets and cloth. The Indians around here have not gone far beyond that. The Choctaws and Chickasaws do a lot of good for their people from what I can see. The Cherokees, not so much except they talk a good game.
I asked my Primary doctor if paying by cash would make visits cheaper-he said no.
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