I just want to say that my broken ankle hospital bill alone was some 47,000+ buckos. I was in the hospital 4 days and in the OR twice. I have a plate and 11 screws holding my ankle together. Or, as the doc said..."I screwed your wife 11 times". Haha. It was a freak accident in the house. I wasn't skiing or hanging out with the rich and famous. Other bills, surgeon/assistant surgeon, out-patient visits, other ancillary charges came to another approximate 25,000. Praise be that I had adequate insurance. I am lucky. I have full use of my ankle. If I didn't have insurance, I'd probably been put in an ace wrap and sent home on narcotics, or worse, an inexperienced resident or new doc would have cobbled me together, never to have walked again probably for the rest of my life. Everyone needs healthcare and insurance!!!!
do you know how much that would cost in the UK ? Everyone needs healthcare full stop, which is why Obamacare is good no ?
Good gravy!! I've had broken ankles on both sides, never had to stay in the hospital. Went to see my Ortho, set bone, cast, meds, never over $5000. Out of pocket after ins was $250. You must have done more than a break. Shattered??
I had 3 bones busted, a trimalleolar fracture, completely broke through where the ankle meets the leg bones. I had to have 11 screws and a plate put in to get it to stay together.
That injury can be treated on an outpatient basis. Don't know why you were in the hospital for it, or why you had 2 operations. Clearly not typical.
But when more people go to the doctors that are uninsured it will cost us all more. Wait, you mean to tell me your busted ankle didn't really cost 47,000$? You mean we already have socialized medicine? To hell you say!
I'm not surprised. I have heard many stories like this from people who live in America. What we really should be asking ourselves is WHY it is so ridiculously expensive. Where is all that money going? I know that in many big American cities, the price of land and rent is just ridiclously overpriced. I was told by an American doctor that a typical practice in his area (shared by 4 doctors) has to see 10 patients a day just to pay the rent for the building! Those property company that owns the building (and land underneath it) must be getting a lot of money. Another big problem I have heard is excessive exposure to liability. When you go to the doctors office, part of the price is going damage awards to people that suffered bad medical treatment. To some extent, these things are inevitable. Most doctors cannot be perfect all the time with all the patients they see. So if you want to cut costs, one of the things patients will have to accept is lower damage awards if something does actually go wrong. Insurance is not going to lower the cost of healthcare; in fact it is likely to raise it, perhaps significantly. Let me give you an example: Another car backed in reverse and hit my car. Both cars were scratched just a little bit. My car was old I didn't care, but their car was new. I did not want any trouble, so I offered to pay them a small ammount of money for the slight damage. The girl in the other car accepted. But then her father came to the scene and convinced us it would be better off being handled through the insurance companies. Later I found out that the insurance company had determined that I was in the wrong (which made no sense to me), and made a big payment to the girl to get the little scratches painted over at a car shop, which is ridiculously expensive. Anyone with common sense would know that what she should have been done is just leave it alone, or get some cheap paint and fix it herself. But because an insurance company was involved, we all have to pay higher rates now to cover stupid things like this. No one complains or cares because it is not their money. But then everyone else has to pay higher rates. See the problem? Insurance should only be for the really expensive big emergencies, not for a broken foot.
Not that Health insurance is the only industry in the US that is exempt from anti-trust laws? Not pay for service structure?
I have been in Health Care Administration for over 35+ years and my husband is a Surgeon and performs this type of surgery. How much did the Surgeon charge? My husband and I find your charges to be outrageous compared to what it would cost in our city. $47,000.00 for a 4 day inpatient stay? Something is wrong. Can you post your bill our pm it to me? I would truly be interested in seeing how it could possibly cost you that much. Also, how much did your insurance approve for payment and what then was your required co-payment and was the Hospital and your Surgeon in or out of your Insurance Network? Seems very odd and there could be problems with what you were charged. I would be glad to review it for you. As, eventhough your insurance covered it you still don't want to be overcharged, right?
Yeah, they would've just given her a cold compress and when infection or crippling pain set in, cut off her feet.
Out of curiosity, what is the normal price for such a thing where you are from? Insurance is a good thing, definitely, but wow. That's a lot of money for anyone to pay.
People...it was an open, displaced fracture and had to be put together with 11 screws and a plate. My ankle bone nearly went right through the skin. I had to be admitted. I had to have OR time. I had to have all the necessary tests needed to have the work done. I am not 18 anymore, you know. It was very painful, you know, a weight bearing joint like an ankle holds your the entire weight of your body up. After two months, I was weaned off the narcs. I hate that stuff. That's why they call it dope, you know? This can happen to anyone, but unfortunately it happened to me. I am now able to walk around the block at least twice, walk the dog, and do all necessary chores and errands. TG I am fairly healthy. If I'd had some gawd awful thing like diabetes, who knows what would have happened to that foot. I am grateful for the recovery I have made.
Hope your feeling better. Your case is just another example of the out of control US health care system. Someday soon just pure economics will drive us to a much more sane system and we will get better health results as well as all the other industrialized countries get.
Thanks. This stuff sux. The price of healthcare has gotta get a grip on things. I'm no ph.D. in economics, to say the least, but this is just crazy, eh?
Conservatives dont want that kind of care here because it doesnt allow them to punish people for what they deem to be an "unhealthy lifestyle" by making them die, or go broke, or live in pain and suffering. Conservatives LOVE consequences. Universal health care would remove those. Thats why it cannot be allowed. As a side note. I screwed up my knee really really badly. ACL and MCL severed. Cartilidge under the knee cap was crushed, and the knee cap was displaced. 4 operations to get it all fixed. Between the operations, and all the therapy, it cost right around 700k. Who the hell can afford to pay THAT?!?!?!!?
One of the reasons for the advertised cost is government interference in the first place. Costs have to be made up somewhere. I agree that legal awards should be limited to the legal and damage costs but instead they go for the legal lottery to get more to punish the hospital.
You just think you aren't paying for your health care. Everyone pays for health care in many ways. In Australia you pay for it in taxes, lost wages, lost efficiency, and lower quality of care. Look at wait times, which are an indicator of availability of physicians and facilities to meet the medical needs of the population. Look at the wait times in Australia - median wait times for elective surgery range from 29 days to 76 days depending upon exact state/territory. Orthopaedic surgery was the longest at 64 days (good luck hobbling around for 2 months on that broken ankle). Knee replacement wait time was 173 days (median). Note that in Australia, knee replacement is "elective". http://www.aihw.gov.au/haag09-10/hospital-performance-elective-surgery-wait/ Thats from your own govt. Or you can look here http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/...book/health_glance-2011-en&mimeType=text/html and see the US has far lower wait times than Australia. So if you break your ankle in Australia, you get quick emergency room treatment to stabilize the medical problem (same in the US), but then you get to wait a long time for those "elective" surgeries, which don't seem so "elective" when its your ankle and you are stuck in bed or a wheel chair.
Well, if you went into the hosp to say... have your left leg amputated, and woke up with the right one gone instead. Are you suggesting that this person should NOT be paid in the millions of dollars? I mean come on. You just totally screwed up that persons life.
The problem is not for those with insurance or can afford to pay out of pocket, or even for the poor because they would get taken care of, the problem has always been for the working poor that would lose whatever accumulated wealth they have to pay and become poor, where they would get the care for something like this. I know people that have hidden or spent everything they had so they could get medicaid. Both Medicare and Medicaid are as much as 21% of federal outlays.
Even middle and upper middle class people get wiped out by medical costs. More than 1/2 of all bankrupticies filed in the US stem from medical issues.
Ah. If you could move your toes, you got hoodwinked and so did your insurance. I've broken both ankles about 10 times each and only when I was 36 did I actually go to a doctor. For $1,000 a clown confirmed a break with an Xray. The last time I went to a hospital. The next two breaks healed per usual (4-8 weeks of pain).
