Victim of Snake Bite Gets Hospital Bill of $55,000

And since Obamacare REQUIRES that hospitals and doctors actually post their PRICE LISTS, we are starting to see a competition on who reveals their prices first!

 

I'm not surprised at all.

I wouldn't expect the doctor to understand it.

After all, under the current system, he has no reason whatsoever to manage his costs. He gets paid primarily by insurance companies, who function in a regulated oligopoly, and thus charge what the market will bear.

I am currently without insurance and my GP just charged me $185 to listen to my heartbeat, measure my blood pressure and weigh me.

That's the list price.

If I had insurance, they would have paid him a discounted price based in the reasonable and customary rate (his list price is part of the data the industry collects to determine what the R & C pay rate will be ).

That's how our system works.

In fact, the doctors have every incentive to run these numbers as high as possible, as do the device manufacturers and middlemen that I referenced in an earlier post on this thread.

The exchanges and requirements of posting prices will begin to put an end to this.

 

damn right !
personally I charge the insurance companies, the AMA, contributing hospitals and doctors with treason for what they've done to Americans with their private health care scam - in a just world, many would be in jail !

 

$55k sounds like a lot of money.

But otoh she didn't die.

I wonder if the lib woman is saying she isn't worth that much money and should have been allowed to die instead.

 

Come on now. By that logic $10M isn't much money compared to dying. So why don't they charge $10M?

 

Arguing that the woman should be glad to be alive at any price is besides the point. The charge is excessive. Life itself shouldn't be a privilege. Saying "what price life" is exploitative. If patients were paying for life, then any life-saving treatment, no matter how inexpensive to provide, could incur a huge price.

The price of medical services is not much affected by the direct cost of providing those services. Rather, it's affected by service providers charging what they feel they can, and by insurers paying these charges.

That $55K didn't all go to the pharmaceutical company. Much of it, probably most of it, was the hospital's mark-up on whatever it paid for the anti-venom. What made the charge noteworthy was not its size but the unwillingness of insurers to cover most of it. Most people don't care how big their medical bills are if they don't have to pay. I had a heath crisis last year, and my bills neared $1M. I have good insurance, so I didn't much care. That's one of the main reasons medical costs have crept so high. Most Americans are insured, and they don't care about charges they don't pay. So service providers raise their fees as high as they think they can get away with, and that usually means what insurers are willing to pay, plus extra that they demand from patients. (Patients wind up paying what they would have without insurance long ago, so it's as if they had no insurance.) Insurers are willing to pay a lot because expensive health care creates the demand for insurance. So everyone benefits, except for the poor people without good insurance.

That's the problem Obamacare was supposed to solve, but it won't. The fees for insurance through the exchanges will be so high most people won't be able to afford them. They'll pay fines instead - a tax on the poor!

A few years ago I fell on a NYC street and badly cut my lip on my own teeth. Someone called an ambulance, but the ambulance crew said they'd have to bill me $900 if they took me to the hospital a few blocks away. So I got a cab. At the Emergency Room, a doctor looked at my lip and said it would heal on its own; she gave me a tetanus shot. The bill? $1,200! My insurance paid about $950. I refused to pay the balance. Why did the hospital bill $1,200 for services that might have cost a couple hundred at a doctor's office? Why did the insurance company pay $950 of such an inflated bill? I read later that hospital emergency rooms are expensive to operate, so they pillage any patients with insurance. The insurers encourage this.

 

Love to...except I can't! I CANNOT get a catastrophic-care plan. It's not offered and I'm not sure it's legal!

 

Where is it not offered or "not legal"?

You live in the USA, don't you? Obamacare will allow it, so that isn't a problem.....

Maybe you need a new insurance agent.

 

My wife looked into it...and a true catastrophic-care policy does not meet the minimum standards for this state, and is therefore not available.

Anyone calling the health care system a "free market" with a straight face needs his head examined!

 

Well if the woman had been a true believer in accordance with Mark 16:17-18 the snake would not have bitten her. And if she had gotten sick the church could have anointed her with special oil while praying over her and she would have recovered (James 5:13-15).

She was probably against Obama care so the snake bite was her punishment. I think the snakes are going to be busy showing people the error of their ways. The Repub health care plan is to tell the sick to hurry up and die before they run up a large medical bill.

 

Your story is an example of poor decision-making. You did save money by taking a cab to the hospital. However, you could have waited to get the tetanus shot elsewhere. You didn't have to get it that instant at the hospital. And since you didn't get any other treatment you didn't have to go to the hospital in the first place. If you keep your shots current you won't go into a panic when something unexpected happens.

 

What bleeding heart libs fail to realize that all of the overcharges went to pay for deadbeats who walk away every day without paying anything.

The woman is paying for the next person who paying nothing at all.

 

I understand it is not easily made.
And has a poor shelf life.
The question is, if government regulators have licensed too few manufacturers
creating a Government manufactured Antivenin Monopoly.

Moi
It could happen

 

Yup...sign up for "Obamacare"...or don't.

 

When an accident happens there's no way of knowing how serious it is without a professional assessment. My shirt was covered in blood and my lip visibly split open. (That's why someone called an ambulance.) I thought I might need stitches. Nor am I doctor enough to know just when a tetanus shot is required. You suppose it was the tetanus shot that inflated the bill. I can't tell. I had no reason whatsoever to believe my brief visit would be so much more expensive than an office visit with a doctor. You're assuming I could or should have known.

 

She got bit, she received treatment, and she was billed. What's the problem here? Get on a payment plan and be grateful that medical advancements were available to save your life, and next time don't let your insurance lapse. Lesson learned.

 

The title of this article could have just as easily read, "Woman bit by venomous snake, life saved by modern medicine". This woman should be grateful she's not dead, instead she's complaining about having to pay for her own healthcare. What a country!

 

Yeah, as I said you NEED a new insurance agent!

You may not find a catastrophic care policy plan through an Exchange, but insurance companies are and will offer plans that meet the minimum standards directly through their agents to customers.

And a clue that maybe you didn't look or research very hard is the fact that the minimum Obamacare standards are the same for ALL states!

Here is what the big boys are doing. The insurance company usually pays the insurance agent's fee, so get a professional and quit listening to the Right IWng shicll blogs on the internet. They are NOT your "friend".

http://thetrustadvisor.com/news/hsa

 

You didn't read and understand my post, did you. (That is not a question.)