Slashdot Mirror
A Crowdfunding Site To Help Pay Patients' Medical Bills
Lucas123 writes: A start-up financial services company called Someone With Group has just completed a pilot of a crowdfunding service that allows hospitals to set up campaigns to help patients pay their medical expenses. The website, which is HIPAA compliant in terms of privacy and security, allows patients facing medical debts to inform family, friends and even strangers of their need for funds versus flowers or cards. The crowdfunding service also addresses a systemic debt issue in the healthcare industry. Each year, the U.S. healthcare industry writes off $40 billion in bad debt from unpaid medical bills. "Then you consider that $6 billion is spent on cards and flowers for patients every year. Why can't we redirect that money and put it into a debit instrument restricted to medical spending only?" said Jagemann-Bane, CEO of Someone With Group. One hospital group, Pinnacle Health Systems in Harrisburg, Penn., routinely writes off $40 million to $50 million a year in unpaid medical bills from patients. The hospital set up a crowdfunding site via Someone With Group and so far has seen a couple dozen patients use it. ... After a one-year pilot of the crowdfunding service, patients who've used it on average have raised $2,315.
I suspect this is the "replace" portion of the Republican plan to dismantle the ACA.
I've got a better idea: Single payer.
I CAN'T keep my insurance plan even though I like it?!?!?!
I CAN'T keep my doctor even though I like him??!?!!?
Obamacare is NOT saving money?
Obamacare is NOT making healthcare cheaper?
Damn - we were LIED to!
On EVERYTHING Obamacare was supposed to do.
The only one who didn't lie was Nancy Pelosi when she said they had to pass Obamacare to find out what's in it.
Or more accurately, where it'd be stuffed into us - BEND OVER while the insurance companies get all kinds of legally-forced new customers and bailout provisions...
Just have medicare for all and get rid of the overpriced priced bills that have A single aspirin for $25
Does it ever occur to you, that before the figures are tallied up, they are already vastly over inflated to what the rest of the world pays for medical products and services?
It is a sorry state of affairs when people have to effectively beg for money to not be crippled by medical debt. The rich can go wherever they want, the middle class barely scrape by and the poorer people never stand a chance in such a system.
The problem isn't that these people got sick. It's that they have incurred these radical medical bills as a result of contracts between the hospitals and the insurance companies to intentionally drive up the prices. This is the definition of collusion and for the insurance companies it borders on racketeering. Every hospital in the US is just as guilty as every medical insurance broker and until we call them on their shit you're only going to make things worse by enabling them.
But who cares as long as you can go to bed feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, right?
OR we could simply give everyone free primary care. At the local clinic it cost me about $100-120 cash to see a physician (less for a PA or NP). This isn't some no-name crap clinic either; this is an ivy league affiliated institution. Where do people with no money or bad credit go for care? That's right, the emergency room where walking in the door with a runny nose costs $500-1000. This is where a great deal of that bad medical debt that gets written off comes from. I could go on forever but I'll give myself an aneurysm... we have so much administrative overhead and middle men it's ridiculous.
While this is an interesting concept, I can't help but feel like this props up our predatory privatized health system which focuses more on profits than it does on treatment. If we're all going to pay for each other's medical bills via private insurance and crowdfunding, why not change to a public system rather than expect sick people to become beggars of their family and friends?
Only in the US would something like this be required.
Please pick one of the healthcare models here in Europe instead - around here we don't consider the value of a person's life to be based on how rich they are.
That's around $18 per man/woman/child in the U.S. I think someone is exaggerating to help their cause.
This is why I love living in the UK and will defend the NHS until my death.
Here in the UK I don't have to worry about the cost of my healthcare, and if I want it quicker or I want a nicer bed then I always have the option of paying privately anyway.
This is also why Jeremy Hunt can fuck off and keep his slimy mitts to himself.
or you could get with the rest of the civilized world and not have health care a for profit venture.
"BUTBUTBUT THAT'S SOCIALIST!"
-Every freedumtard ever.
Socialist healthcare is provably better in every single way.
Fact is, there is no private healthcare model in the top 10.
All of them are socialist healthcare systems.
wow! i never sease to be amazed at how broken USA is.. that you have to crowdfund when you get cancer... and now someone figured out how to make 7,5% extra of this. they cud have kept it at 2% atleast or something.
I think the card and flower vendors might have something to say about this plan
This wouldn't be as big of an issue if you people didn't rise up in arms against "Obama care". Oh and the fact that your dumbsh*t politicians are in the pockets of the big pharma so they don't regulate the price of stuff...
It appears that the healthcare industry takes in over 3 trillion a year. 40 billion is what 1.3 percent? Maybe I missed a zero or something but it doesn't sound like it is a terribly big problem.
How about a Web site that lists the hospital's prices for each procedure and their doctor's malpractice record so people can shop around for the best price?
Why do we even need this? First, everyone has insurance now. That's the Law, dammit. A Law that we fought hard for. Second, healthcare is affordable. That's also the Law. It's right there in the title: The *Affordable* Care Act.
I call this whole thing another BS profit move by the big greedy hospitals and wealthy doctors.
Americans pay more for drugs than do most people around the world... that is indifferent to subsides.
FDA regulations to say nothing of bans on imports of foreign drugs inflate American prices.
Beyond that, a huge portion of hospital bills do not go to doctors or medicine or medical equipment. A huge portion goes to administration. Simplifying medical paper work and streamlining hospital labor could radically lower costs.
We have test cases where shift nurses bypassed most of this stuff which had a dramatic impact on costs.
Hospital bills are going up faster than inflation for the SAME treatment. You can't blame this on insurance companies because the costs are if anything even higher for those without insurance. The costs are high because the hospitals are billing at those rates.
Get the costs where they should be and the bills will be affordable - period.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I'm not sure how the UK system compares to Canada, but here our public health care system is a disaster. None of this may apply to the UK so please don't take offence if I'm wrong, but in Canada they should call public health care the public murderers.
People die in our ERs while waiting for attention. If you do have to go to the ER you can expect a 10-15 hour wait easily. One time my grandmother spend 20 hours in an ambulance in a hospital parking lot because the hospital's ER was full. That also means they were paying ambulance staff to sit around doing nothing for that time. My wife was in the hospital and spent 30 hours in a hallway getting treatment (IV drips connected, etc), because they had no where else to put her.
A friend's mother was diagnosed with cancer and told there was no treatment and she had less than a year to live. Her kids took her to the states, spent $300,000 on treatment for her. And now 10 years later, she's still going strong.
I would much rather have a US style system. Why should I have to suffer with crappy medical service when I can afford better. I work hard, I save a lot of my money for the future. Why should the government say I don't deserve to spend that money on better treatment than people who blow their money on crap or don't work at all?
This is so completely and utterly backwards.
Aren't we all supposed to have quality insurance now? Why hasn't this problem gone away? Why are patients still being refused treatment because of economic circumstance?
I can't even.
Sentence: I officially degrade the USA to the status of 2nd world country.
But remember, as a UK citizen cared for under the NHS, you just better make sure you don't get cancer. And to anybody who wants to say anything about that, do a bit of research first. The UK is critical about the quality of UKs cancer care.
Medical care should be a right, not a for profit (or non-profit) business. Perhaps if we stopped interfering in other countries (going to war on false pretenses) we might have money to spend on medical care. How about medical training being paid for so that doctors getting out of medical schools aren't swamped with debt and have to charge higher prices. How about not buying the next greatest non-working weapon system and putting the money into health care. How many people are killed by stress from medical costs compared to the number killed by a terrorist attack in the US? What a fu***d system.
Trying to fix the broken process by setting fundraising site is comparable to the ransom collection by the pirates of the seas, figuratively speaking. Slashdot article mentioned this arrangement because this site collected $2,315 on average per person. Clearly, the concept was executed by the layer of society, who believes in Obamacare, basic income, and free healthcare. Money are collected by the people who have a network anyway. For people without the network this website is not a big help.
As far as strangers involved: eventually the demand will dwarf all the anonymous donors...
It is a common knowledge, that pricing of uninsured patient services is outrageous and is inflated, like 10 to 20 times inflated, on what the reasonable or "Medicaid" rates are.
Writing off those billions is merely an accounting trick, that achieves the following goals:
1. Allows keeping price lists in obscurity and for different arrangement there is a different price. NB: same person, but with different insurance card or no card at all will be getting different rates. Which tells a lot what exactly is driving the process. Bottom line, every hospital is keeping full price pricelist which is used when people who, ordinarily, can afford the least, get medical services. This price list is public, and, historically, has also been used to confuse the competitors (of course everyone knows multiple pricelists today).
2. Writing off the debts allows for the hospital to operate in a loss. Reality is that those original billings are not based on a reasonable cost, as such writing off of the losses (for provisions for noncollectable debts) is also not a real economic loss. There are some hospitals in lower socio-economic areas who start believing this accounting and economic model, by admitting a lot of non-paying customers and not having robust finance division. Those hospitals usually go bankrupt or verge on it. Again, incurring accounting losses is an outcome of management decisions on how to price, how to sell and up sell medical services and mix them with private insurance billings. All of this done in order to get coveted financial statements demonstrating poor state of affairs and financial loss, claiming non-profit status (yet paying exorbitant salaries to certain people in healthcare industry) and making money to the pharmaceutical companies and other suppliers.
The only solution to reducing the prices is complete deregulation and liberalization of the industry. In deregulated market, such fundraisers sites would be valuable if not indispensable tool. ...Will not happen in my lifetime.
Pretty much. I'm a wage slave^H^H^H^H^Hworking professional. I just paid, what was it, $16 for my meds the other day after traveling 150 miles away, and I still don't know whether my insurance will even cover the office visit or if I'm going to have to pay $100+ out of pocket despite having insurance. Granted, that does turn out to be less expensive than my previous source. But!
I know somebody with medicaid. She can see a local doctor, and prescriptions are completely covered. She pays no premium and has no income.
There is something horribly wrong with this picture.
In saner societies this service called universal healthcare and it is run by the government.
But you're in the UK and have never used the US system. How long does it take to get a appointment at the local surgery. Now add the weeks or months it takes to see the specialist you're referred to. Now add many more months to find a slot to be treated.
The NHS being great is a myth. It takes forever to get seen, scanned and treated. The singular benefit is you don't have to lose your life's wealth paying for it. You've been massively taxed for it up front.
Compare to the US. Call, seen within an hour or two. Specialist can be the same day, as they tend to have preferred suppliers/services in town. Need an opt, how's next week.
I've lived both sides of the Atlantic, and let me tell you, the US medical is superior in every way with the exception of it being all about the money, and private insurance doing all they can to avoid paying.
And as to your "private" option bullshit. Guess what? When they're over booked for operation type or birth, you get told to fuck off back to the NHS, but you get a small refund on your BUPA premium. Been there, done that, seen it with friends and colleagues.
My mother suffers from Chromic Lymphatic Leukaemia, started treatment within two weeks of being diagnosed in 2005, received all the drugs necessary and went into remission. Ten years on, she still has regular checkups, tests and support from the same doctors.
All for free.
Don't think that the few cases that come up in the news are indicative of all cases.
If insurance companies actually would pay for the bills, hospitals would not have to resort to this crap. I agree with the single payer though.
This is nothing new - we used to call it charity, and an event centered around raising money and asking for help from strangers was known as a 'benefit', crowdsourcing is just a generational term for something that has long been. We didn't used to have to codify things to understand them or participate. Basically what has happened in the 21st century is that individuals and companies have devised ways to exploit such activities for their own 'benefit' ;), through data collection, skimming off the top, or userous interpretation of law (or outright bribery to create laws that suit them better!). It's everywhere from non-profits to startups.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I consider myself very lucky being an European citizen, even with other problems that we may have. I don't know how a country with this problem can consider itself 1st World.
May the Free Market heal you...
In the UK, Accident and Emergency has a 4 hour waiting restriction on patients - if the patient has not been seen and treatment is not underway within 4 hours of them presenting at A&E, it becomes a major incident that needs to be investigated.
We do have an issue at several hospitals currently where there has been an upsurge in breaches in waiting time where A&E departments have reached capacity, but having private hospitals wouldnt help there as its a max capacity issue brought around by a step change in public behaviour rather than departments being underfunded.
No, a cold is not a valid reason to come to A&E. No, an ingrowing toe nail is not a valid reason to come to A&E. If you come to A&E drunk and need to sleep it off, you are a fuck tard because you are now blocking an A&E bed because you cannot legally be discharged.
If you are awaiting an operation, you are low risk and the waiting list is too long, then the NHS will pay for you to have the operation in a private hospital just to cut the waiting list.
It's not meant to help the patient. It's meant to help the hospital. When a hospital provides you with a financial aid counselor, you know something is wrong.
About an industry that can write off $40 billion and still make massive profits.
It's not like getting all $6 billion of our 'card and flower' money is going to make them drop prices one dime.
But you're in the UK and have never used the US system. How long does it take to get a appointment at the local surgery.
If I phone in the morning and it sounds important usually a couple of hours. If I say something like "can I review my hayfever tablets, I hear that there are some newer and better drugs", then its days, sometimes into next week.
Now add the weeks or months it takes to see the specialist you're referred to. Now add many more months to find a slot to be treated.
The NHS being great is a myth. It takes forever to get seen, scanned and treated.i
Again, it depends. My wife had a clicking and achy knee and waited two weeks to be seen and another 10 to be treated. My brother had a small stroke and, wha given an MRI and a treatment within hours.
And as to your "private" option bullshit. Guess what? When they're over booked for operation type or birth, you get told to fuck off back to the NHS, but you get a small refund on your BUPA premium. Been there, done that, seen it with friends and colleagues.
That concurs with what my dad says, that the best use of a company healthcare plan is to get a nicer room in an NHS hospital.
My grandmother had no difficulty getting care for cancer very quickly.
Appointment at local surgery? Up to two weeks if its non-urgent, same day if its urgent.
Consultant appointment? Again, depends on urgency - same week for some things, 18 weeks for non-urgent.
For example, my wife had a stroke scare the day before Christmas eve, she experienced dysphasia which passed after 10 - 15 minutes. We rang the GP the next morning, within an hour she was in a clinic in the hospital, MRI, CT, blood tests all underway. Follow up MRI this week.
My mother in law needed a growth removing from her face - 8 weeks from initial GP appointment to post-op follow up.
I had my ears pinned back when I was about 10 years old - that took 17 weeks from initial GP appointment to op.
Wife broke her foot stepping off a curb 3 years ago - A&E visit took 4 hours, including x-rays and fitting for a boot.
As for my private option "bullshit", if the private company isn't delivering then why are you paying them in the first place? You also don't need to pay a BUPA premium in order to go private - book your own appointment at a Spire hospital, pay the fees (£3,500 for a hip replacement, £495 for a growth removal) and do it direct. What makes you think its going to be any different it there wasn't an NHS alternative?
*rolls eyes*
"Old man yells at systemd"
A person might just need the comfort and peace of mind while they're sick or injured, thinking of the financial aspect is probably only stressful and counterproductive to their recovery.
A 4 hour wait for accident and emergency... and you'll defend that till your death? Seems like that may not be to long anyway.
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
I know, let's pool everyone's money and have everyone pay for each other's heath care... like having insurance, you pay just incase something goes wrong... or have everyone pay on their taxes and call it a free healthcare system... but that is what communists do!
I've supported the idea of something like the UK system for years. But people in the USA will need to get over a few things first. The biggest preconception people have is that under single payer, they will get the same treatment, but for free.
Unfortunately, we insist on deluxe treatment (under threat of malpractice lawsuit for not providing the best care possible). That's not going to be easy for people to give up. Free, they can get behind. Not getting the nice bed in a private room, not so much.
I try to explain to people that basic free healthcare is cheap and attainable. But any universal healthcare is not going to be healthcare like they imagine. Go for it, but with open eyes.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I do not support this project or the idea.
The figure "the U.S. healthcare industry writes off $40 billion in bad debt from unpaid medical bills" is disingenuous.
Because healthcare insurance pays all its bills [citation needed], then unpaid bills are only payable by uninsured folk. This represents the retail price, which is orders of magnitude higher than the average selling price (the price health insurance pays).
I do not recognize the authority of the healthcare industry to charge ruinously higher prices to people not having health insurance [legal rationale pending]. Therefore, I cannot support the repayment of unpaid medical bills. Instead, I support paying reasonable fees for services rendered and then using bankruptcy (and "use the law") to escape ruinous healthcare debts.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
I think the NHS is far better than the US system for most people, *however* the above doesn't mention one unfortunate reality of that 4-hour limit (at least in my experience):
You will be evaluated and treatment will begin within 4 hours... but the "evaluation" may be literally just an on-call doc evaluating you to make sure it'd be safe for you to wait longer. And treatment beginning? Well... treatment begins with an evaluation...
In other words, they can and do game the stats when necessary.
Regional differences. Yes, there are differences between populated versus not. Your generalization doesn't really apply to the major centres and their catchman (sp?) areas.
Yes, I would. If you can wait 4 hours to be seen, is it really an emergency?
Go in with a cardiac arrest and you will be seen straight away.
Go in with a broken nose, you wait your turn.
A&E departments are staffed independently of the rest of the hospital, so there is no such thing as an "on call doc" in A&E - when your turn to be seen by a doctor comes up, you are assigned to a bay in the A&E department and you sit in that bay until you either move on to another department (AMU for admissions, X-ray for x-rays etc etc) or receive your treatment and are discharged. You are not sent back to the waiting room to be called back through.
If hospitals gamed the system as you describe, no hospital would breach the 4 hour limit, and yet we hear about breaches regularly. So the evidence is that hospitals are not gaming the system.
Yes, and this helps lower medical costs for people who DO pay for their medical care. This is just shifting the burden to people who involuntarily pay the costs to people who do. I don't have a problem with that.
Collectively empathizing with people who have fallen on hard times due to sickness, and helping each other out by small donations to help pay those bills? So basically it's health insurance, except it's one that the poor can actually afford. Won't be nearly as effective because it isn't mandatory though.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Does this really work?
Obamacare was forced through on a perfectly partisan aligned vote, against the will of the majority of Americans... But they rammed it through. It cost them the House, the Senate, enormous number of seats in the State and local governments. It left us with a disposed and imputent President... But they did it.
And still we have this? Odd... We were promised you would be able to keep your Doctor and that the uninsured would become insured.
Suckers.
sounds like the next time you have a broken bone your bankrupt!!!
bankrupt or 4hour wait, i'll take the wait!!
Insurance companies don't get rich writing checks.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
The odds of any one person ever having an expensive medical emergency are very low. It is like winning the lottery in reverse. We're going to charge you taxes on your ficticious lottery winnings just in case you do win someday, but obviously most people never "win."
Yes, sometimes errors are made, same as in private hospitals.
Problem is at the moment the Tory government is deliberately using it's close contacts with Murdock controlled media to make the UK NHS to be useless for "political ideology", as in if we can get people to believe that the NHS is bad, then we can convince them to let us sell it off to private companies. Jeremy Hunt (sorry for the spelling error I know his surname starts with a "C") does not hide the fact he want this to occur.
This is why I love living in the UK and will defend the NHS until my death.
Here in the UK I don't have to worry about the cost of my healthcare, and if I want it quicker or I want a nicer bed then I always have the option of paying privately anyway.
I'm a fan of the two tier system as well. Assured basic coverage from a national system and the option to pay extra if you want a different service level. The big thing would be to get all the non-emergency patients out of the emergency room and into the system where they belong; since ER care is probably the most expensive in the hospital. Of course, it's not just a simple as offering free care elsewhere but ensuring they can navigate the system and have a way to get to the appointment; otherwise they'll still go to the ER because it's convenient, free to them, and they know they'll eventually be seen.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I know somebody with medicaid. She can see a local doctor, and prescriptions are completely covered. She pays no premium and has no income.
There is something horribly wrong with this picture.
People will debate "wrongness," but in that situation, you are buying her medicaid for her. And depending on where she lives, she may have a real problem finding a doctor willing to take her on as a patient, because he loses money (not just less income, but actual negative cash flow) with every hour spent with each such patient.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Just have medicare for all and get rid of the overpriced priced bills that have A single aspirin for $25
You hit on one of the numbers behind the $40 billion in unpaid bills. Hospitals jack up bills because they have to cover the costs on un or under insured patients; so you see $25 aspirins. Insurance companies pay no where near those prices; for example when I look at a bill a $500.00 bill becomes about $125 once all the negotiated prices are reflected in the bill. Hospitals have the high rack rates to try cover costs from those who can pay and don't have insurance. Even someone who doesn't have insurance wouldn't necessarily pay those rates either; an MD I knew, pre ACA, would negotiate medical bills prior to entering the hospital and pay up front in cash, resulting in a significant discount, for pre-planned care. The MD carried a high deductible insurance plan for an unplanned catastrophic event, just in case. Of course, it helped to know what insurance companies paid so you could negotiate around that price while offering a no hassle payment up front to avoid all the paperwork that goes into a claim.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The rest of the big boy and girl countries have figured this stuff out, and the US is reduced to begging.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
so what you are saying is the USA has lots of doctors sat doing fuck all, waiting for some one rich enough for an appointment!!
And the aspirin (or equivalent) will cost you $0.25.
20 hours wait in ER? People like you abuse system, but thanks god people in hospitals are aware of that, and let you wait for 20 hours, they should let you wait 60 hours so you don't pull this shit next time when you have a light headache.
Go to US if you do not like Canadian system.
I was in hospital 3 times each time ER, once car accident, got my MRI done in 30 min, stitches etc all done on the spot, then spend few days in hospital. second time bike accident, open broken hand and, surgery in 3 hours on the weekend. Third time heart issue: got instantaneous help saving my life. Friend of my with Aneurysm open heart surgery 15 min after transported to hospital, saved his life.
Canadian healthcare system is one of the best in the world for those that relay need it.
Why not move to the great Europe than? Why force your ideas on people who don't want them and won't vote for them when you can have what you want today with a simple airplane trip? Are you that much of an egomaniac that you think you know best for everyone else and they are too stupid to know what is best for them?
Also, stop illegal immigration first. Why should we pay for medical care for all of Mexico? Healthcare is far more difficult than securing a border and the government is unable to do that.
It may be because the quoted 40billion dollars quoted are based on price sheets for hostipals and doctors of which insurance companies/medicare actually only pays a very very small percentage -- the only time those numbers are actually used to close accounts is if they land on people to pay. In fact most times a 40,000.00 bill on rate sheet billing would be discounted down to 4,000.00 if the person just called and worked with the hospital.
The issue here is that the system is broken with this huge rates because hospitals have to max out their rate sheet costs across the board because they need to negotiate a huge discount with each insurance company for services and it gives them a larger pool to pull back from.
It is disingenuous to drop those costs as deficits -- they were never meant to be charged/received; but only to negotiate the broken system.
A one payer system would kill off this billing game.
A big issue being seen by GP's today is that there has been a loss of home-knowledge about illnesses in newer generations - an illness which would have put you in bed with chicken soup, a hot water bottle and a good book 30 years ago now necessitates a visit to the GP for antibiotics (even though they don't work against viral illnesses, as any doctor will tell you) or A&E if the GP surgery is closed.
One of the quickest growing group of users of the NHS is in those under 30 - despite the UK population gradually moving to an older average age.
Why? Because newer generations have abdicated responsibility for their health and well being to the healthcare system - just as practically no one under 40 changes their cars oil or lightbulbs these days, instead abdicating their cars care to a garage once or twice a year, or Halfords when a bulb blows.
Younger generations are more focused on life itself rather than maintenance issues, and thats seen a huge increase in the use of the NHS along the way.
Did you completely misread GP intentionally or are you just uneducated and illiterate?
Why not move to the great Europe than?
Please, may I?! Are you willing to pay for me to move over to say Germany or the Netherlands where my ancestors most likely came from and get established?
I would hop on the plane today, but being a wage slave, I simply don't have the resources to escape. I could vacation over there, sure, but how long will it take me to become fluent again and start having an income on my own? I will admit, it's my fault as well. I stupidly dug roots in a backwater state in a crumbling empire without understanding that what I've been facing is not the norm for the rest of the developed world or even in a general sense the rest of the USA.
I am curious if my recent difficulties obtaining health care would be enough to qualify me as a refugee instead of an economic migrant. Since I'm mostly German, would there be a problem with me saying, "My ancestors fucked up. Please accept my apologies and take me back in."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And you only hear of the few extreme cases. The wait times for the ER are long in Canada because too many people go there for things that they should be going to a clinic for and so they wait. And the Ontario government isn't helping things with this. My family doctor is part of a clinic and if I don't go to that clinic or the ER then my doctor gets a penalty. So if I have a bad cold that I'm worried that may be turning into bronchitis and the clinic doesn't have any openings today or isn't running their walk-in that day I'm supposed to go to the ER. It's not an emergency. It's something that I want to prevent from becoming one and the proper place for me to go is a clinic. The few times that I've had to go to the ER I've been seen within a short period of time.
I have heard about people that have had to wait in corridors and it's terrible. But it's caused due to a lack of beds in other wards in the hospital. Part of that problem is that there are too many patients in there that should be in long term care facilities.
The doctor bills an uninsured patient gets have no relationship to the contracted amounts that would actually be paid for the same procedure (company plus patient copay) by an insurance company or government assistance. Indeed, the payment for a given procedure can be wildly different among insurance plans, even from one company.
Hospital bills are even less related to the actual amounts paid for procedures. No, your insurance company is not really paying $25 for each aspirin you got during your stay. That line is in the "chargemaster" bill in hopes of trapping the occasional hapless foreign tourist - who will hate America for the rest of his life, but that's not your problem as a hospital accountant. Here's the story of a visiting Norwegian whose country was billed $143,000 for treating a rattlesnake bite:
http://www.10news.com/news/-14...
The biggest thing in US vs Europe is tax rate. The effective federal tax rate in the US is 25% for those that can't (really) afford either ObamaCare or private insurance. In the UK it's 45%. If you sink 20% of your income into private insurance, you can pay for very good private insurance in the US.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
That America is fundamentally broken...
... hospitals just *COMPLETELY MAKE UP* any charges they like for the un-insured.
1-out-of-10 un-insured patients will pay off their entire debt.
2-out-of-10 un-insured patients will almost bankrupt themselves trying to pay off their debt.
And what about the other 7 out of 10 un-insured patients with huge debts to pay?
Well, the hospital made enough money from the other 3 patients to cover their costs for all 10 patients and make a big fat profit.
It's just disgusting.
This is SO full of sh*t. Yes, during an outbreak of c. difficile or flu, the hospital is running over capacity. So you end up on a gurney in the hallway in ER. But you still get the treatment you need, and when a room opens up, it's not left empty.
Your grandmother could have asked to be transferred to another hospital. Problem solved.
If more people didn't go directly to an ER for minor things, but went to one of the clinics, that would go a long way to solving the problem of waiting times.
Oh, btw, if you don't have either $300,000 or some form of insurance to cover your cost in the US, you will not get the equivalent treatment that you would havel with the money or coverage available. Minimal treatment, and out you go.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
We just opened up a new hospital with 500 beds - all single room, with larger rooms and picture windows in each room, soundproofed, state of the art equipment, The idea is that by treating people more effectively in comfortable rooms that are large enough to accommodate family and friends, patient treatment will be more effective. And yes, we have single-payer universal healthcare.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Lookit that: an anonymous commenter dissing Canadian public health care!! Sigh...
I'm Canadian, I occasionally use Medicare and I'm satisfied with it. Yes, outpatient service in hospitals is nearly always slow. But based on personal and other people's experience, real emergencies are generally taken care of quickly.
When/where it's available, avoid outpatient service by using local, smaller health clinics. They're generally fast, and often take appointments so you don't have to wait 4-5 hours at the hospital. When they needed medical care, friends and parents were generally well taken care of and in a timely manner, at no cost to themselves, even when the medical procedure was very expensive.
Yes, people have died in Canadian ER and outpatient waiting areas. A lot more people have died, in the American system, because they couldn't afford medical care at all, and because of its profit-driven exigencies. See here "Is US Health Really the Best in the World?", Barbara Starfield, MD, MPH, from the JAMA: http://www.jhsph.edu/research/... Link goes to a downloadable PDF.
If you wanted to see how most/nearly-all Canadians feel about Medicare, just run stand for office and have a plank in your platform stating that you want to dismantle Medicare and switch to an American-style system.
Even Harper wouldn't have dared to that.
If the DNR was legally executed, then this is Medicare fraud. Did your family report this to the government or even to the local media?
I've often wondered if some kind of personal bank account/crowdfunding system for healthcare would be more appropriate than the nightmare of a system we're currently being saddled with. Your average person has around $10k or more of their money go towards the healthcare/insurance industry per year whether they use any medical care or not. Accumulated over a lifetime that is a third to half a million dollars. Your average person isn't going to use that much over their lifetime. They could donate some of it towards people with major conditions and bypass the insurance industry. Not sure I'd want a hospital running the crowdfunding system though as most have a well defined history of inflating bills to pad their bottom line.
Where do you think the $25 aspirin came from? Medicare publishes how much they are willing to pay for a service code. The clinic then establishes a "cost" of double what Medicare will pay. Then your insurance company steps in and says "$50 for aspirin is insane, we'll only pay $35."
See that "Preview" button?
It's because of Republicans.
We can't even maintain our water infrastructure because it's more morally desirable to give 1%s a pass on taxes.
Poisoning the poor with lead is just a happy side-effect.
You are talking about Flint, MI. Local politicians made the decisions that lead to the poisoning. All Democrats.
America has the worst health care on the planet. One bit of bad luck and you lose everything you ever owned.
You really should look at how civilised Euorpean countries do health care.
Yes, and that clock starts ticking when the patient gets out of the ambulance (or otherwise enters the Emergency Room). As a result, there are stories about hospitals in the UK where the ambulances are backed up waiting for hours for the hospital to allow them to unload the patient into the Emergency Room.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Why is something wrong? When someone wants to make use of a large staff of highly trained professionals and millions of dollars worth of labs and equipment, but hasn't made any arrangements to actually afford all of that, it's not going to be a financially rosy scenario. Just like if that person accidentally burns down half of their house and then arranges for the services of an architect, demolition crew, and a homebuilder's crew, equipment, and materials to fix it back up ... but hasn't made any arrangements to be able to actually pay for that.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yes, I would. If you can wait 4 hours to be seen, is it really an emergency?
Go in with a cardiac arrest and you will be seen straight away.
Go in with a broken nose, you wait your turn.
So then the rule isn't 4 hours? Why does the person with the heart-attack get preferential treatment? It's either 4 hours or it isn't. Which is it?
When you take your car in to be serviced, the law requires that you be given a binding estimate of the costs involved before any work is done, and the mechanic is forbidden to exceed that estimate (within a small margin, like 10%) without getting your permission first. Mechanics who violate that law go to jail. Why do we not have those same kinds of consumer protections in the health care industry?
Pharmaceutical companies routinely charge people in the U.S. more for their products than in other countries, such that a drug which costs $100,000 for a full course of treatment in the U.S. costs only $5,000 in India, or scorpion antivenom that is billed at $40,000 a vial in the U.S. is available for $100 a vial in Mexico. Yet, if you were to go outside the country, buy those drugs, and bring them back to the U.S., you would go to prison, thanks to a law bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical industry, a blatant infringement on the Doctrine of First Sale (which is that, once you buy something, it is yours to do with as you wish). The Supreme Court recently ruled (Kirtsaeng vs. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 568 U.S. ___ (2013), Docket No. 11-697) that this practice was impermissible in the textbook industry. Why, then, should it be permissible in the pharmaceutical industry?
If we were to get rid of all the special exemptions that the health care industry has under law, and force it to abide by the existing law of the land (such as the Sherman, Clayton, and Robinson-Patman Acts), including prison time for health care and insurance executives where applicable, the cost of health care would drop by 80% or more. Most people could then pay cash for their health care needs for about the same as they pay in a deductible today...meaning "health insurance" would no longer be necessary (except for "catastropic care" policies for unforeseen circumstances, which would cost about the same as your car insurance). Some form of Medicare and Medicaid would still be required for the truly less fortunate, but would cost a lot less. Obamacare would no longer be needed and could be trivially repealed. The economy would experience a massive boost because health care would no longer be draining it, and every government budget deficit problem, Federal, state, and local, would be instantly solved. (Leading to secondary effects such as stopping the erosion of your purchasing power because the government keeps "printing money" to fund its deficit spending.)
Be who you are...and be it in style!
So in the US, healthcare costs about $3T per year. The article says they have to write off about $40B in bad debt each year. That's 1.3% in bad debt. Boo hoo. I think they'll just have to learn to live without that $40B.
...then you must not keep up with the news then.
There's restrictions on cancer drugs due to budget restrictions.
Doctors threatening to go on strike over pay cuts and work hours.
Discussions about rationing of simple orthopedic surgeries or limiting them based on some yet to be defined "merit" criteria.
In general, the order of the day seems to be budget cuts and rationing.
Right now, the NHS is actually more of a cautionary tale.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You must look at total tax rates in the US and Europe NOT JUST FEDERAL tax rates.
It's not even Medicaid. Medicare also has this problem.
I'm really amused by any American that wants to embrace socialized medicine. Sure, the Germans might be able to pull it off but when has the US ever done well implementing welfare?
Do they not know any poor people or old people or veterans? Clearly not.
Just about any welfare program that existed in the US ever has had to deal with claw backs from the GOP. Even if it started out well it eventually devolved into something awful as soon as something like 20/20 started running articles about fraud and abuse. All of the state workers comp systems were gutted after that.
You do NOT want to admit to a workplace injury. If one happens, say you were engaging in some hobby at home. You are MUCH better off with evil private insurance based healthcare.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
And if you self pay because you don't have coverage - because you can't afford (say) 1200 per month for premiums despite the so-called Affordable Care Act and pay the tax penalty - you pay $50 per aspirin. I'm not arguing the ACA versus not but just that folks who dont' have coverage pay "list prices" and folks with coverage pay "discount prices."
Insurance companies write plenty of checks.
They are generally evil but they are more than willing to pay claims. Medical providers engage in abusive billing practices that are just bad enough not to be blatantly illegal. There's also a fair amount of genuine fraud as well.
There are a number of things that could stand reform here and Obamacare completely ignored them.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If you self pay in my state the hospital can only collect as much as it would have collected from insurance.
I can also neither confirm nor deny the urban legend about this $50 aspirin as medical bills are not sufficiently detailed to validate this. This may or may not be true but anyone that's repeating it is really just pulling it out their ass.
Consider both of these issues that should have been addressed by the ACA but weren't.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The biggest obstacle is the insurance companies, their lobbyists are far too influential to let this happen.
And paper processing plant employees and lumberjacks and the people planting and caring for the trees that will one day be turned in to a greeting card that reads "I heard you were sick. Get well and I hope you have insurance." with a picture of a sad puppy with a hot water bottle on his head and a thermometer sticking out of his mouth. Wow! These things just write themselves.
Great.....anecdotes....no one cares. Go away, republican AC.
with a simple airplane trip?
I would love to move there and I'm trying to but it really isn't as easy as an airplane trip, fool. Getting a job in a country where you are not a native speaker, getting a work visa and all the other friction of moving across an imaginary border are ridiculous.
Why should we pay for medical care for all of Mexico?
Because Reagan and the conservatives voted this into law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
NZ is the same.
The TPPA better not screw with it.
To be blunt, if you aren't having a genuine emergency then you are a MORON for going to the ER. It's common knowledge that any ER runs on a priority queue. It's NOT "first come first served". The people that ARE actually dying have a very justifiable medical priority. So the fools and hypocondriacs just have to wait.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Unless you've got real numbers about people dying for lack of money in America, it's just mindless political propaganda.
On the other hand, I personally know someone that was killed by the Canadian medical system. He didn't receive what would have been considered the standard of care in America. His condition was not properly diagnosed and what they missed initially ended up killing him.
He was a victim of miserly lab work, the flip side of the "over diagnosis" bogeyman.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I use to live in Germany and loved the single payer system there.
I would call up for an appointment and would have it that week. Doctors would take me in at lunch, or whatever time I wanted.
I do need to explain I was not on the German single payer system. When I would first called up and told them I had an issue,non life threatening it would be a few weeks, however after they would check my record and see I was not using the single payer system I would be accommodated in the next day or so. I would go in by pass all the people who had been there for a while, get the work done an be out why they were still sitting there. The system payer system is great, as long as I am not on it.
It all depends on how ill you are (or think you are...)
Here are the options.
In short, if it's urgent, go to a walk in centre or A&E who will see you pretty-much immediately (as a triage), do whatever scans and tests are required, and if necessary admit you to hospital.
Otherwise for seemingly less urgent stuff, you can go and see your GP (you might need to make an appointment),
The GP may deal with the issue directly, or they might refer you to a consultant (in which case there may be a delay as you move up their list.) Or they might tell you to go straight to A&E.
But here's the thing - it'll be exactly the same consultant, and quite probably in the same hospital, as you would have seen if you had gone to A&E in the first place (if you were ill enough.)
In short, delays, when they occur, are mainly due to the triage process.
And there's always the option of going private (either paying directly or through insurance); you still have to go via your GP (for non-A&E issues) but you can jump the consultant's list. (Yes, the same consultant, but this time in a private hospital for a day or two a week.)
There's no benefit to be gained from private health insurance for genuine emergencies; if you had a heart attack in a private hospital they would take you to the NHS A&E. But you might have a nicer room, and better food.
Forget about Fox News. The "inconvenient facts" that I bring up are reported by the BBC. Not exactly a Tory stronghold.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
10-15 hours? Then it must have been non-life threatening. Many people use the ER as their doctor.
Our daughter had a UTI a few weeks back. We went in as she was in great pain and we were back in the car not an hour later after tests, diagnosis, and prescription.
> I really don't think you do, but hey, it's your dollar. Do what you want with it.
Consider it a basic IT capacity planning exercise.
Do you want your servers to always being run balls to the walls at 100% capacity or do you want some left over so that your systems run better, you can handle a sudden spike, or even some limited future growth.
Now consider that this exercise is not just about some consume product or other thing that really has no significance in the grand scheme of things. Consider that this is your life. This is your worthless ass that's on the line. It's not just some Koreans in some internet cafe that can't get their gaming fix. It's your life.
I would rather not have my life hang in the balance because some bean counter thinks that a little excess capacity is unacceptable.
Been there, done that. Love not having to worry about that sort of thing. Much less distressing than the whole "can I pay" thing.
That's the problem with socialism. It doesn't matter if you are a "rich man" or not. Sh*t's just not there to be bought.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Indeed, about the consequences of electing Tories.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
> Please, may I?! Are you willing to pay for me to move over to say Germany
Why should we pay? You're the one that wants a socialist utopia. You don't have to destroy this country. You can just go back to the one that your ancestors escaped from.
Your attitude is the basic disconnect here. Many of us expect to be responsible for ourselves. You want the rest of us to pick up the slack for you. That's not the way it works over here. If you want something done for you, you have to sort it out for yourself.
You can have your socialist utopia. You will just have to stop being a Mooch for one minute in order to achieve it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Card business.
step 1) find something that scares people. medical bills or whatever
step 2) get others to put up the money
step 3) take a percentage off the top as profit.
wait, that's the entire insurance industry already!
but now with even less oversight.
One anecdote doesn't override stats, jedidiah. I could give pointless, inapplicable anecdotes if that is the only thing you'll believe, but I won't bother. Numbers, however...
"New study finds 45,000 deaths [in the US] annually linked to lack of health coverage" - Harvard Gazette
http://news.harvard.edu/gazett...
In 1978, the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) reported that, "Only 10%-20% of all procedures currently used in medical practice have been shown to be efficacious by controlled trial. In 1995, the OTA compared medical technology in eight countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States) and again noted that few medical procedures in the U.S. had been subjected to clinical trial. It also reported that infant mortality was high and life expectancy was low compared to other developed countries. Although almost ten years old, much of what was said in this report holds true today. The report lays the blame for the high cost of medicine squarely at the feet of the medical free-enterprise system and the fact that there is no national health care policy. It describes the failure of government attempts to control health care costs due to market incentive and profit motive in the financing and organization of health care including private insurance, hospital system, physician services, and drug and medical device industries. Whereas we may want to expand health-care, expansion of disease-care is the goal of free enterprise. "Health Care Technology and Its Assessment in Eight Countries" is also the last report prepared by the OTA, which was shut down in 1995. It's also, perhaps, the last honest, in-depth look at modern medicine. Because of the importance of this 60-page report, we enclose a summary in the Appendix.
http://www.wnho.net/deathbymed...
There is none so blind, as those that will not see. - Matthew Henry.
Not once you get ove a certain age you can't
FUND YOUR FUCKING HEALTHCARE, like a civilised country.
The hospitals are only doing this so that THEY get paid.
When the guy with your life in his hands is only going to touch you if he thinks you're going to pay, he's breaching everything from basic morals to the Hippocratic Oath.
Pay people who care to be able help everyone, instead.
You mean like the shit I've been chased with illegally by various debt collectors? The injury that occurred while on duty in the reserves, that the hospital illegally sent to debt collections? That the debt collector then illegally sold to another debt collector? 7 times? I don't give a rat's ass if they are "writing off bad debt" unless the homework is done to prove it's a legitimately owed amount.
I thought the US finally had some ethical medical care.
Apparently they're still lagging behind the rest of the world.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Have you seen, first hand, the care a privately insured American gets compared to a publicly funded patent? I have and I would still take the NHS over the highest tier private coverage in America. The idea that we have "the best" care is entirely false. If it weren't would the people that can afford it be going overseas anyway?
Cue all the false comparisons of the British ghetto to McMansion-Ville USA et al.
That's just the federal tax rate. State is another 7% or so + all other minor taxes.
Sure, sounds great, unless your family's income relies on selling flowers /cards or you happen to work in the flower or greeting card business...
$40 billion in medical debts reduced by (at best) $6 billion is flowers/greeting cards sales leaves $34 billion in unpaid medical debts (a 15% reduction) at the cost of shuttering two industries putting a few hundred thousand Americans on the unemployment line in the process...
You already have it. It's called Canada. :) Well, health care is controlled provincially. In Ontario health care expenses are 40% of tax revenue and 8.5% of the GDP. Though I wouldn't mind paying extra for faster service.
Having worked in a hospital, I can tell you that there are many cases where a DNR is ignored, usually when a weeping daughter (who may not always have power of attorney) starts shouting, "that's my mother", "bring her back!" I have seen the look on doctors faces making that call. Right or wrong, I am glad that I am not in their position.
Yes, but its not how the make money. Its a cost center, and like any other company you have to minimize the costs going out. That might mean deductibles, it might mean limited networks with really good deals and it also might mean fighting with doctors over whether they are going to pay for a service that was rendered or not.
All of these are things that insurance companies do and its not about being evil or not, its their job as a capitalist enterprise, it is their job to make money for the shareholders. This is why it is generally considered to be a bad thing to have such entities involved in health coverage because the demand for healthcare is inelastic. People get sick and they need to be treated and when companies can charge increasingly high premiums while trying their best to minimize expenditures it is a bad situation for the people who had the misfortune to get sick.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
45% uk nope, wrong.
poorest pay closer to 25%
middle about 33%
rich %40 to %45 (but generally much lower as they can avoid lots by doing sneaky stuff that their accountant advises.
(And yes, I have been in all 3 situations!! so I really do know!!)
BBC is impartial, and at the moment slightly to the right, as they are threatened with being dissolved due to Murdock influence on government!!, so are sucking up to ca"moron"
like your thinking
Fuck everybody but me!!!
if everyone though like that I'm not sure I'd want to be alive!!!.
Selfish prick!!
I can confirm the $50 aspirin - not because I've been in hospital but because I worked for a company that did healthcare IT. The cost accounting is done by taking (essentially) all of the costs of a hospital and allocating them to various "Service Items" by a weighted algorithm. Of course, I've never seen such a bill however I do know in the early 1990s my wife was hospitalized and we had a 'surcharge' on the bill that was ~150% of the bill - it was the 'uninsured patients surcharge.' But that was a long time ago. I like your state's self pay regs.
Ok then, don't worry. You're just going to have to wait a few years for me to get the resources together.
However, I'm also eyeballing the ravaged land of the druggies and laws that protect trans people: Colorado.
She's living in the same town as me, which is why earlier this month I was getting so pissed off at Michigan Feminism. One of the local hospitals provides trans care, just not to me for unknown political reasons, most likely related to my role when Obamacare shut down a women's health organization I was "volunteered" to be a liaison with by my employer, they won't negotiate or even openly state.
1) patient crowdfunds for surgery costing 20K US$
2) Patient successfully raises 20K US$ and pays for surgery.
3) Hospital raises price of future surgeries to 40K US$
It's like College costs, the more money that flows in, the more is absorbed.
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