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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've got a better idea: Single payer.
Just have medicare for all and get rid of the overpriced priced bills that have A single aspirin for $25
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?
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.
"Mr Scrooge, ... it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons..."
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir..."
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
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.
In saner societies this service called universal healthcare and it is run by the government.
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.
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.
Great, but what about the 3-year-old daughter of a colleague of mine with a brain tumor? Is that because she does drugs, or maybe she smokes?
Health is the responsibility of the person, not the community. Since the community has no say in how a person lives their life, whether that person smokes, gets drunk, uses drugs or is obese, why should the community be responsible to pay the medical bills for that person? Obviously the person doesn't care about their health or they wouldn't have chosen the lifestyle they lead.
A civilized society wouldn't force its citizens to hand over their money to protect those who choose to kill themselves through their own bad choices, especially when that society has endlessly informed its citizens about the dangers of such lifestyles choices.
Really - society bears no responsibility? Tell that to the people of Flint who have been poisoned by lead. Or the person walking down the street who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets shot/hit and run/raped?
These are not lifestyle choices.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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!