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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.
From what I understand, it wasn't so much about making healthcare actually cheaper, so much as slowing the projected rate of increase from "Ludicrous" to merely "Ridiculous" or less.
Actually making it cheaper would probably have required a lot of things that were just not politically feasible at the time (like single payer/Medicare for all), considering how difficult even the messy patchwork of fixes that comprise the ACA/Obamacare was to get passed to begin with.
Indeed, and it's necessary to factor in the huge percent of the unpaid medical bills that belong to people forced to wait until their symptoms are bad enough to be seen be an emergency room... the health care program of too many Americans.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
In saner societies this service called universal healthcare and it is run by the government.
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.
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.
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 not something that can or should be traded on the free market.
America's healthcare system is about as far as you can get from a free market. Patients have no ability to compare prices, or even know what services cost when they are provided. If socialized medicine was the sole answer, America would have a wonderful healthcare system, because our government spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, and is near the top in per-capita government medical spending as well. Our medical system is bloated, inefficient, and bureaucratic, and at 18% of GDP it is bigger than the entire economy of Canada. If our medical system became as efficient and effective as other developed countries, it would wipe out 10% of our economy, and eliminate the jobs of more than 7 million well paid people. There is a huge amount of inertia and resistance to change.
Obviously you have perfect health, were not born with generic issues and have never needed to have your appendix removed, or never had emergency surgery for an anatomic issue that caused a medical emergency. Not all medical bills are caused by not taking care of yourself.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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?
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
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!
Actually Americans as a proportion of there GDP spend more on health (2013 17.1%) than any other country exception of Tuvalu (19.7%) and America is one of richest countries in the world, per person it only it spends more any other country than except Switzerland and Norway (they obviously have a higher GDP per capita) yet Americans life expectancy is ranked 34th, Norway 9th, Switzerland 2nd. Clearly Americans are spending just more to get a worse health care. So who is squandering their money? Insurance companies by definition take their cut, of health care spending, it is in there interest to keep health care cost high so that they can sell insurance in the first place.
Ref: http://data.worldbank.org/indi... , http://data.worldbank.org/indi... , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
These are not extreme cases at all, these are normal cases, people get sick, mostly through no predictable fault of their own. Yes people could save and plan for something happening, but with 11 out of 12 cancer drugs costing more than $100,000 per year (http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/medical-costs/how-much-does-chemotherapy-cost/). The cost of a heart bypass surgery (which is not uncommon surgery) is $70,000-$200,000 without insurance, the main contributing factor to heart disease is genetics. Even the most fugal saver on an average income would probably be ruined by these expenses. This is not the cost of a luxury goods, unless you mean a Ferrari, and staying alive is not a luxury, it is by definition a necessity.
Providing health care to the poor, benefits everyone, rich included. Having a population with lots of unhealthy people can infect the rich as well, a virus does not look at the size of your bank balance before infecting you.
Like requiring a politicians to implement a decent health care system.
Anyway, that would be society's as a whole fault wouldn't it? So society as a whole should pay for it.