"Are you considering suicide or harming yourself?"
"No."
— adds 40$ to your bill —
"How about now?"
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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Got charged $100 for "dental hygiene training" during annual dentist visit after dentist walked in and asked "Do you floss?" - "Yes." - "Good. Floss every day." and walked out. I only know of this charge because insurance refused to pay and they sent the bill to me. I know it's definitely about these two utterances because this was the only interaction I had with this doctor at all. Everything else was performed by dental students.
I now refuse to answer any questions that do not directly pertain to the immediate procedure.
Please tell me you didn't have to pay that bill
I had to, I just didn't.
Based
Damn. This has to be late stage capitalism. Please, I can't handle any more capitalism.
”On a scale of 1 to 10, how often do you think about killing yourself?”
“Uhhh… 3?”
”That’ll be $40”
"And how long ago was your last doctor's visit?"
"Uh, 7-ish years ago?"
" Great. That'll be $350."
Last time my son got a flu test it was $180. This time he was sick and school needed a note so I went to the Dr. They asked if I wanted a flu and covid test. I said, "How much will it cost?" Nurse said "I have no way of knowing that."
I said, "No. Unless you tell me how much it will cost." She walked out in a huff to go get the Dr.
How are we supposed to "let the market sort out the cost" when we can't see the cost before the bill?
I thought Trump signed a bill explicitly stating medical facilities needed to be transparent about costs? It surprised me as being one of the few human things he did so I made note of it.
Found, CNN unfortunately, but also appears to be hospital focused and executive order: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/15/politics/hospital-insurer-rates-transparency-trump/index.html
It cost 350 to have your age estimated on a previous visit?! And they only got a range from 18-39?!
Outrageous
I thought it said beehaw
I was saying beehaw.
In europe: "Do you need that surgery to survive/live your life normally?"
"Yes"
"Ok, then it's free"
In the us: "Do you need that surgery to survive/live your life normally?"
"Yes"
"That'll be 999,999.99$"
I just got hardware put in my ankle. From what I've seen of the costs so far, I'm guessing the whole ordeal, from the moment paramedics arrived at my house to when I am fully healed and finished with physical therapy, will cost about $100k. The doctor cutting my ankle open was billed for $16k. That was just the surgery. No post-op meds or anything were included in that. I had an ambulance ride, an ER visit, a 2 day stay in the hospital, and an outpatient pre-op visit before the surgery even happened.
I had a surgery in 2017 that was billed out at right around $1,000,000 total. Literally saved my life.
Bonus points to anyone who can guess what it was!
Appendectomy?
Nope, but not a bad guess. Most appendectomies are laparoscopic andrelatively quick and simple.
I'm not surprised at that bill, tbh. Healthcare is a fucking joke in the US. Did you have heart surgery? Some kind of organ transplant? Or was it something hella basic like an appendectomy?
Some kind of organ transplant?
Bingo! The cost of a liver transplant in the US is about $878,400. I had liver and kidney.
On top of that I needed dialysis 3x a week for ~6 months before the transplant and that was billed out at a little of $7,000 per visit, north of $21,000 a week, for 26 weeks, over $500,000 billed for that alone.
Healthcare costs in the US are absolutely gross!
Holy fuck. That's so much. God forbid you live and continue to function in society. It's almost like the people who control the prices just want us to die or some shit.
Kind of. The hospitals and clinics don’t want that, in part because a sick patient is a revenue stream and in part because I’m sure a lot of medical professionals genuinely care about their patients.
I’d say the health insurance companies are more interested in a sick patient’s death. They’d prefer healthy people paying premiums but not having a lot of claims. It increases their profits.
Dang, you got a full body renovation. You don't seem that upset about the million dollar bill. Did your insurance cover it all?
On Oct. 20, 1972, Nixon signed H.R. 1 into law. The law automatically qualified anyone with chronic renal disease, anyone who would need a kidney transplant, for Medicare, regardless of age.
So Medicare covers transplants and post care for a period and I was eligible even at my relatively young age, early 30s.
That said, the poor life choices that I made that led to needing the transplants also left me in a pretty big financial hole before healthcare and I had a month long hospital stay long before the transplant when I first got really sick.
In the end I filed for bankruptcy to free myself from the medical debt but also to get a clean start on the life I fucked up.
Even with the existing social safety nets it’s incredibly easy to go broke with our healthcare system.
Cardiac surgery
Not yet on that one, good guess though. That’s another I think is pretty up there!
Gender reassignment?
Nope, although I can only imagine what they bill for that!
WTF? I'm in Europe and I broke my finger recently, so I had to get surgery. I literally paid 26€ + 2€ for pain meds and that includes an ambulance, multiple doctors visits, surgery and physical therapy.
I cannot imagine living with the fear of having random medical problems ruin you financially.
See, the thing is, you can just ignore medical debt for the most part. I was told by the hospital billing people, while panicking over finances, that I can pay like $1/month and say that's all I can afford and the companies just have to deal with it. You can also just ignore it outright for 7 years and then it's gone forever. It can fuck with your credit if you do that, but it is an option.
The cost of shit is still bad though. It's so dumb
How ya doin'?
Well, I...
Great! That'll be $40!
I guess I'm feeling poorly...
I had an accident happen on a dive trip where my dive buddy had a heart attack about 70ft down. Another diver and I see him struggling, and do an emergency surface to haul him up. We get him on the boat, Coast Guard meets up with us to rush him back to shore, and when we get back, they had an ambulance there for me as they were worried I'd get the bends from having to surface from that deep that fast.
I feel totally fine the whole time, get to the hospital and they ask me if I'm in any pain/check for symptoms. I tell them no. They have me wait on a stretcher for about half an hour, until a hyperbaric specialist can see me. He walks over (again, I'm just sitting on a stretcher in the middle of a hall this whole time), and asked if I'm feeling okay. No issues other than the worst need to pee I've ever had from the saline bag in me, and he says I'm good to go. Weeks later, I get a hospital bill for $7k, $5k of which was being seen by a specialist. Which, my college insurance didn't cover because I wasn't referred to by my PCP.
It took an insane amount of back and forth to convince them to cover it, but quickly turned around when I showed them the news broadcast from that day about the accident, and how bad it would look for them to try and throw a $7k medical bill onto a college student who was literally trying to save a dude's life.
Our medical insurance system is just a ton of fun.
Emotions....check
Behaviors....check
I see about 4 different specialist and 3/4 if them attempted to bill Medicare for having me fill out six questions and them adding it up until I put a stop to it. They all knew I have seen the same psychiatrist for 12 years. They would never bring up the inventory.
What qualifies this Dr to make a psychological evaluation? Am I going to ask the librarian if I have flat feet? 🤦🏻♂️
Well I'm pretty sure they studied some psychology at the very least the general education psychology classes
Doctor: Have you had any recent suicidal thoughts?
Patient: No.
Doctor: Good. That'll be $40.
I got charged $125 for a nurse to give me 15 minutes of therapy. Out of pocket, while having insurance.