Avoiding hospital over-charging

https://www.rickbradley.com/healthcare

by obiefernandez • 6 years ago

27 12 6 years ago

Absolutely vital information for Americans. That we need this is one of the reasons I don't live in my native country anymore.

mxz3000• 6 years ago

It's ridiculous anyone should have to think about this at all. I'm happy to be European right about now.

Ididntdothis2• 6 years ago

In Germany you go to a hospital, get treated and don't have to worry about surprise billing. It's hard to believe that the country accepts this.

disabled• 6 years ago

I am happy to be both a US|Croatian (European Union) citizen, as somebody with 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system.

I have tried 10 different treatments, plus combinations of them, with only one thing working: a blood product that I must self administer.

If the healthcare law gets overturned in the US, I have no choice but to head off to Europe.

pavel_lishin• 6 years ago

Can someone with a legal background double check this for me? "Print out these cards and present them to officials" strongly reminds me of sovereign citizen nonsense.

glitchc2• 6 years ago

Concur. Sketchy as all heck, this kind of advice is actually dangerous.

Truth is, it doesn’t matter what you sign. If you don’t have insurance, all amounts are negotiable after the fact. The hospital will write down a $10,000 bill to $500 if they are convinced that’s all you can afford to pay.

prostheticvamp• 6 years ago

I’m too ugh to engage with this at length but just a word:

If you don’t have insurance, go for it.

If you have insurance:

People standing on EMTALA are generally another word for “we are never going to see a penny for this patient.” Your ED doc does not give a fuck. However, the hospital will be assigning you a nurse case manager ASAP, whose only job will be to scrutinize everything done for you, to ensure you don’t get a single iota of care beyond the bare minimum needed to meet EMTALA standards, with as prompt a discharge as humanly possible. This will save you money - at the expense of appropriate care you’d otherwise receive (care that doesn’t qualify as an “emergency”, which means EMTALA doesn’t touch it, but that we’d normally do very urgently in order to keep your tuchus alive.) This is the standard of care random homeless people get.

People have every right to prioritize according to their resources, but if you’re not worried about ending up homeless, this isn’t the route I’d take.

Ididntdothis2• 6 years ago

The fact it's necessary to write such an article already demonstrates how corrupt hospitals are. The whole process seems to be full of intentional pitfalls. If the patient doesn't follow any of the rules (he doesn't know about) either the insurance or the hospital will screw you big time. Or they make some mistakes themselves and screw you that way. And it's always up to the patient to spend time and effort fixing things. I can't find think of any other industry that gets away with this nonsense.

It's really hard to believe that the country is not capable of bringing some level of sanity into this.

phonebanshee• 6 years ago

Read the last paragraph first. In fact, only read the last paragraph, where the author explains that they have zero expertise and are basically just making it up based on a bunch of pages they found on Google.

glitchc2• 6 years ago

If the advice works as intended, why does the author have a disclaimer at the end indemnify him? Has he tried this out in a real emergency or is this just armchair pontification?

chkaloon• 6 years ago

The advice about marking up the consent form is similar to the advice given by Elisabeth Rosenthal in her book American Sickness.

It's not fringe advice.

https://www.amazon.com/American-Sickness-Healthcare-Became-B...

MarkMMullin• 6 years ago

Given my first terminal was an ASR-33, this is of interest to me - yes I have insurance, and yes I have friends who got staggering bills because the anesthesiologist wasn't in-network (not to bash on anesthesiologists, I have counted some as good friends and they're the greatest geeks in medicine). - will this keep in-network hospitals using in-network providers for services ?

Avoiding hospital over-charging

Related Stories