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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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Asklemmy
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While I agree with the essence of what you are saying. I want to say, if you have insurance the "bill" might be hundreds, but my share might only be 20 usd, if anything at all. If my "bill" was thousands, I might see my share be a couple hundred usd at most. It is possible for it to be far less then a couple hundred.
The other thing people don't mention is, if I honestly can't pay my share. I can walk into the billing office at the clinic /hospital and explain I honestly can't afford my share. The hospital will bill the insurance what they can, then look for extra funding. Most hospitals have a charity fund. It is based on my income. If I am broke and make crap wages, my share might be reduced to 0 usd.
Should we have a better system? Yes, but many times there are real options out there.
As a Canadian it's insane to me to have a bill at all after going through some sort of health ordeal the last thing you need is a big scary bill with something to do.
So the ask here is for someone who already need to work every waking moment, and then just lost a bunch of hours being hurt/sick, to then spend their time explaining multiple times to the billing dept that they cant afford it (this is degrading) and then their bill MIGHT be reduced but it also MIGHT go to collections and which further goes to damage the individual by hurting their credit. just seems like a burden on the poor.
But yeah i mean its a difference in systems. I think about how canada builds it into taxes - everyone pays in at a rate consistent with their income levels and benefits similarly - but the US way is donations. And I hope that works too. It seems to work from what i've seen so far. but it seems like a round about way to get it done.
I basically agree with what you are saying, just to clarify, it isn't asking multiple times or explaining multiple times. The one time I had to ask for help, I talked to one person. They looked and said, don't worry about the bill.
But yeah we do need a better system.
I appreciate having your first hand insight and appreciate the convo
User fees invoke a chilling effect on care usage, especially preventative care.
And when you're seen as a cash cow and as a patient, there can be a conflict of interest.
Currently working through this with the local hospital and about $8k of various visits over the last 4 years of so while we had some mix of no insurance, garbage insurance and Medicaid (federally funded low income insurance) and it's literally all being wiped away. The lady who processes the applications explained to me that it's on a sliding scale, so if you make $1 over the threshhold for 100% waiver, it might be a 95% waiver. Notably some of the debt turned out to be a billing error where they should have billed Medicaid in the first place, but that was one of the smaller bills in the pile of debt