I just paid over $2000 to find out I don’t have throat cancer. Also have insurance. That’s just the cost of a 5 minute laryngoscopy and a 10 minute CT scan.
You can get charged thousands just for showing up an an ER, seeing no one but the receptionist, receiving no treatment whatsoever, and leaving in exasperation after a multiple hour wait without any sign of anyone having any intention of administering to you in the slightest. I’ve seen it happen personally. America!
Could be worse. You could have paid that to find out you do have breast cancer…
Wtf, as a Canadian who had a breast reduction and a revision for free this sort of thing seems like a nightmare to me.
I’m supposed to have a colonoscopy because of my celiac
This is why I don’t
Out of curiosity, why are they doing a colonoscopy rather than a gastroscopy for Coeliac confirmation? The disease affects only the small intestine, and so an upper small intestinal biopsy is sufficient and doesn’t require uncomfortable fasting/dietary practice before the procedure, and is a cheaper, quicker and safer procedure.
My confirmation was blood test and then gastroscopy - after the biopsy it was confirmed.
They did some labs and gave me my diagnosis. The way it was explained to me was that they wanted the colonoscopy to check for things like scarring and so forth.
To be clear, I’m not a medical professional, so my attempting to answer “Why would they…” is pretty fruitless. I have no idea; that’s why I was seeing my doctor lol
Ahh okay, so it’s not confirmatory for the diagnosis but rather assessing the impact of living with Coeliac? That makes sense. I’m having a full endoscopy/colonoscopy later this year for a similar purpose. Fingers crossed everything comes up clear for you mate!
Go, get your healthcare, ignore the bills.
I’d rather die than have collections on my ass again
7 years later, it’s irrelevant
What do you mean by this? They just erase your debt after 7 years? Are you sure?
Yeah after 7 years it falls off your credit report.
On top of that, most major credit bureaus don’t even calculate small medical debts(less than 1k I think) against your credit score.
I mean don’t quote me on this, verify.
I wish I would have known this when I thought my life was over after having appendicitis the one year of my life I couldn’t afford insurance. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll keep it in mind.
I’ve got to say there’s no way my debt would ever be less than $1k though. I’m pretty sure my deductible is $5k, but I’ve also given up on the whole credit score thing. I always get emails that it’s dropped or whatever, and I’m just numb to it at this point it’s just background noise
I edited my reply above with some sources.
The credit score system is bullshit, but it can be played. I opened like 13 credit accounts in my early 20s and keep them rotated, because of that my total line of credit is ridiculous. I don’t use it all very much, but on paper it makes my credit utilization look like 1-2% of my total limit, which raises my score significantly.
Goddamn… as a fellow celiac sufferer, I’m very sorry to hear that. If the blood tests are pretty conclusive, you can probably assume it’s celiac without the colonoscopy. The downside is that if you start a gluten-free diet now and decide to get a colonoscopy later, it might now show anything since you’re off the gluten. Best of luck!
Oh I’ve had the diagnosis for a few years, and I’ve totally adhered to the dietary restrictions I was given. If I so much as question whether cross contamination may have taken place, I don’t eat the food.
I’m pretty well stable now and no longer shitting myself. But I know I’m at greater risk of things like colon cancer, which is something that my family has a history of.
My insurance would “cover” it in that it would go towards my deductible, but that’s still thousands of dollars, and we had to buy a furnace this year because ours died. I’m thinking about going and having it done in Mexico. I have in-laws there.
My wife has a chronic illness with expensive drugs.
Healthcare is around 35% of our families gross income when you include in the cost my employer pays, what I pay, plus deductable and copays.
I avoid going to the Dr as much as possible because I have a separate deductible. If I went for everything I should it would be closer to 40% of our gross income.
That country is fucked up. You people really have to come together and demand universal healthcare, as impossible as that sounds.
We elected Obama on that promise and our reward was the current system 🫠
Obama improved a lot through Obamacare, but it’s really hard to get a good system in the USA as a lot of people are strongly against free and universal health care, even though it’d likely decrease the amount they have to pay for their own health care too. I really don’t understand it.
Oh, it’s very easy to understand. They’re worried their tax dollars might help someone who “doesn’t deserve it”, so they’d rather not help anyone.
I broadly agree with that, it’s better from the former system in the way that walking on glass is better than being on fire.
As with a large portion of our fucked up politics, the answer for why people are like this here IMO goes back to conservative talk radio post-Fairness Doctrine. For people who haven’t lived in the rural US, especially before satellite radio, I can’t emphasize enough how much the massive amounts of extreme conservative talk radio shows impact the stuff you hear every day. When the majority of Americans never travel abroad to see otherwise it’s easy to just accept the conservative propaganda that you half listen to for hours a day, every day, for decades.
I thought a yearly mammogram was always covered with insurance after the ACA was passed? Or maybe that’s only after a certain age?
It’s only after like 35 or something, iirc
An annual screening mammogram is automatically covered. If it’s a “diagnostic” mammogram following up some specific issue or complaint, then it would then fall into whatever normal policy rules you have with your insurance company for imaging tests. That’s more likely the case here since this person had to go on to have an ultrasound as well.
If you have insurance but get billed for an annual screening mammogram, it’s possible it was coded improperly by billers and you should definitely check up on that before paying.
Congratulations on not having breast cancer, and on living in a society where it only takes a few days’ wages to afford a test that can detect death lurking in the future so you can avoid it.
$644/$7.25 (minimum wage) is 88.8 hours. That’s two weeks of gross income. A giant chunk of us cannot afford that. Your snarky comment is stupid and you should feel embarrassed.
So ten days of work. And in return you avoid death. It’s still an amazing deal, and nobody is forced to do it.
My comment is here to remind people to be thankful for the world we live in because it’s better than the lives of most humans who have ever lived.
So what should they do without 10 days of income they likely need for food, shelter, etc? Not eat? Get evicted? Sounds like a great way to not avoid death
As I said they don’t have to do it. I haven’t had any cancer screenings, for instance, and I’m not bitter about that.
I just paid $1600, which took me a year to save up, for a surgery that left my bellybutton fucked up and itchy, but at least it won’t slowly tear open now like it would if I lived in nature.
I’m thankful to be here. Others don’t have to be thankful for the incredible medical options we have around us, but my advice is that they do.
$600 to potentially avoid death is incredible. And, if it’s not worth it to someone, no one is forcing them to do it.
Thank god I was born here instead of a any other moment of human history. That is all I have to say.
You seem very deeply invested in bitterness, so I’m not willing to put any more effort into changing your mind. Take it or leave it, and maybe look up the health effects of different emotional states if living well is important to you.
Goodbye.
So I consider myself an optimist, but even I know it’s stupid to say “I’m happy I only suffered a little bit so I will ignore solvable problems”. Also I find it very weird and disturbing that the argument “you are free to die” is being used to promote what I assume is a free market approach to healthcare. Or maybe you don’t have an angle other than to tell OP that they aren’t in pain, when obviously they are, and that’s fucked up.
Yea, there’s a lot we have going for us with medical advances, but let’s not forget the reason millions die every year is not because lack of medical advances, but rather lack of access to those advances. Those millions of people didn’t choose not to afford it. They didn’t choose to die.
Being an optimist isn’t about ignoring the problems of the world and calling people who are upset about these problems bitter. It’s about looking at these problems head on and believing you can address them. If you are an optimist, the light you shine should allow you to see.
I’m deeply invested in bitterness for leaving 1 comment pointing out that it might not even be a choice for someone if they couldn’t afford it? Lol. Get a grip. I can simultaneously be thankful that modern medicine exists and also advocate for it being available to everyone, not just those that can afford it.
Honestly that’s kind of on you for having breasts
Yeah, a knife is only like 5€
For those unaware how Health Insurance works in the states.
You can have health insurance all you want. Especially if this bill is recent, they will cover a large part of the cost, but most people are still on the hook for Usually between $1000-1500 of all healthcare before insurance REALLY kicks in. This is called the Deductible (and Out of Pocket) expense. You also pay a ‘Premium’, essentially a subscription cost that normally comes directly out of your paycheck.
For single coverage, just yourself, it’s about $1200. For family coverage, where your insurance covers everyone in your house, It’s usually double that. So ~$2,500-3,000.
So this person probably hasn’t had any bills yet this year. Once they pay about $1500 in costs, everything after that becomes (mostly) free. Depending on what you have, insurance will pay anywhere from only 80% - 100% of the cost from whatever the procedures and meds are.
Then funny part is that some places in America the cost is so high, this might be a situation where their insurance DID kick in already and their insurance is still making them pay that much. Or it’s a case where you get a bill for that much but your insurance hasn’t paid it yet… so it looks like you’re supposed to… so you do… then two months later you get a check for that amount.
It’s so. Damn. Silly. And I resent Republicans every day for it. That’s not even the Fascist MAGA Theocracy republicans. Just your stock standard ones lmfao.
So if I had insurance like that and I actually had cancer I’d pay the first $2,000 and then literally all treatment after that would be free regardless of cost and then I just pay like the standard insurance price?
Presumably your insurance would then go up after that or does it only go up for other cancer related stuff?
No the treatment would not be free, most plans will also only cover a certain percentage of the overall procedure so on top of your annual deductible which mine for example is 7,500, there’s also certain procedures that are not covered at all and the rest of the procedures are at a 70-85% coverage, which is still better than them not covering anything I guess but still pretty dog shit for an insurance that you’re paying over $100 a month that’s tied to your employer
well it depends.
for major surgeries, no. after you satisfy your deductible, you’re likely to pay a co-insurance on your procedure.
co-insurance is the percentage you’re personally responsible.
so lets say your procedure is billed by hospital for 50,000. and your co-insurance is 20%.
you would be paying 20% of the 48000, so 9600.
up to your “out of pocket maximum”, which can be like 15000 to 30000 or whatever.
if you’ve already paid like 10k already this year then you would just be paying up to 5k for ur cancer treatment.
confusing? yes. fuck health insurance so much.
It’s pretty confusing, but basically your insurance won’t cover much until you meet your deductible for the year. After that, your coverage depends on the policies of your insurance company. Some stuff may be totally covered, some partially, some not at all. And there’s really no way to know what costs what until you get it done.
This is the part that drives me bats. For any other service in any other industry you can get a quote first, but for some fucked up reason healthcare in America doesn’t work that way. The hospitals and insurance companies just do whatever the fuck they want, and you get to find out afterwards if you could have afforded it, i.e. after it’s too late. It’s such bullshit.
Indeed, I hate it when people are like “you shouldn’t pay that much, you need to shop around”. Assuming you even have multiple hospitals to choose from, tell me you don’t get “I don’t know” 9/10 times when you ask about the cost of a procedure.
$1000-$1500…?
Most people are on high deductible plans, so it’s more like $3000-$5000
Most
That could be true, but do you have a source for that? A significant portion of people are on Medicare/Medicaid, which usually doesn’t have deductibles that high.
I really don’t understand why there is anyone against universal health insurance in the states.
Pretty much everyone is guaranteed to get major hospital bills at some point in their life. They are paying massive fees to insurance companies to line their pockets instead of hospitals to provide better service.
Sure, taxes will go up a bit to cover it, but what you’ll pay in taxes over your lifetime is going to be no where near what you pay in insurance and healthcare procedures.
I pay $0 annually for insurance, and I can walk in to see my doctor at any moment to consult on something for $0, and if something needs to happen I can get blood work and X-rays for $0, then go to the hospital for surgery for $0 (maybe a $5 parking pass).
Those amounts you mention. The 1200-3000 dollar ones. Call me silly, but I have no clue if that’s monthly or annually. The whole situation there seems so alien. Healthcare, but also salaries and cost of living. (E.g., $45k/year is a pretty good salary here, while I think it is a junior-ish salary in the states, right? >$100k/year is rare as rocking horse shit here at least.)
You should also hate Joe Lieberman. He scuttled a public option for the ACA, which likely would have prevented a lot of the shenanigans insurance companies pull, as they would be competed right the fuck out of business with a robust public option. Japan has private and public insurance and costs are generally low for health care. Most kids get it completely free
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but shit like this is what prevents people from taking preventative measures.
Its purposeful. It’s done this way so that there are legal ways of justifying the death of millions per year as they are deemed unprofitable.
Can confirm. Had my mammogram last month and they recommended an ultrasound because my breast tissue is dense. I’ve had it once before with no problems, but my husband’s company switched insurance providers and it kicked in January 1, so now the lab where I normally go isn’t in-network and every lab that is in their network wants to charge me hundreds of dollars. This is with good insurance. (My husband always picks the most expensive insurance package because we’re getting older.)
Money is a little tight right now because I’m in between jobs, so at this point I’ve given up. I’ll look into it again when I’m employed again but it’s just not affordable at the moment.
Congrats tho. Just lost a friend to breast cancer that was suspected years ago but not confirmed until december. Seriously, congrats.
My wife and I have 'the best insurance in the city" we’ve been told by practitioners. Standard bloodwork costs me several hundred dollars.
*Best for them :p
Oh, but we have the best healthcare system in the world (which is why I’m thousands in medical debt despite having good insurance with no sign of a diagnosis or treatment) and you have super long wait times in other countries (which is why I had to wait almost a year to get a new neurologist when my old one retired).
But hey, we keep the health insurance industry making money for its shareholders, so there’s that.
Empire aka “The Land of the Free” “sarcasm”
Healthcare can’t be left to the free market. Simply because the demand part of the market isn’t free.
My country screens like 10% of total (mostly) boob-havers per year for free (the number would heve been higher if more ppl decided to get tested). So basically everyone is invited, with mobile test units (just big containers/trucks) roaming around the country for the elderly, or fit a bit more remote villages, or just to spread awareness & make someone get screened out of convenience.
Yeah luckily that is free over here. Every few years, and always if a doc orders it.
