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This is a great piece - thank you for posting. We need to see a hundred of these per day - a thousand per day - until we get these mobsters in jail where they belong.
They built a system as corrupt as anything we saw in 1920s Chicago. Only the tools of the trade are different....Al Capone used machine guns - the American medical cartels use the desperation and fear of vulnerable people in life's most threatening scenarios to extort their fortunes.
There is no bigger problem than this in our culture - at least no bigger problem that we can really do anything about. 40 years of unchallenged criminal behavior built today's American "health care" system. The challenge is way overdue and justice is going to take a big increase in prison space.
We pay under 1k/year for family coverage, copays are minimal and range of services provided is great. We are in year six of allergy shots every other day with not even a copay. Again a what I have experienced in Germany was everything but pleasant. Waking up in a hallway after surgery with nobody around and my clothes on a chair was an invitation to pull out the IV and go home.
We pay under 1k/year for family coverage, copays are minimal and range of services provided is great. We are in year six of allergy shots every other day with not even a copay. Again a what I have experienced in Germany was everything but pleasant. Waking up in a hallway after surgery with nobody around and my clothes on a chair was an invitation to pull out the IV and go home.
Your plan is quite exceptional. Most of us have a high deductibles and high co-pays and still poor care.
Last year, I had to get a 3-D mammogram and ultrasound. I asked the radiology clinic to find out how much I would have to pay altogether ( I had not met my $3000 deductible) I wanted to make sure I had the money for this. They told me it would be $354. I paid that. I had the procedure. Two weeks later I got a bill from them for another $270. There is no consequence to them not being completely open and transparent. System is so convoluted they probably can’t even figure it out properly. So what are we supposed to do? It’s a terrible system for all but a few such as yourself with Cadillac health plans.
The system is pretty efficient outside the U.S. in my experience. I'm in Spain for the winter and went to the hospital a few times to get arthritis treatments. People in the waiting room took a number and were seen in about 15 min. No one was doing any paperwork or billing. My MRI was $231 since I was private pay. I received my own scans and x Ray's the same day. I was informed ahead the exact cost of everything.
The ER in Ecuador where we retired took care of me immediately for my hip dislocation and care was attentive and respectful. Best of all, no billing, no extra charges...all included in our $80 a month national plan.
It is sad the disgraceful RIP offs going on in the States. Like $30,000 for a kidney stone. In Spain, it's $1,400.
One of the biggest problems is administrative costs. If you've ever worked in a doctor's office and seen what ridiculous amounts of paper and man hours go into dealing with and filing insurance, your head would spin. There are so many different ICD codes, even for the same procedure, it's insane. It's basically like filing taxes for each and every patient on each and every visit. Countries with universal healthcare don't have to deal with that, and that is one of the reasons their people, and governments, pay less for healthcare than we do.
You paid $231 for an MRI. My deductible for an MRI is $1,000. And that's with what is considered good insurance. Oh, and I had to wait 3 months for that MRI because my insurance company denied it at least 4 times. My doctor literally had to fight with them for 3 months to get it covered. But, yeah, universal healthcare sucks.
I will also say that I firmly believe that US politicians don't really want to fix healthcare. Too many of them are getting rich off of the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and healthcare systems (many of which or for-profit). As long as our members of Congress are making literally millions of dollars off of the current system, they have no motivation to change it.
I will also say that I firmly believe that US politicians don't really want to fix healthcare. Too many of them are getting rich off of the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and healthcare systems (many of which or for-profit). As long as our members of Congress are making literally millions of dollars off of the current system, they have no motivation to change it.
I agree. But like I said, politicians don't really want to do that because they are literally making millions of dollars off of the insurance companies, pharma, and the current system. There are a few politicians that don't follow that path, but not nearly enough to get universal healthcare. We have one of the most corrupt governments in the world. It is all profit driven.
Know what you are doing before you do. Be informed. I can only confirm jonesg's statement - healthcare in Europe is an adventure for the healthy.
74 yr old scottish pensioner breaks his hip and has to wait 5 hrs for an ambulance only 3 miles away.
This is typical of the new stories I see on a regular basis. They have no legal recourse like in the USA.
If they get a lawyer they have to pay up front and if they lose they have to pay the hospitals lawyers too.
Its very expensive, so much that people very rarely are able to sue.
74 yr old scottish pensioner breaks his hip and has to wait 5 hrs for an ambulance only 3 miles away.
This is typical of the new stories I see on a regular basis. They have no legal recourse like in the USA.
If they get a lawyer they have to pay up front and if they lose they have to pay the hospitals lawyers too.
Its very expensive, so much that people very rarely are able to sue.
There is really no legal recourse in the states either. No lawyer will take any medical malpractice suit that’s worth less than $1 million. And you can’t even get a pimple popped by a dermatologist without signing an agreement taking away your right to sue and agreeing to arbitration. And here, you get huge bills for the ambulance to comes to get you. My mother was charged $500 to be taken by ambulance literally across the street. And don’t ever get in a medivac helicopter, you’ll get a bill for $15,000.
You can find plenty of those horror stories in this country too. Here’s a video of a woman dying in a New York ER while no one notices. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9lKUwBCIBzA
There’s another man who bled out on the ER floor. https://abc13.com/5456576/ If you Google the stories, there is an endless number of them. I saw sad story yesterday about a man whose wife died in childbirth. He told them at 11 AM or so that there was blood in her Foley bag and they continually ignored her. One nurse said to him “your wife is not a priority”. Later that night she died in surgery, when they opened her up she had an abdomen filled with blood from internal bleeding that was ignored for 10 hours.
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