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Hospital bills are very negotiable. Find out what the insurers pay your hospital for similar encounters, and shoot for 1/2 of that. Be sure to look and sound destitute or disreputable when you talk with them. 1/3 is typically very easy.
It is easy if you can apply for a sliding scale, if not, they will chase you into bancruptsy without mercy or discounts. Only, insurance can negotiate bills down, an uninsured individual with some money on him stands no chance.
It is easy if you can apply for a sliding scale, if not, they will chase you into bancruptsy without mercy or discounts. Only, insurance can negotiate bills down, an uninsured individual with some money on him stands no chance.
Because of the way laws are written for medical bills, there's not much hospitals can do if you do not pay. They cannot garnish your wages or seize property like credit cards and banks can.
They can send it to a collection agency, but if you don't pay the agency, they really can't do anything.
When my wife was 18, she went to the hospital for an emergency surgery. She was working part time and did not have any insurance. The bills added up to over $5000. She tried paying some of them, but eventually they got out of hand and she completely stopped. It got turned over to a collection agency. She never made any contact with them and the debt fell off her credit 7yr later.
If it's not something you wake up to in an ICU, there are more reliably affordable options to negotiate on price. Before proceeding on something, a surgery center's facilities can be negotiated down by at least half of what they initially quote to an uninsured, paid up front. Thus they get what insurers ordinarily pay them. The surgeon is another story; I'll pay the asking price there--which has been fair.
It is easy if you can apply for a sliding scale, if not, they will chase you into bancruptsy without mercy or discounts. Only, insurance can negotiate bills down, an uninsured individual with some money on him stands no chance.
I have seen savings such as this on many occasions. Family, friends and patients. 1/2 looks good if they have been convinced they might get 0. After all this is the basic impetus for hospitals to want their states to expand Medicaid. Lower payments per encounter, but fewer no-payers.
It is easy if you can apply for a sliding scale, if not, they will chase you into bancruptsy without mercy or discounts. Only, insurance can negotiate bills down, an uninsured individual with some money on him stands no chance.
If we had national Health care, there would be no problems. You would be insured because you are a citizen, that is it. And you would not go in debt. This is how is done in the rest of the developed and not so developed world. Medical care is a right for all their citizens. This clumsy system only exists in America.
If we had national Health care, there would be no problems. You would be insured because you are a citizen, that is it. And you would not go in debt. This is how is done in the rest of the developed and not so developed world. Medical care is a right for all their citizens. This clumsy system only exists in America.
You'd have one megamorphic insurance company that bills 'policyholders' at the muzzle of state firepower. And taxes would be in low earth orbit, the remaining employers skittish and besieged, and your sorry self would be as desperate and underemployed as the denizens of Western Europe who've turned unemployment street protests into annual rites.
The U.S. health care system has become one gigantic money making scam
the United States spends more on health care per person than any other country in the world by far.
The health insurance companies and the big pharmaceutical corporations are raking in gigantic mountains of cash and yet the quality of the health care that we receive in return is rather quite poor.
People living in Puerto Rico have a greater life expectancy than we do.
Residents of Cuba have a lower infant mortality rate than we do.
We are the most medicated population on the planet and yet we are also one of the sickest.
As you read this, there are hordes of health bureaucrats and greedy corporate fatcats that are becoming incredibly wealthy while the rest of us go broke trying to pay for our health care.
In the United States today, health care bills cause more bankruptcies than anything else does.
Obamacare was one of the worst pieces of legislation that anyone has ever come up with in the history of the United States.
Rather than doing something to address the abuses of the health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical corporations, Obamacare actually gives them more power.
In fact, huge portions of Obamacare are virtually identical to a bill that was written by the health insurance trade association in 2009.
Under Obamacare our health care costs will go up even faster and the quality of our health care will continue to go down.
So please don’t try to tell me that Obamacare is the solution to anything.
You'd have one megamorphic insurance company that bills 'policyholders' at the muzzle of state firepower. And taxes would be in low earth orbit, the remaining employers skittish and besieged, and your sorry self would be as desperate and underemployed as the denizens of Western Europe who've turned unemployment street protests into annual rites.
The Big THREE private insurance companies make billions of dollars insuring the young and healthy.
The US gov loses money insuring the old and the sick.
One would think that adding healthy people to the Medicare ranks would bring in a profit.
The average premium for private health insurance in the USA is around 400.00 (sometimes more). That is 5k a year! It may not be called a tax, but it is actually worse than taxes.
The Big THREE private insurance companies make billions of dollars insuring the young and healthy.
The US gov loses money insuring the old and the sick.
One would think that adding healthy people to the Medicare ranks would bring in a profit.
The average premium for private health insurance in the USA is around 400.00 (sometimes more). That is 5k a year! It may not be called a tax, but it is actually worse than taxes.
You have no viable answer for what I wrote.
You moonbats already treated us to "ram it through" and '45,000 souls perishing each year for lack of health insurance' and "400,000 new health care jobs" (the latter courtesy of dark occultist Nancy Pelosi). You think anybody is going to listen to the progressive left on this, when Europe has over 50 years of desperately high unemployment by hopeless jobseekers in socialist purgatories like Brixton?
You moonbats already treated us to "ram it through" and '45,000 souls perishing each year for lack of health insurance' and "400,000 new health care jobs" (the latter courtesy of dark occultist Nancy Pelosi). You think anybody is going to listen to the progressive left on this, when Europe has over 50 years of desperately high unemployment by hopeless jobseekers in socialist purgatories like Brixton?
The left gets its news from where it always has: from propaganda campaigns.
Then let the poor people die! As of now we treat them for free and charge high fees to the paying patients to make up the difference.
A well run National health Plan can make money. DO you want to get rid of Medicare? What do you propose instead of medicare?
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