Originally Posted by Alfred_B
Originally Posted by Ws6
Originally Posted by stockrex
I just received a $19 bill for my mother from 3 years back, when I called the hospital, they had no record of it but said she has a $65 credit and they will cut a check for it.
Reviewing her google hangout messages, I found a message from a collection agency on her google voice number, it does not give any detail but says a scammy message asking to call them. What the bill,
3 years later they billed her for underpayment from insurance? very frustrating.
Insurance in America is crap. The whole system is broken and needs intelligent reform. NOT the ACA, but a sensible, rolling change aimed at reducing paperwork, complexity, etc. The patient or family or anyone else should be able to pull the bill up, look at it, explain where every cent went, and what insurance is liable for, without a decoder ring and magic 8 ball.
There should not be a financial burden on patients if we want a meaningful health care. But what we have is a financial system that just happens to deal health care.
Well, a large part of it is people getting what they want. The amount of QA/QC and liability in healthcare is absolutely STAGGERING, and that all costs, and people aren't going to work in healthcare for less than a very decent wage considering how many jobs there are out there that are much better. So you cannot slash care provider pay. Then comes the fact that institutions eat so much money some of them near Mexico close because of it because of laws that REQUIRE people be treated, whether they will ever pay or not, so you're also picking up the tab for them (or your hospital will close).
So, what we have:
-Crappy jobs that have to pay well to keep people coming to work.
-Extremely demanding performance considerations which require TONS of oversight.
-Charity cases which will be losses financially with no gain, often in the millions of dollars per patient.
Then we get into corporate abuse where drugs are marked up (insulin, Epi-gate, etc.) and so on.
The whole thing is an absolutely convoluted mess.