Nothing but armed robbery.
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What am I missing?
The bill says amount NOT covered is $0 and the co-pay on $65,000 is $5K. Seems like pretty good insurance.
My son was born deaf and received cochlear implants at $85K each. Co-pay was $1500. In the office was a kid from Canada with his parents for the same operation. No one in Canada could perform the surgery. My surgeon said the SF Bay Area has more MRI machines than the entire country of Canada.
Things can be better, but we get pretty good care here over other places, including other western countries.
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Did the implants help? My hope is he is one of the recipients were they are beneficial.
The best insurance plan is feeding your body clean organic foods and purified water, and avoiding as much as possible, processed foods and pharmaceutical drugs.
You don’t treat a problem when you can remove the cause.
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Ha ha, US medical rant… here is mine,
Actual bill $99,619
Ins discount $67,003
My insurance out of packet max $3,500. (So lucky My employer provides relative good insurance.)
Even better, after all these, bills from unknown services continued to come. Finally, one year later, no more new bill.
I am close to retire now. My wife and I did some research, we might move to Taiwan. - besides good MD it has, also good adventure in Asia for us. (Sorry Mexico.)
It is pretty good insurance, costs my wife and I about $2k/mo so my out of pocket for the year will be somewhere around $34k plus anything out of network that would be added. What’s the median household income for the US in 2021? $67,463. Average is a bit higher. So insurance and out of pocket represents more than half the household income for more than half of the US population. That seems pretty bad to me when only 44% of americans can afford a $1000 emergency expense and that’s the highest it’s been in 8 years.
Edit to say, glad your son got what he needed, hope it all worked out.
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Last year I had an accident that accumulated very similar medical expenses as you. I too am fortunate that insurance paid the overwhelming majority of it, and the rest I could easily pay. What many people fail to understand is that without insurance to act as your advocate and negotiate down the charges and fees , you would be on the hook for the whole bill. These amounts would financially wipe out an average family. We are extremely fortunate to be able to afford adequate healthcare.
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You can also personally negotiate costs with providers if you are not covered or are uninsured. Either before or after services are provided. Before 2008 I did not have any insurance (by choice) and providers are very happy to sell services at a deep discount.
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I didn’t know that. I just always ……assumed.
Happy Cake Day @aiki14 !
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Hi Elk, The implants were a game changer. He was able to to attend an oral deaf school initially and then mainstream regular public school. Most of friends are in the hearing world, which for us was a testament for cochlear implants given most the world can hear.
The fidelity is not what you or I can hear and speech discrimination degrades rapidly in noisy environments. Hearing someone speaking across a dinner table in a loud restaurant is difficult as as the background noise and speech blend together into a single plain.
He is very glad he has them and with some exceptions is able to fully participate in regular hearing world. Quite a miracle of science actually.
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Happy Cake Day Jim! Celebrate your Forum advent!
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Thanks @Elk been a great 2 years, have learned so much I can’t even say how much value the Forum and it’s members add to my life. Thank much to all who participate. Seems funny to say that in this particular topic I started with a rant but it holds true regardless of where it’s said!
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Yep.
And getting some insight into the “real” charges (when insurance money is not available to subsidize costs) is a real eye opener.
I was in between insurance carriers for a while and had to take the approach you noted. The details are fuzzy at this point (it was several years ago), but I recall, for example, a lab charge being “discounted” by more than 50% because I was uninsured and paying cash.
My personal opinion is that, overall, we have one of the best health care systems on the planet. Is it perfect? No. Much can be improved and I am optimistic there are options for reducing costs without denying timely access to care (which I currently think can’t be beat pretty much anywhere else).
FWIW.
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My brother, a doctor, is a managing partner in a good sized multi-office clinic. He indicates their greatest expense is staff and computers to deal with all of the different types paper work required by insurers and mandated by government.
He suggests a single form be used by all carriers and governments, no exceptions, no addendums. This alone would result in considerable savings.
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Glad to hear about your son’s implant and the successful outcome.
My friend had to wait 10 months for his prostate surgery in Nova Scotia. His outcome was far worse than it would have been had he not been forced to wait. His was once thrilled with their med system. Not anymore.
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Agreed. The medical system has to make a profit in order to succeed but their oath helps any procedure or service become negotiable.
Being self employed and in good health I never had any health insurance until forced to do so. It was cheaper to pay directly for services rendered than pay a high monthly premium for a group size of one.
I still think that insurance of any kind is betting against yourself but has become a necessary evil and has formed how our society operates since the beginning of this country (and before).
I had some pretty severe seasonal allergies up until 15 or 20 years or so ago and I used to stop by the Doc’s office and ask for salesman’s samples of Allegra before it became OTC. They would always give me a bag full. Sometimes they were children’s size and he would just tell me how many to take. The same with antibiotics and other office visit type drugs.
I suppose those days are long gone now. The only prescription drug I have ever taken long term is for enlarged prostate.
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My wife’s cousin’s husband is part of the “other” Canadian health care system. There is a private pay as you go system that thrives on people who can afford to pay directly and dont want to wait in a que for services to be rendered. Until he became a doctor I did not know this second system existed.
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Under single payer systems the government has the authority to make you wait until resources are available. This is a common complaint and a point of fragility for single payer (socialized medicine). If a private insurer or hospital in the US made someone wait and the outcome was less than good, the tort suites would start flying.
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[Emphasis added]
An excellent example of some what I was thinking about when I submitted my post.
Cheers.
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