1967
got the bratwurst from the back of the grill
(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
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this post was submitted on 28 May 2025
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I know expensive, shitty healthcare in the USA is a stereotype, but in my experience it's also largely true. Maybe it's because I'm not wealthy or connected enough to have access to the good stuff, though?
The bills for my latest medical emergency are rolling in now.
The $1,000 USD ambulance bill is almost a relief, since I've heard others say their ride cost several times more than that. I declined pretty much all medical care in the ambulance and all offers for medication/treatment, though, so maybe that's part of it. Had I lost consciousness, I likely wouldn't have been able to say no.
The $2,000 USD emergency room bill? That's just the part that I have to pay out of pocket. The actual price they charged my insurance is $6,000+ for my slightly more than 90 minutes on a stretcher in the hallway. And it doesn't seem to have covered anything specific because the imaging (which I didn't even need), treatment, medications (which I would have refused if I knew how much they charged but they don't know that and can't tell you ahead of time), individual nurses, etc are all billed as separate line items. I was even charged thousands of dollars by a doctor I never even saw in person. I joked in another thread recently about $45 tylenol, but that's actually true. I'm paying $45 for 800mg of tylenol.
Months later, the billing part isn't even finalized. New claims/bills showed up literally 2 days ago, well after I thought I was done paying. Thousands of dollars out of pocket, on top of paying a thousand dollars a month for insurance.
At least the medical professionals that treated me were great.
I had a brain injury from a bicycle accident. The fact that my health has bounced back, but my finances likely never will, tells me everything I need to know about our system. One injury, and I now have a lifetime of bills to pay off. I guess it makes sense in some sick way, I do owe them my life, but man, they don’t let me forget (even if my broken brain tries).
Over 60% of all private bankruptcies in the US are due to medical issues. The system is broken
Two major studies in California found 70% of the homeless were employed "productive" members of society before injury/illness forced loss of income, then housing. Yes the system is broken.
The system is working as designed.
It’s designed to be predatory and evil.
This is crazy. I once stayed at a hospital for two months, countless ultrasounds, even an invasive procedure where they sent probes down my veins, two MRI's and the final cost was around 5k... payed by state supplied insurance. I payed 0 and even got payed 80% of my wages... cause that's the law.
9 months of chemo, countless tests, scans, meds, consults, two stints in ICU....$0
'Straayaaaaa
In the US right? FMLA? I was also out for about 6 months but received full pay, not 80%.
FMLA is unpaid. You only get paid to miss work if you use your vacation time or if you had paid for short term disability insurance, otherwise you are fucked. I know a woman who was forced to return to work 6 weeks after giving birth because her leave was unpaid and she couldn't afford to take any more unpaid leave
I did not need to use my vacation time and did not have short term disability. Sounds like my company did me a solid
last time i was in the hospital in the states the nurses and the hospitalist intentionally tried to kill me via malpractice.
I've had good hospital experiences, but not in the last ten years.
As someone who hasn't been to a hospital since he was 13 I would love to hear wtf I'm in for when it inevitably happens. Why would they do that? What did they do? Was it subtle? Stupid?
I've worked in a few US hospitals (in the lab, but we worked closely with nurses and doctors) and by far the biggest danger I observed (other than insurance practicing medicine without a license) was nurses and doctors making mistakes due to sleep deprivation. Doctors and nurses will work 14 hours, get called in to the ER multiple times throughout the night, and then try to work another 12 hour shift without sleep.
Another huge risk factor was overworking nurses by giving them too many patients to care for. Nurses need patient caps of 5 or 6 because each additional patient increases the risk of someone dying by 20%
short version, not subtle, very stupid. i had an acute condition with one and only one accepted course of treatment. nurse put in orders to do something very different, which likely would have caused a massive organ rupture if i wasn't keeping track of every minutiae they did while trying to treat me. i refused the new treatment and wasn't harmed, but the MD signed off on it. as it was i left the hospital severly dehydrated because they were refusing me IV fluids while i was NPO.
Last time I was in the states the doctors and nurses murdered me in my hospital bed.
Are you a newt or did it get better?
Am newt