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What Happens When You Don’t Pay a Hospital Bill


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2019 Aug 29, 7:54am   1,553 views  9 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (55)   💰tip   ignore  

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/08/medical-bill-debt-collection/596914/

Krevat’s bills were just a drop in the American medical-debt ocean. About 43 million Americans have unpaid medical debt dinging their credit, and half of all overdue debt on Americans’ credit reports is from medical expenses, according to a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau study from 2014. ...

Krevat’s bills began to arrive while she was still being treated at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. One came from one of the hospital’s doctors, Mathew R. Williams, for $9,000. Another came from a doctor named Aziz Ghaly for $17,418. A few months later, a separate invoice from Weill Cornell Physicians said she owed $22,464. ...

Ghaly told me he was a fellow at Columbia at the time. “We are on salary, and they bill for us,” he said. “I have no idea what they bill, or why it was out of network. We’re not involved in it at all. This is an unfortunate part of our health system.”


These bills contain a lot of bullshit. Hospitals just make up physicians who were not there and treatments which did not actually happen.

The fix is simple and obvious:

1. all non-emergency medical bills must be presented in advance of treatment and signed by the patient, no hidden prices ever
2. all emergency bills must be limited to strictly regulated prices

Comments 1 - 9 of 9        Search these comments

1   Al_Sharpton_for_President   2019 Aug 29, 7:57am  

Rape without consent.
2   FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden   2019 Aug 29, 8:02am  

Pricing transparency is a must.

I don’t see left trying to fix this, because it’s an actual problem, not made up bullshit leftist problem.
3   Al_Sharpton_for_President   2019 Aug 29, 8:09am  

Hospitals have claimed that efforts to have uniform, transparent pricing will cause some hospitals to go under. One reason is the shell game of having those who can pay, pay. So if an uninsured person receives care, those costs get spread around into other billables. A lot of illegals are uninsured, and hospitals won’t play an immigration law enforcement role. Open borders makes this worse. And so Medicare for all including illegals is a Dem mantra. Of course, more illegals are then incented to come in.
4   Goran_K   2019 Aug 29, 8:44am  

Patrick says
1. all non-emergency medical bills must be presented in advance of treatment and signed by the patient, no hidden prices ever
2. all emergency bills must be limited to strictly regulated prices


What about just have pure 100% pricing transparency like in the car market?

You can totally scope the cost of ACL surgery. The surgeons hourly rate is known, the medications and support materials all have a cost. There is a baseline here. Then hospitals can add whatever profit margin they want, and COMPETE against other medical institutions.

If hospitals CAN'T COMPETE, then they go out of business, and other BETTER RUN hospitals take their place, thereby increasing the quality of healthcare via the market.
5   RWSGFY   2019 Aug 29, 9:26am  

Stanford Medical says in writing right on their bills that they don't sell the debt to collectors, don't sue and don't report to credit agencies. Which makes any bill you get from them pretty much optional.
6   desi_chai   2019 Aug 29, 10:19am  

I went to valleycare(stanford) in Pleasanton and I have a high deductible blue cross employer plan and for just a common doctor visit they charged me 400$ and extra 200$ for wax removal. After a fight with billing department they gave a 100$ discount on wax removal. I had to paid $500 just for a doctor visit who referred me to neurologist in their department.

I'm not sure how people are paying so much money for just a doctor visit
7   Patrick   2019 Aug 29, 9:40pm  

desi_chai says
I'm not sure how people are paying so much money for just a doctor visit


Basically, they aren't.

You could try just not paying it. If you don't care about your credit rating (I sure don't, because I never borrow money) what can they really do to you? The odds they will successfully collect are small.

Also, lots of people are covered by low-deductible plans, and those plan simply don't pay nearly as much to the provider as the amounts stated on your bills. The plans get a discount. Individuals get the maximum possible price, which is usually well hidden before treatment, and not visible until it is actually on the bill.
8   Shaman   2019 Aug 30, 5:10am  

desi_chai says
I went to valleycare(stanford) in Pleasanton and I have a high deductible blue cross employer plan and for just a common doctor visit they charged me 400$ and extra 200$ for wax removal. After a fight with billing department they gave a 100$ discount on wax removal. I had to paid $500 just for a doctor visit who referred me to neurologist in their department.

I'm not sure how people are paying so much money for just a doctor visit


You’d have paid less with no insurance, just offering them cash. Most doctors, even specialists, will be absolutely great with $200 for an office visit.
9   mell   2019 Aug 30, 9:17am  

Yes and no the smaller ones will gladly give cash discounts and some of the bigger maybe as well but they often have whole department that deal with insurances and therfore can be more efficient with that racket system and give lesser discounts.

Also high deductible plans are basically closest to catastrophical plans. They make their money with reasonably healthy people that rougbly spend the amount of their large deductible per year but not much more. If you can avoid going to the doctor for routine stuff they are cheap. So you either need to be super healthy or super unhealthy.

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