$126 to jab a needle in a vein is rediculous. However, how many needles are you paying for? See the guy that walked in and cannot pay? Guess who is paying for it? Go look in the mirror.

Berlin, that in Germany? Where they have higher taxes to pay for their version socialized medicine? Where they have way less liability lawsuits than we do? Who is responsible for it? Go look in the mirror if you are a US citizen. Joe Citizen serves on the jury. When a suit goes to trial and the plaintiff is given rediculous awards, what happens? Well, that case gets logged somewheres and people use it to figure out liability. Lets see now, The last suit like this got the institute charged with a $10 mil award to the plaintiff. Well, if my lawyer sues, they will settle out of court for maybe $5 mil so it is a win-win for both sides. Well, that drives up the cost of business. So, you pay. Yes, there are a few rediculous suits that have gone out but the time to fight them and the uncertain outcome makes the institute settle for a smaller sum. Why do you think my wife is very quick to note down patients non-compliance and get them to sign an AMA (Against Medical Advice) form if she thinks they are going to do something stupid? I mean, the doctor said you cannot smoke or you might stroke out but the patient still insists on smoking. Why does she have to do it? liability. Why is there all sorts of stupid instructions in your manual for your car? Liability.

It might be a billing mistake. Those happen all the time. Here is another one. A man I know personally and saw his letters from this institute told him that he was being denied further benifits because people with his condition either get better or die by this time. Sounds fair, don't you think? Well, lets see. He has had lung cancer and they took out over 60% of his lungs and he has about 40% capacity at most. He can walk short distances and has to stop. Hell, people even scold him for using a handicap spot. Oh, the institute was the one that doles out disability benifits. Since he was still alive, they figured that he had regrown his lung or something.

Say you normally charter boats for hire and you charge your ongoing customers.............the one's who do quite a bit of business with you...........$100. for the boat.

Then Mr. Lim comes along and you tell him that the boat.......for him.......will be $350. Mr. Lim tells you to take hike........he knows that $350 is a ripoff and has no relationship to your true costs. So he walks and finds another operator to provide him the service for a "reasonable" charge. Maybe he'll get the boat for $150. but not more.

However, now imagine that Mr. Lim has to rent the boat under an emergency condition.......he can't shop around for rates........for two reasons. The first being that he doesn't have the time......the second being that no charter boat operator will tell him the price of the boat. He must charter the boat from me and I don't even need to tell him the price up front.

I stick it to him........after the boat returns to the dock for a price that is 3.5X what I would give to my preferred customers.......and there is not a damn thing he can do about it.

You believe that scenario is fair to Mr. Lim?

I don't.

A question first. Can Mr Lim show up, take the ride and when you try make him pay he says he has no credit cards and no money of any sort and does not pay but you still have to give him a ride?

IIRC, the Emergency Room CANNOT legally kick you out even if you don't have insurance or a means to pay even if you tell them up front that you are broke. I think I remember my wife telling me that they had to treat some hobos or something of that nature. So, Wonder why they stick it to the guy that has no insurance? Somebody's going to pay and since the insurance people have clout and the single uninsured guy doesn't, well..... That is the price of us insisting that they have to treat everyone who walks in. There are 3 types of patients. Those that have insurance and those that can pay and those that cannot pay. What group do you want to be in? It is up to you.

My wife got her BSN so she is set for life, right? Her parents dealt her a bad hand. She has rehumatoid arthritis. With that, it means she cannot keep up this physical pace till she retires. I guess she could cry about it and moan about how unfair life is or she can do something about it. Well, she decided to go for more school and get her MSN and be an Nurse Practitioner. Less physical and more diagnosis work. My dad found that people who kissed butt got promoted over him even when they had less productivity. He also saw that they treated their older people badly. He could take it or leave it. He left it and did his own business. Was it hard? You bet. There was a time where he didn't have $100 to his name literally. My parents had to take a 2nd mortgage on their house which has thankfully appreciated. His business got better finally. Could it have gone south and they lost their house? Sure.

Problem is we are too spoilt. We want an entitlement society. Well, the world doesn't owe us jack. The sooner we figure it out, the better. We don't want high taxes but we want the benifits. We want excellent medical care for all but nobody wants to pay for it. The hospital is a business. I didn't take my wife to school 70 miles away twice a week for nothing. She doesn't write papers and do classes for nothing. We all work for something.

No he can't.

And, the issue of providing free health care to those with no assets is definitely part of the problem.

However, the legitimacy of charging a person without any insurance 350% of the amount that is charged to the insurance companies is simply unfair and begs for regulation.

It's no different than the analogy of the ferry boat where you must use my boat and I don't have to tell you the price.......upfront. Total BS.

Then what we have is a different situation.

Well, we the people told the lawmakers we want that. Now some issues crop up and we start crying.

Ah, but you see, insurance companies have clout. You Joe Nobody, don't. They need to make their money or at least have some of it back since there are many who don't pay.

What's your point? That I tell you upfront? To what end? Even if I tell you and you don't pay, what can I do about it? I cannot refuse to treat you, take back the treatment or lock you up till you pay. The only thing I can do is send you a bill which you can make paper airplains out of.

I thought the point was obvious. There are a group of people........between the wetbacks without W2 income.........and folks with health insurance........that can have their lives set to financial ruin due to the practices of the hospitals with regard to charges.

The hospital is legally bound to charge all comers the same rate. They should be legally bound to accept the same payment from Mr. Lim as thay do from Aetna.

Makes sense
 

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Hi Brian,

If hospitals charged a fairer price to all, they would have a better chance of collecting.
Who would think that a couple of days in the hospital (without a big operation) could cost
a year's pay for someone at the poverty line?
Of course, the intent is to cause fear so that more people will get insurance, so the hospitals must be under the influence of the insurance companies in some way.

The medical system sure is geared to keeping the poor and part time workers dependant on the SS system Healthcare savings accounts might be a sensible solution to this..
If I was poor I would dread any illness unless SS was looking after the bill.

In Kanada, we may complain about the high taxes, but at least we don't go broke after a
broken leg or a case of pneumonia.
If an American tourist was hit by a car, they would be looked after at little or no cost, I believe.
(I don't know any injured American tourists )
The system is abused here in many ways, by those who go to the emergency room and wait for
hours to see a doc because they have a bad cold or a migraine.
That is a very expensive way to get a few tylenol pills (without the chicken soup)

Ron (Kanada)

OK. So they tell you that your emergency C-section is going to cost you $10K. Now what? You think you will shop around? Probably not. So, you will get it there. Now the bill comes. Well, you cannot pay. What can they do about it? Nothing. Yes, it has drawbacks in that 20% of Americans are uninsured and of that 20%, I would bet a large percentage has to be written off.

Here is another thing. If they do, it would be like me having to charge you $300 per ton of widgets when you purchase 3 tons of widgets. Joe purchases 300 tons but I have to charge him the same money and accept the same money as you. That is why we buy in bulk. That gives us more pull with the shop. I buy 1 TV and it costs $100. If I walk in and ask what they will sell me 30 TVs for, I expect the unit cost to go down. 300 TVs and I expect a bigger price drop. Atena sends them thousands of customers. They are able to negotiate a better amount of payment. I get discounts when take out a 2nd policy with AAA

Probably right. Even if they posted the rates, you don't have the time or the capability to "shop around" when you have an emergency.

Right again. If you buy more widgets, you get a discount. But, you're missing the point here. The person shopping for a discount on widgets has the time available and is not under pressure to buy the widgets immediately. Furthermore, he can shop various suppliers and negotiate with them based upon prices from other suppliers. It's a proper capitalist system.

In the case of the hospital, none of this applies. They charge whatever they please and negotiate whatever discount they wish with the largest clients.

You may think it's perfectly acceptable.........and........you have a solid conservative position for believing that.........."not my problem because I have insurance".

But, I stand by the need to make a change so that a working man is not crushed with an unbearable debt for the remainder of his days. In fact, the debt that he would incur with the Aetna pricing is onerous enough........he doesn't need to see charges that are 3.5X this number simply because the hospital can get away with this.

By your logic, the hospital should charge 10X the price of what Aetna would pay.........hey.........why not..........what can the poor slob do about it??

It is not only the working man that are getting pounded some years I paid more than 10% of my income to self insure, I can't imagine the burden that a $50,000 self employed accountant, RE sales person or whatever that is because the rates are not based on income.

IMOHO health systems should follow the government contractor protocol and law, that being they cannot charge an uninsured group more than their lowest rate allowed for anyone else. Fixing the system will make it somewhat more affordable and will ultimately increase the profits because people will have the ability to pay the bill in lieu of bankruptcy.

Example:

The lowest amount paid for X to HMO Y is the rate that an emergency patient will pay.

Yep. Not my problem. I have insurance. Did I always have insurance? Nope. Did I get my tit in a ringer? Yes. What did I do? Wait for people to help me out? My wife went to get a college degree in Singapore because that was the only game in town. She majored in Philosophy and minored in English. Why? Because she loved the program? No. Because she was told that was what they wanted her to do. Grades have nothing to do with it. You are streamed in Singapore according to what the government wants you to be in. Well, she came here and found that she had no markatable skills so she went to school for her Batch. Science. Nursing. She has lupus so she cannot keep being physical like floor nursing demands. Did she cry and say "Help me."? No, she went back to school for her Masters in Nursing to be a Nurse Practitioner so she would still do work she is capable of but way less physical. I told you about my dad and his last work place earlier. I found the IT field closing up so I moved on to something else.

The working man should get off his duff and make himself more markatable. If you are planning a career as a shelfer in Wal*Mart, you get what you get. I didn't go to kollege for just the beer.

Well, stop going along with the stupid suits. I hear horror stories of people being so worried that this, that or the other will end their career as a doctor that they have to carry tons of malpractice insurance. Still they get sued like mad. Think 75% of OB-Gyns are idiots? I don't. ARe there bad ones? Yes. 75% of them will be sued at least once in their career. Why? Because the outcome wasn't waht the patient wanted. Also, like I said, they cannot operate as I would. You can't pay and I don't sell you stuff. They have to treat everyone that walks in no matter how expensive it is. Insurance companies have clout to negotiate lower rates. So, who will pick up the slack? IIRC, 80% of our people are insured. I don't see too much of an issue there.

Then the hospital will either go bancrupt or make everyone pay higher rates. What happens then? 80% of the population (the insured) will have to pay higher HMO rates to support those that have no insurance.

I cut out all of the off-topic BS.

The above says everything that anyone reading the thread would like to know regarding your position on the subject. Congrats on being a true conservative.

I guess I'll then add that I have insurance because I put myself in that position and not wished for some devine creature to give it to me. I saw the problems and I corrected them. Do you see something wrong with that? As such, I have little sympathy for people who don't want to work for what they want and have to be spoonfed. What happened before the days of entitlement?

I don't know about that. I favor abortion on demand and gay marriage. I don't think the conservatives want me either. :D I don't believe in an entitlement society.