Hospitol bill

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Originally Posted By: toyotaguy
Anyone that has had a large hospitol bill with no health insurance, please give me some advice. I am self employed. Had no health insurance and had to go to ER twice in a week. THey admitted me and ran a bunch of test. Got the bill for $7,000 dollers. There is no way I can pay this bill. I know you can neg a payment plan, but I was wondering if anyone has had experience with dealing with hosp, and what my best course of action is. I do not own a home.


Since you are self insured, you will have to negotiate your own rate. Right now you are charged what the price of the services delivered is. You will not know what a large insurance company would pay but it is a fair assumption that they would pay about $6,000 on a $7,000 bill depending on their size - the larger the payer, the better rates they get.

I see that you are in Indiana. Which provider did you go to?
 
What I don't get is that some 'minority' people who drive a Cadillac with 24 inch wheels, have 3 or 4 kids, get food stamps and don't pay a dime for their health care.... and this poor guy gets a $7000 bill from the hospital.

Next time you got to the ER with chest pain, make sure you check in under a fake name and SS #.
BY LAW THEY HAVE TO RENDER CARE.
 
Originally Posted By: LT4 Vette
True,

But I don't mind my tax dollars helping person in need like toyotaguy



It is not taxpayer money that pays for this. It goes into charity care and comes out of the provider's revenues.
 
Originally Posted By: CivicFan
Originally Posted By: LT4 Vette
True,

But I don't mind my tax dollars helping person in need like toyotaguy



It is not taxpayer money that pays for this. It goes into charity care and comes out of the provider's revenues.



And what does a taxpayer supported hospital do when their revenues drop and they need more money? They raise taxes. This just happened with our county hospital (Parkland) in Dallas County.
 
If it's a county hospital, the county may decide to inject some cash into it. The logic being that the hospital does an invaluable service to the community. After all, the hospital is owned by the community in that case. But if a hospital is losing money like that, there may be fundamental issues like the community not being able to support such a hospital. In the long run if the situation is not remedied, it will deteriorate and close down. Then you end up with substandard health care for the county residents who have to travel long distances to get care. You can then forget about preventative care and see overall decline in health of the average resident.
 
And its people like Toyotaguy whose been paying into the system for years and years that keep that keep his local Community Hospital afloat.
 
Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
For emergency services a self pay is a no-pay. They do "bill" for the fake "full price" of services


Can you, or anyone, explain how this insane practice ever came to be?
 
I went to St. Anonthny Hosp. In Indiana. I knew it wasn't going to be good when the person from Billing services contacted me while I was still in the Hosp. They don't wait long do they?
 
Originally Posted By: CivicFan
Originally Posted By: LT4 Vette
True,

But I don't mind my tax dollars helping person in need like toyotaguy



It is not taxpayer money that pays for this. It goes into charity care and comes out of the provider's revenues.


HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! You have to be kidding...

Many many hospitals are owned by municipalities, such as our Memorial Hospital system here. I'll show you the city budget where tax revenue goes right to the hospital to pay for delinquent services.
 
Originally Posted By: moribundman
Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
For emergency services a self pay is a no-pay. They do "bill" for the fake "full price" of services


Can you, or anyone, explain how this insane practice ever came to be?


Sure - it came to be through the power of insurance companies. They probably have more leverage then any other private entities out there (well, other then the Fed.
smirk2.gif
).

They get big and lean enough through thousands and thousands of large group policies and then they can negotiate with health care providers to substantially lower their prices because they know they'll have unlimited business.

It's like buying a car purely on credit, where no "sale price" is even listed - you'; never ever know the true price you're paying and health care providers are charging.

The "in network" bill from the surgeon to Blue Cross Blue Shield for my appendicitis was $7,000. The amount knocked off the "real bill" if you want to call it that, for me going through an in network provider, was roughly $10,000. So the insurance company and I "saved 10 grand" since I had insurance and went to an in network provider.

I can't think of any other definition other then extortion that defines the health care industry in the US. You either buy health insurance, or the entire industry will try and ream you into the ground.

And everyone saying to not pay the bill - I've know a few people who've been run through the ringer from collection agencies, even sued, and been forced into bankruptcy.
 
Actually, I have the bill in front of me now.

The total bill for just the emergency room service and the appendicitis surgery was $22,081.55.

The hospital charged the insurance company $6,310.32. The "patient savings" amount (defined as the amount in excess of the allowed expense for a participating provider) was $15,770.73.
shocked2.gif


If I hadn't had insurance, I'd have gotten a bill for $22 grand, but the insurance company only gets billed 6 grand.
 
Thanks for confirming what I thought was behind this. Apparently, "free market" healthcare is driven by nothing but greed.
 
Originally Posted By: toyotaguy
I went to St. Anonthny Hosp. In Indiana. I knew it wasn't going to be good when the person from Billing services contacted me while I was still in the Hosp. They don't wait long do they?


If you had gone to St. Vincent, they would have worked out a payment plan with you - their new policy is not to employ collection agencies as they realized that more and more people are under or uninsured nowadays.

You must have really been in a bad shape when admitted. They normally try to determine whether the patient should be billed or should be treated as part of charity care as early as possible. They will even try to find a qualifying program for you - Medicaid or some other program that you would have qualified for.

My advice would be to work out a payment program with the hospital. I don't know what programs the St. Francis system has but I am sure they will work with you if you explain your situation.
 
Originally Posted By: toyotaguy
I went to St. Anonthny Hosp. In Indiana. I knew it wasn't going to be good when the person from Billing services contacted me while I was still in the Hosp. They don't wait long do they?

I have an even better one for you....a family member died rather suddenly and stayed at at certain community hospital in Munster *wink wink* before he died.

Exactly one bleeping week after the funeral, we received a letter from a collections agency the hospital retained -- they hadn't even billed Medicare yet but were ready to come after us for the full amount.

Good luck with the situation. I'm at a loss too as to why a provider will take 25% of the billed amount from an insurer and call it even, but expect someone without insurance to pay the full bill.
 
Originally Posted By: moribundman
Apparently, "free market" healthcare is driven by nothing but greed.


It works both ways.
I lived in the Dallas, TX area for 10 years. In a previous post, "Footpounds" talks about Parkland hospital in Dallas. This hospital, while having very good care, is a funded by the taxpayers. This is where a lot of immigrants and uninsured go for their health care.
I worked with a lot of people who DID have insurance. They would have their babies born at Parkland and simply ignore the bills when they arrived in the mail, just so they would pay nothing out of their pockets. These were people that had a good income and their insurance company would pick up most of the tab. Of course, they would say when they were admitted that they had no insurance.
Both organizations and individuals can have greed.
 
Well, I am a firm believer of Karma. You do good things and good things come back to you. You do bad, and well there you are. I have seen both sides of Karma in my life, and I much prefer trying to do right
 
Originally Posted By: moribundman
Thanks for confirming what I thought was behind this. Apparently, "free market" healthcare is driven by nothing but greed.


It's a game of funny money and semantics. Health care has never gone down in price. They blame it on a number of things ..but it doesn't alter the fact that a $25 xray is now $150 on a technology that's way older than I am. More health care facilities and providers increases the cost of health care.

About the only free market aspect to it is that professionals will flock to where the money is.
 
Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
They blame it on a number of things ..but it doesn't alter the fact that a $25 xray is now $150 on a technology that's way older than I am. More health care facilities and providers increases the cost of health care.

About the only free market aspect to it is that professionals will flock to where the money is.


Once must remember another reason that health care has drastically gone up in the last 100 years is that people live longer. In 1910, you'd be lucky to make it to the age of 50 before you died. If you got a heart attack, cancer, have your appendix burst or have a blood clot, you usually died quite quickly. A lot of disease are now treatable and now with people living well past their 80's, you have a lot more health care to pay for. My grandma recently died at the age of 104. Had she died 40 years sooner, there would have been a lot less medical costs needed during her life. Somebody's got to pay for all this. A person who is in their 80s will also need a lot more medicine than somebody in their 40s. Medicine also costs a lot of money.
Our government can skewer a statistic any way they please. This is another reason they can hold up a chart of health care costs from many years back and show everybody how health care has gone up over the last few years. Except today the chart will show how greedy a doctor is, how a for-profit hospital is screwing us or how a medicine company charges too much money for some medicine they spent 10 years of trial-and-error testing to finally get approval for.
 
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