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got a bill today from the hospital after birth of our son for $470 and we are only $92 or so from hitting the $5000 deductible (all of that has been spent on every other bill involved with being pregnant/childbirth) so my wife spent several hours with insurance company just trying to make sure we don’t actually have to pay $470. they said to just pay the whole thing and “hopefully” we would get a refund for the difference. lol
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Nov 7, 2019 03:06
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Apoplexy posted:ow in the everloving gently caress are people paying $400 every 2 weeks, not even getting 100% coverage, and not literally rioting over it? I would be. Probably wouldn't even need to be 10 grand a year in medical insurance premiums to get me to that point, either.  also because at this point drowning in bills and being perpetually in-debted with health care is still preferable to not. people will grasp onto whatever droplets of piss the rich trickle out and be thankful for it because the alternative is worse
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Nov 7, 2019 03:07
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I was talking to someone very knowledgeable of the healthcare industry who said the “politics” of it were only surface level and that we will need to make “hard choices” to lower costs. Dude was sincerely arguing for insurance death panels lol. we already have death panels, it’s called health insurance boardrooms
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Nov 7, 2019 03:16
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nah posted:got a bill today from the hospital after birth of our son for $470 and we are only $92 or so from hitting the $5000 deductible (all of that has been spent on every other bill involved with being pregnant/childbirth) so my wife spent several hours with insurance company just trying to make sure we don’t actually have to pay $470. they said to just pay the whole thing and “hopefully” we would get a refund for the difference. lol better get every elective health expense you can think of out of the way now, before January comes around and your deductible resets!
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Nov 7, 2019 05:19
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Apoplexy posted:The Minnesota Medicaid version of this: You make too little money? Here's 2 to 4 options of health insurance providers for your district. I pay $0 a month no matter which I choose. Each policy is nearly identical and has you paying, at most, $3 per non-emergency medical visit or non-generic Rx. yeah Minnesota’s Medicaid is awesome and I miss being on it
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Nov 7, 2019 05:57
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get that OUT of my face posted:i got to stay on my medicaid plan this year because my combined income from my two jobs in 2018 put me below the threshold. even though i'm over the threshold now, i'm able to stay on it until the next enrollment period Oh good news call them when your poo poo expires in April because there's a plan where you pay like thirty bucks a month and you get the same bennies
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Nov 7, 2019 11:51
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ikanreed posted:Guess whose employer switched to a slightly cheaper much suckier plan  Everyone?
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Nov 7, 2019 18:19
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Apoplexy posted:The Minnesota Medicaid version of this: You make too little money? Here's 2 to 4 options of health insurance providers for your district. I pay $0 a month no matter which I choose. Each policy is nearly identical and has you paying, at most, $3 per non-emergency medical visit or non-generic Rx. Medicaid has been pretty good to me, all things given, but that's only because they put me on the one that matched what I was getting in Washington, which is ten or twenty bars above the rest. When Aetna was still in the state, holy poo poo, you sure did not get any service at all
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Nov 7, 2019 18:26
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I got a letter from my current insurer (through ppaca) that says they want to increase my monthly premium from $373.33 (most of which is subsidized) to $633.64. That's more than my rent.
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Nov 8, 2019 01:50
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Dr. Furious posted:I got a letter from my current insurer (through ppaca) that says they want to increase my monthly premium from $373.33 (most of which is subsidized) to $633.64. That's more than my rent. i love that america is just spiralling towards death and destruction and republicans are stnading there pouring gas on the fire and democrats are standing by watching it grow bigger and kicking a few sticks into it
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Nov 8, 2019 01:56
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our insurance rep likes to try and sell our new grad employees on the high deductible plan by describing it as "a great plan if you don't need to use it much" lol i hafta talk people outta it every year it's such a loving scam compared to the ppo that has the exact same premiums
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Nov 8, 2019 03:58
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what the heck, they made this even more complicated this year now i gotta prove to them that my garbo retail employer's health coverage fails to meet some standard or another before i can even use the marketplace y'all got way more information about this than me, figure it out yourself.... binch
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Nov 17, 2019 00:06
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My state is oNe Of ThE gOoD oNeS, and I'm finally out from the semi-under-the-table misreported ~startup bullshit~ mess that meant that I couldn't have anything for the past couple years (fun protip: if your pay is fucky in, say, late 2016 to early 2017 you get absofucking lutely nothing until 2020 since you're immediately out for the fuckiness, can't apply Nov '17 because your 2016 taxes are hosed, can't apply Nov '18 because your 2017 taxes are hosed) Let's see what I can get! "The system is down for planned system upgrades beginning on November 15th." is what I get. Can I at least tell if I qualify for any kind of subsidy that will drop premiums under 80% of that ballin' 4-digit income without a deductible over 80% of income? "You may qualify, based on your age and income! This is an estimate and does not include all program rules. To find out more, fill out a full application on the site which has been down several days for a maintenance scheduled during the month a year it is available." Well, let's take a best-case-scenario where I get full Medicaid. How will that change my life? My wisdom teeth have been killing me, and when I travel for work I'm terrified I'll end up in a situation like I did a few years back where I sprained my ankle, immediately had to stand working on the grapefruit-sized lump for four ten-hour days without having it looked at, and walked with a limp for the next year and a half until I somehow sprained it back into position. "The average cost of an impacted wisdom tooth extraction is $550, not including anaesthetic. The dental coverage limit is $510 a year. Procedures performed out-of-state are not covered unless preauthorized or life-threatening with no option of transfer." the proper answer to the anti-full nationalization line about "well, you wouldn't hold a doctor at gunpoint and force them to treat you, would you?" is well on its way from "that's an absurd mischaracterization" to "actually yes"
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Nov 17, 2019 00:47
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My wife missed open enrollment for her employer because she was changing positions and the e-mail from HR about it managed to go to her work e-mail's junk folder. So I added her to my work insurance, and I get to pay $65 every two weeks extra (on top of the extra for adding her to my coverage) because she's technically eligible for insurance at her employer but isn't insured through them. Fuckin' cool.
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Nov 17, 2019 02:34
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Crakkerjakk posted:My wife missed open enrollment for her employer because she was changing positions and the e-mail from HR about it managed to go to her work e-mail's junk folder. Wtf I wasn't even aware of this being a thing, they tack on fees for... Like having to choose which lovely plan you use?
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Nov 17, 2019 02:57
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Gunshow Poophole posted:Wtf I wasn't even aware of this being a thing, they tack on fees for... Like having to choose which lovely plan you use? Near as I can tell it's a penalty because if she was insured through her employer, her employer would be footing some of the cost of the insurance. Which doesn't really explain why it doesn't also apply to spouses who aren't eligible for health insurance through an employer or something, except I imagine there's an actual law preventing them from doing that as well, otherwise they would.
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Nov 17, 2019 03:27
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Pretty cool to work for the man so I only pay $410/mo for health & dental coverage (no vision) for my wife and I, while taxes pay the other $985/mo this plan supposedly costs. I only have to pay a $30 co-pay just to see my primary care physician and a couple hundred for any surgeries or hospital visits. This is considered good healthcare in America I think. Anyway back to consulting this arcane table to find out if and where I can see a therapist.
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Nov 17, 2019 03:34
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this is my third go around with Obamacare for my father, who is disabled after having a stroke/heart attack a couple years ago the first time i got a special enrollment around April, and the tax credit covered the whole plan, which i think was a silver after that we had to drop to bronze to be able to afford monthly payments, which is like an $8500 deductible and $50 doctor visits he has to see his GP monthly, so it's like, either pay $180 a month for $20 copays and a $4000 deductible, or pay $40 a month w/ $50 copays and an $8500 deductible the secret sauce is that we have no intention of ever paying his loving medical debt, it'd be impossible for him to do so at this juncture. if he had assets, that'd be owned by the healthcare companies in a few years, but since he doesn't, gently caress them his heart attack + stent surgery was tens of thousands of dollars in non-covered charges, his stroke + emergency helo and rehab totaled a QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS after that he had to have open heart surgery, i don't even know what the final tally is on that we're really lucky because we found a local pharmacist who must be a straight up comrade in how he runs his business, because he never charges anything for RX, even when i'm picking up a bag of 6 medications and insulin injectors, he also lets me get an RX for anti-depressants that i need for a song. i don't want to know how he does it, he must do a lot of creative inventory manipulation and book cooking, but its for the benefit of his customers and my friends/neighbors all go to him and would probably defend him with their life if they had to he's 60 years old and i'm grateful that I was able to get him to emergency care, help him recover, and now do (honestly not much) work to help him live his daily life and he's still with us, but he will die with a half million dollars in medical debt and i'm kind of queerly proud of that i've lived in the bottom three rungs of society my entire life, my father is the quintessential exploited proletarian w/o class consciousness, watched his neighborhood de-industrialize/out source and turn to poo poo in the 60's and 70's, worked crap jobs, lost his union, battled addiction most of his life, smoked, is a misguided racist/sexist soft chauvinist who is brittle and easily cowed, because he's needed therapy since for 30 years but can't get past his own conception of masculinity to make himself vulnerable and do it. he's my model for how a man interacts with the world, and i've turned him into a photographic negative in my mind and discarded all the lovely aspects and kept whatever useful tools he gave me (the ability to think fast and lie convincingly to people i owe money to, and who to actually watch out for in your life [gently caress rich people, gently caress landlords, gently caress creditors, take care of your family, take care of your friends]) i'm glad he'll put that big loving number in the books in red ink, and i hope it materially contributes to choking the god damned system to death for the life he's had to live and the life i've had to live because of the life he's had to live, so that healthcare and pharma executives can ride around in yachts for 4 months a year after pulling the "less coverage / more denials" lever on their vast infrastructure of death and misery sorry, i'm ranting, i'm kind of manic and i hate this loving country so much
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Nov 17, 2019 03:57
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my late father in law had well over a million dollars in medical bills for around 4 months of cancer treatment, and he had "good" insurance he was fortunate in that the cancer killed him relatively quickly before those bills could be racked up even higher than it was
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Nov 17, 2019 04:01
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fibblins posted:Pretty cool to work for the man so I only pay $410/mo for health & dental coverage (no vision) for my wife and I, while taxes pay the other $985/mo this plan supposedly costs. I only have to pay a $30 co-pay just to see my primary care physician and a couple hundred for any surgeries or hospital visits. This is considered good healthcare in America I think. Anyway back to consulting this arcane table to find out if and where I can see a therapist. no treatment; only charge
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Nov 19, 2019 00:08
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My insurance company denied me for the shingles vaccine because I'm not old enough. I've already had the shingles, have a compromised immune system, and still have nerve damage on my neck and in my ear from them. It was one nerve away from potentially blinding me. Good system!
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Nov 19, 2019 00:33
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I am the healthiest person I know. I am on zero medications, have zero health problems, never go to the doctor, don't smoke. Literally a dream patient/insuree. I am one of the healthiest, most active people in Colorado, a state where every grandma runs Ironman triathlons. Here is the cheapest, most bare bones health insurance option offered to me with a shitload of gotchas and copays and exclusion  $8k deductible, $400 a month. Great work guys, awesome market place.
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Nov 19, 2019 01:17
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Pryor on Fire posted:I am the healthiest person I know. I am on zero medications, have zero health problems, never go to the doctor, don't smoke. Literally a dream patient/insuree. I am one of the healthiest, most active people in Colorado, a state where every grandma runs Ironman triathlons. With PPACA insurance plans on the marketplace are based on a community rating rather than an individual rating--with some modifiers for tobacco use. So the rate you get is based on the overall health of your general area, and your individual health doesn't matter. In your picture, the $8k looks like the oop maximum and the deductible is $5k). Still absolute poo poo though, of course. Looking up the plan online though, it at least doesn't have an Rx deductible! So you can pay those copays ($20-$150 depending on drug) right away, lucky you. My favorite blurb from the site I found for it is right after it explains all of the child specific coverage: quote:Spouse, Yes; Adopted Child, No; Foster Child, No; Stepson or Stepdaughter, No; Self, Yes; Child, No; Life Partner, Yes Lmfao On the upside, you would qualify to open an HSA...but if you don't have an employer to make contributions to you only get double tax advantage and not triple... though at $400/mo good luck with that.
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Nov 19, 2019 02:19
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That's amazing, you would only write it that way if you wanted to hide the fact that your children aren't covered in a sneaky way.
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Nov 19, 2019 02:22
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Xaris posted:oh nice, i thought it was mostly a west-coast centric provider given its hq here in ca and didn't know they had a east coast presence as well. its actually the cheapest option here, and for most of my life it's been "da poors use it" provider. except now republicans have been pushing high-deductible bad scam plans on all the poor/middle people instead so i guess that makes it luxurious. though its still a lot cheaper than blue shield aetna whatever garbage options i could pick from which were anywhere from 20 to 100% more expensive kaiser was 5 dollars more expensive a month than a similar plan with anthem, kp was the obvious choice
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Nov 19, 2019 02:22
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So we're going through a bankruptcy and a buyout that's been slated to be completed next week for almost 3 months now. They sent a nice letter saying that we'll be losing our healthcare with no option to even do COBRA* because the entity that would provide COBRA would necessarily cease to exist in such a scenario. This would be effective the month they do it. Two scenarios: If you get hired, you (supposedly) have seamless coverage. You get laid off, you will 1. Likely not know for maybe a week or two before your insurance goes away, one of which is a major holiday week. This could even be a matter of a couple days. 2. Probably have to get a state plan or whatever it is the rules are this minute for when this happens. You would get laid off most likely arbitrarily, with no opportunity to interview and probably not without even a look at your performance. You could have been a model employee thus far but since beep boop spreadsheet says you go, you lose your income and healthcare. If only healthcare wasn't tied to whoever deigns to employ us at the moment Oh and my mom said "what about all the people that don't work" when I mentioned how anti-worker (as in, us) it is and why it should be public. Lady, you've been working all the this time and they just could snatch your healthcare, such as it is, from under you for no reason at all. Even you working doesn't guarantee poo poo. *My proximity to the 80s has taught me to distrust anything named COBRA.
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Nov 19, 2019 02:47
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people defend this system viciously and the insurance industry will wage nuclear war to prevent bernie from being elected warren is at least canny to know standing up for americans will stop her from being elected. bernie is simply right. god bless bernie and god drat america
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Nov 19, 2019 03:08
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Gunshow Poophole posted:Wtf I wasn't even aware of this being a thing, they tack on fees for... Like having to choose which lovely plan you use? If you've got two married peoples and they both work and they can both get employer subsidized insurance through their jobs, neither company wants to pay extra to cover the other person that could be getting coverage through their own job. I was on my essentially common law wife's insurance until they instituted this extra charge policy and it had the desired (for them) effect, I dropped their insurance and went back to my employers insurance which they (meaning her employer) don't (obviously) subsidize, saving them probably thousands of dollars a year.
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Nov 19, 2019 03:36
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I was gonna say that the last time this was the case in my family those fees did not exist BUT now I think carefully about it, we were individually insured literally through the end of the calendar year we got married and then hopped onto my wife's insurance that paid 100% of everything (thanks nonprofits I guess)
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Nov 19, 2019 03:50
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The Pussy Boss posted:You all have my sympathy. I'm on Medicaid and I would be so so so hosed without it, like I'd have tens of thousands of dollars in debt already, plus I get to live with the constant worry that I will fill out a form wrong, or make too much money this month, and get thrown off it. And I'm one of the lucky ones.  at least medicaid is sorta like universal healthcare, (if we stay poor and dont get thrown off it  )
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Nov 19, 2019 08:56
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after reading this thread I can’t understand how this system is able to exist it doesn’t make sense. how.
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Nov 19, 2019 17:56
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It makes money for a lot of people.
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Nov 19, 2019 18:03
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i really need to do my back taxes for the years of back sales tax rebate for being poor, and to get some new meds covered completely even though none of them cost more than $20 to fill fight fam, for these basic things everyone should have
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Nov 19, 2019 18:11
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Gunshow Poophole posted:do we have a thread for horror stories of healthcare in a barbarous meatgrinder of a nation, I feel like we should please this. i think it would be extremely good for purifying the hate, and also a good repo of misery for when you have to tell a non-believer the gospel. does someone want to start it? should i? or is this thread already that thread?
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Nov 19, 2019 18:25
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this thread is that thread
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Nov 19, 2019 18:26
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Willie Tomg posted:this thread is that thread cool one time i asked my insurance company how much it would cost to see my doctor, and they said $60. i asked my doctor how much it would cost with my insurance, too, and they also said $60. i went and saw the doctor, gave them my insurance card, paid $60, and saw the doctor. $60 is absolutely bonkers to see a doctor but whatever, at least it was predictable and i could decide if it was worth it to me. two weeks later i got a bill for $600 for seeing that doctor. for some additional insanity: i spoke to the doctor for all of two minutes. he took one look at me and said "yeah you're fine," was basically the extent of the interaction. i called the insurance company and the hospital, both of whom were of course never going to do anything to help me obviously because it'd mean less money for them. while talking with the insurance company, they also asked me a series of personal questions to try to blame me for the cost, including what condition i was seeing the doctor for, which i'm pretty sure is illegal. they also asked me: "when you went to the doctor, did you TALK TO the doctor?" i said, yes, loving obviously. and they said, "oh, that's why it was $600, if you talk to the doctor, it's a consultation instead of a visit." i forced them to define those terms in the explanation of benefits and they backed off on it. later on they settled on telling me that it was $600 because my doctor's office had been bought by a hospital, so going to see him in his office for 2 minutes and then walking out counted as a "hospitalization" they also categorized it as a "level 5" intake, which is the most severe/complex (i.e.: you're dying on the table), so i called them and told them that overbilling in that way is illegal, and they said, "oh, that's just what we do for all new intakes." i told them that a pattern of misbehavior doesn't make it less wrong, and they told me they'd have the doctor call me about it, then never did, and sent it to collections. anyway i've never paid a penny past $60 and i never will death to america edit: i realize $600 is small compared to what many people deal with; the issue here to me is that now i'm terrified of going to doctors because i don't know if i'm going to pay $x or $10x, and that's not a kind of risk i can tolerate, and i feel extremely angry that i live under a system where i can't even feel secure to ask a doctor about something without fear of arbitrary costs. i got lucky it was $600. they could have easily said $60,000 and i'd have equivalently useless recourse. Soap Scum has issued a correction as of 21:45 on Nov 19, 2019 |
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Nov 19, 2019 18:54
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Had strep throat a few years back. Tried to deal with it by just doing liquids and gargling saltwater, eventually got bad enough my airway was starting to close up. Went to urgent Care, gave them my insurance info, had a doc look in my throat, diagnose as strep, write me a prescription for antibiotics. Went to the pharmacy, paid for the antibiotics, strep went away. Couple weeks later got a bill for over $1000. Laughed and didn't even bother calling up my insurance company or the hospital. Hit my credit pretty hard but gently caress them both, I'm not giving them my time and stress to try to get them to see reason.
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Nov 19, 2019 20:31
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Soap Scum posted:
tbf it's a meaningless distinction. 50% of the country couldn't spontaneously cough up $600, and after that point the degree to which you're hosed is almost irrelevant. don't feel guilty for getting hosed less. I had a bill for $350 show up from an anesthesiologist for my endoscopy show up 8 months after I had the procedure to rule out barrett's due to reflux
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Nov 19, 2019 23:44
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What's this thread about
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Nov 20, 2019 00:47
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paul_soccer10 posted:What's this thread about It's about America's perfect health care system where even people lucky enough to have a job with benefits get the "benefit" of paying hundreds of dollars a month, so they can pay even more money each time they have to see the doctor or go to the hospital, and then have a bunch of desk jockeys play Calvinball with their bill before they find out how much they're being charged. Seriously, this is straight up "making the rules up as we go": Soap Scum posted:they also asked me: "when you went to the doctor, did you TALK TO the doctor?" i said, yes, loving obviously. and they said, "oh, that's why it was $600, if you talk to the doctor, it's a consultation instead of a visit." i forced them to define those terms in the explanation of benefits and they backed off on it.
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Nov 20, 2019 02:00
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