Quote:
Originally Posted by Daseal
Schneed -- the current health care system not only works like this, it promotes it. I am not insured. There is no way I'm going to the doctor at the first hint of being sick like I may with insurance. A simple doctor's visit for us uninsured can easily cost 250 bucks just to get in the door.
I was uninsured and went through treatment for Lyme disease. Each blood test cost me out of pocket 550 bucks to get the labs necessary to tell if I had Lyme and how to treat it. How much does this exact same test cost for the insurance company? That's right, 225 bucks. That's not how much the insured person pays, it's how much the lab charges. How in the hell is this fair? A service should cost a set amount regardless of if a person is insured or not.
45 minutes in a hospital left me with a 9000 dollar bill. Not including the 900 dollars a week for medicine x 8 weeks.
People are petrified of getting these types of bills for a reason. Hospitals are ridiculously expensive, there's a reason why people don't come in when they're starting to feel bad. Granted it compounds the issue the longer you wait, but you have to understand that people sit down and have to weigh bankruptcy with getting fairly basic health care in this country. That is not okay, in my book.
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Right but the difference between you and the "poor" I'm talking about is the poor qualify for Medicaid coverage, you do not. You are simply uninsured or underinsured, which is a totally different conversation. Which you are very right about.
But, that doesn't speak to how the poor handle their healthcare. They have coverage granted to them through the state Medicaid program, so they use the ER as a "frequent flier". They know if they show up to the ER they can't be refused treatment, so they use it for every little thing. Then you have other poor folks who refuse to get treatment until they're very sick, like the pneumonia thing I mentioned. I'm saying the Medicaid programs need to be tweaked to incent the poor to use the system wisely.
As for uninsured patients who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, that's a totally different discussion. To make that fair, you're talking about a radical change to the way hospitals get reimbursed all throughout the country. Idealogically I 100% agree with your point, however knowing the business like I do, it seems like an unrealistic pipe dream.