re: Hospital overcharging BS

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If you have say a $3600 deductible and are hospitalized. Do you have to pay the entire amount the day you check out?

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No, generally.

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Never dealt with this before. Went to doctor and got sent to hospital.
Have insurance high deductible.
If it's billed and I have a few days that's fine.

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Go talk with the financial department after discharge. They'll often have someone available to you during your stay. You can typically pay down the account interest-free over a reasonable term which you and them will agree upon.

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Scruffy always goes generic.

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sulfamethoxazole trimethoprim FTW




Conversely from OP's topic, my daughter had to take mesnex that, even with insurance, is $100 per pill (in the hospital's pharmacy which was annoyingly out of network). Her physician couldn't have been kinder and scrambled to find a less expensive one in the city. He said they normally give them when they can, but the admin on duty wasn't allowing them to do it. It was down to the wire so my husband went to the pharmacy to get it filled. There was some more red tape involved so the process was delayed. The pharmacist was so mad about our situation that he just gave him the pill free of charge.

The nurse, physician, and pharmacist all rad. Hospital admin not so much.

Build an outpatient clinic right next to the ER room. Problem solved.

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Vote Democrat, the horse haired coward couldn't care less about your overcharging.

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Let's let the government take it over. That'll fix it

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They charge the insurance company the $175, the insurance company will only pay them $50 and they will drop the rest of the charge.

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And apparently we're supposed to just accept this as normal business behavior.

Try getting a straight answer about what something will cost from a doctor or nurse. shite is laughable.

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I mean, why not try something new?

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Government is the most inefficient organization in the country? New entitlements never get removed? We can't afford it?

The real answer to cutting costs is some things just shouldn't be paid for

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The biggest medical costs are concentrated on a fairly small segment of the population—people with one or more chronic illnesses, plus victims of accidents or violent crime. The cost is so concentrated, in fact, that an estimated five percent of the population accounts for 50 percent of total medical costs.

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Hundreds of billions of dollars each year are spent treating Americans who are in the last weeks, or days, of life.

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Yes, we spend hundreds of billions of dollars to prolong the inevitable by a very small amount

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One famous, or perhaps notorious, advocate of limiting late-in-life medical spending is former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, who was given the nickname “Governor Gloom” in the 1980’s for his argument that the elderly have a “duty” to avoid costly care when the end is near. There’s only so much money available for medical care, Lamm noted, so it ought to be used in the most efficient way. In the face of bitter criticism, Lamm stuck to his guns. Just this spring he told the Denver Post: “When I look at the literature, and there are such things as $93,000 prostate operations at some stage of prostate cancer that might give two extra months of life, it is outrageous.”

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This is just absurdity and people just accept it and act as if this absurdity somehow makes our system "better"

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Gotta keep those hospital executives rich. Evil fricking bastards.

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I blame the irrational fear the general public has about their health. frick germaphobes and old people.

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ry getting a straight answer about what something will cost from a doctor or nurse. shite is laughable.

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I'd rather them know how to treat me or a family member than have a running list of what their hospital charges. In my experience with high dollar tests and treatments they act cautiously because they know things like MRI's and CT's are expensive.
And for all they know you've met an out of pocket cap or certain things are out of network. It's a bunch of pieces that I wouldn't hold one person to having all the knowledge of- that's a whole other department.

You should try the VA for your govt healthcare