S&F!
A friend of mine was in a car accident with a drunk driver. After all costs were tallied it came to around $1,500,000 for a total bill all factors included. He had private insurance through the company he worked for and only had to pay like $4,500. So i do see how in America the private side takes care of their own. But if your uninsured your hosed!

On my company's plan, I pay $165/month on insurance for my wife and me.

I had a voluntary mini-maze procedure on my heart 2 years ago.

I paid $1,500 while the total bill was $75,000. (tHE BILL DID HAVE A $40,000 discount for the provider though, so I guess that they paid out $34,500

The only overseas experience I had was visiting my grandmother in a UK hospital. It reminded me of the pictures you see of WW1 wards. 20 beds, dark & dirty.

But if your uninsured your hosed!

Not quite...
you walk, roll, or drag yourself in to an emergency ward and you're taken care of. Others have to pay for your sorry a$$.

If you don't speak English, you'll get even better care!

[edit on 9/7/2009 by wookiee]

I love my doctor (in the USA). He's been a life saver for me since I lost my job (and insurance). He has a rather great approach to his charges and such. People with insurance pay their copay and the insurance company picks up the tab for everything else. People without insurance, like me, get a flat 80% discount if they pay at time of service. So I go in for a checkup, some blood work, and instead of paying $126, I pay $26 for it all. Works great for me. Of course, this is just my personal physician/general practitioner. I've not had to see any specialists in quite some time, so i don't know if they have similar types of deals. My doc is great, though. He understands my financial needs and works with me to keep my costs down. In addition to the above, he helps me find medicines that are inexpensive (yay $4 generics at Walmart) and also helped me get into the Pfizer Connection to Care program so I can get my Pfizer medicines for free. Help is out there for people with limited incomes, you just have to do some work to find the resources that are available. A lot of the "big bad" pharmaceutical companies have programs where they will give you your medicine for reduced or no charge if you're of low income. People just don't go out and look for these programs on their own.

I got shot with a 12ga 00 mag buck shot in the neck and chest in Dec 2001. Now I was taken to the local Trauma 1 Regional Teaching Hospital. I had 23 surgeries total over 2 years. Last I saw was $1.2 million. The feds came in and told the hospital they could take it as a write off on their taxes. I paid nothing, well, except the damage. I was amazed because I had received a bill about 8 months into it of $750,000 and on the bottom it said, "Bill Due in 10 Days"1 Yea right. Let me just pull my wallet out right! Anyway, if you get injured bad enough that your life is on the line, they give you the treatment anyway. They knew I couldn't pay for all the work over the years, but they never denied me the care and treatment. And amazingly I had some of the best doctors in the Southeast of the US doing my surgeries. I would NEVER have predicted how the US Government would have acted in the situation, nor believed it if someone told me beforehand.

I wouldn't wish a major medical catastrophe on anyone, but if your life is on the line, I don't believe you will be denied treatment the way things are now in the US. Something needs to be done now for the uninsured people here because there is no way to pay those bills when your having a hard time putting food on the table in the first place!




[edit on 7/9/09 by spirit_horse]

Recently paid 150 for surgery and about 15 for prescription meds, that seemed pretty reasonable to me. Seems like the American private health care system is doing pretty good. For the while...

But then again I am still a college student covered under my parents health care, of whom one is a nurse... Its pretty good overall coverage...

Some of the stuff I am reading is certainly getting my attention... Thanks for posting this information, time to do some readin...

[edit on 8-9-2009 by tmayhew01]

Originally posted by Red Dawn 09
S&F!
A friend of mine was in a car accident with a drunk driver. After all costs were tallied it came to around $1,500,000 for a total bill all factors included. He had private insurance through the company he worked for and only had to pay like $4,500. So i do see how in America the private side takes care of their own. But if your uninsured your hosed!

Why did he have to pay $4,500 that part should have been covered by the auto insurance company as part of the drunks drivers liablity.

If it was not he could recover that from the drunk driver in small claims court.
It would serve the drunk driver to have to pay "all" the cost.

By the way i have been in small claims court as a witness because i was the first EMT at the accident caused by a drink driver and the victim was recovering what the insurance did not cover.
It was a open and shut case as the judge awarded the full amount to the victim without any chance for the drunk to challenge it.

Originally posted by admriker444
medical school is so expensive its insane. so when these crappy walmart medical centers open up and offer so called medical services with a nurse practioner (who has only 4 yrs of training) its further squeezing doctors pay.

a lot of doctors are leaving the country to avoid their 500,000 dollar student loans they can never hope to pay back because ignorant patients would rather visit a walmart nurse and pay 10 dollars to get their ointments.

Sorry this is off-topic, I just have to say, as someone related to a nurse practitioner, and also as one of those "ignorant patients" that visits a "walmart nurse"...
What you said is not only disrespectful and insulting to both NPs and their patients, it's also untrue. Becoming a nurse practitioner actually requires a minimum of 6 years of education. NPs are perfectly qualified providers of health care and are a good alternative for people that would otherwise be unable to afford any care at all. I'm sorry that doctors are feeling squeezed and are having trouble paying off their education, but you can hardly blame the patients for that!