Teen lifeguard gets $2,600 bill for saving drowning boy's life

reply to post by TKDRL


Average doctor salary is between $150 and $200K / year:
Physician Average Salary
unless they are a specialist, senior partner, or own their own practice.

Its not as much as you obviously think....

Also doctors do not receive kickback from running tests, its illegal under the “Stark Law”:
Stark Law

reply to post by defcon5

most highly educated/registered/certified medical people make on average less per hour then most electricians, plumbers, auto workers, etc...

Well, unless I have been lucky enough to only meet well off doctors and dentists, I have to call BS on that one.

reply to post by TKDRL


Dentist make more per hour then most doctors do...
Read the above post.
ER Doctors are some of the lowest paid Dr's around BTW...

reply to post by defcon5


Ok, reading the last post you made..... All of the doctors I have worked for have their own practice, as did the dentists. There may be some truth to it, I don't know first hand.

As far as ambulances and helicopters, they are overcharging by a long shot IMO. As are hospitals. Those of us that have seen a hospital bill can attest to that. A week and a half of hospitalization cost my pops more than it would cost to buy a brand new BMW. There is no way to justify that.

I have always had a hard time understanding the health system over there, exorbitant pricing for drugs, hospital visits etc.

Over here, we pay around $15 (£20) in National Insurance. That covers just about Everything.

I remember seeing Sicko many years ago, where Michael More brought some families over here, and one was able to get her asthma Inhalers for £7.50. Every prescription here is £7.50 (maybe a little higher now). She left the chemist in tears. Over there the cost was something like £50 each. Truly sickening to those of us with NHS type systems.

I have a terminal illness, I have to take inhalers and oxygen, and seven different pills every daily. If I lived in America, and had to pay each time for these medications. I would be dead. No ifs, No buts.

Some of the comments here are also bewildering. From questioning this brave man's actions; taking an ambulance ride, to the suitability of his parenting. Most baffling,

I honestly cant understand how anyone can find it acceptable to charge over a thousand dollars for a damn ambulance. I sure hope you folks sort it out over there toot-sweet. Perhaps someone should start an ambulance firm where they charge only $50, more than enough for the petrol. A fairly decent stop-gap until you rid your country of the parasites intent on keeping you down (drug companies / hospitals [run for profit] / unfair insurance system).

I agree with another poster, these sorts of stories should be on all the local news channels around the country. The people need to know this insanity goes on. What happened to common sense.

Take back Obamas peace medal and pin it on this fella.

reply to post by TKDRL


Average RN salary: $66K
Average LPN salary: $41K
Average RRT Salary: $58K
Average CNA Salary: $28K

The idea that working the in medical field is so highly paid is an old wives tale. Unless you are a specialist, senior partner, department head, own your own business, etc... Doctors don't make much more then many assembly line workers, or engineers at some of the big three auto manufacturers that I have worked for.

2600 is pretty cheap for the ambulance ride AND treatment.... Last time i was in a ambulance i was billed almost 2g just for the ride... Who save's a life then complains about a headache anyway...? Sounds like a primadonna

reply to post by defcon5


Well, if that is considered low paid, then I guess I must be superlow paid. And I am a specialist in my field. Or at least I was until the real estate bust.

Wait, I see what you did there. Those are all nurse jobs, and they all make more than me. How about putting up some doctor salaries?

ER doctor $249,567
Link

Those poor poor people. Every year they can buy a house, don't sound like they are hurting for money to me....

reply to post by TKDRL




With the amount of debt accrued going through medical school and dedicating that many years of your life to learning about the human body I don't think they are overpaid. If they were just about making money they would have chosen another profession.

reply to post by TKDRL


Now average into what you think that a hospital charges for all the salaries, utilities, consumables, rentals, insurances, liabilities, drugs, certifications, support, cleaning, regulations, etc... and you'll, quickly figure out that its not as high a profit business as you think it is.

For example, what I do...
The government makes us have to get immunizations, certifications, registries, carry liability, equipment has to be serviced and certified regularly, on top of all the normal business operating expenses. Heck, they just made us install a $100K electronic medical records tracking system, which eats one hell of a dent into our yearly profit.

On average out of every two patients we run a test on, we only make money off of one. If one does not show, or we cannot get two, we run at a loss for that night. When the nights that generate losses start outweighing the nights that we generate a profit, we go out of business...

You cannot run ANY business at a constant loss, and the government, through medicare and medicaid, want to pay less for services then what they actually cost to preform. Medicare sets the average that all the other insurances base their payments on as well.

Another example.
I used to work for a home health care company. It used to cost us roughly $100/month to pay the loan on an oxygen concentrator. Medicaid would only pay us $80 per month for that concentrator. That's -$20 per month for every O2 concentrator we had on a medicaid patient. NOW... Add in that a driver had to be paid to take that to the patient, the sieve beds had to be regularly replaced, O2 tanks had to be supplied in case of power outage, someone had to be paid to sit and jump through Medicaids PITA hurtles to get any payment whatsoever, etc... Now that -$20 is more like -$100...

reply to post by Domo1


It is only the way it is, because we let AMA monopolize things. They have no competition, and they keep the numbers down, to keep the demand up. Big problem. There is no fixing our problems without a complete overhaul. Getting rid of the monopolies, making up some new rules.

For example, people can go to med school free, but have to work for 5 years at minimum wage for a clinic. Free training, experience. After that they can open up their own practice.

reply to post by defcon5


Sounds like the problem that most of us have, most of the costs are imposed by governments. Damn, what is the solution then? Get the government out of the medical business maybe?

reply to post by TKDRL

First off, I put average Dr's salary in its own post at the top of the page. Also Dr's have to carry large fees in liability insurance and school debts.
Average liability insurance

Yes, a neurosurgeon makes a lot more then a ER doc, but he also has to go to school for at least 10 more years and carry a huge yearly insurance debt...

Secondly, the other salaries I posted are the most common medical jobs that you find in a hospital setting... You also have tech people, biomed, medical billing people, security people, housekeeping, food services, HR, etc... ALL those people have to be paid out of what folks are billed for your time in the hospital.

reply to post by defcon5


I am probably coming off like a moron, but not my intention. What are the solutions though? Spend a week in the hospital, and have to pay more than 6 months salary to pay for it. There is something wrong there. In my experience in canada, socialized medicine sucks. Can't even handle a lazer apendix extraction.

There has got to be something we can do.

reply to post by TKDRL


Some of it is the government, but some of it is also the cost of medical equipment, the cost to service that equipment on a regular basis, the cost of insurance/liability/bonding, and the cost of medications.

A lot of it is just overhead that you really do want cause its in your best interest as a patient. All those things cost money, and all those things untimely get paid by the patient or their insurance. Go compare the cost of a top level suit at an expensive hotel to the cost of a night in the hospital, then average in the amount of extra overhead that goes into a hospital stay vs a hotel stay.

reply to post by defcon5


So we should feel greatful to have the chance to go into debt bigtime because of a hospital visit. Is it any wonder most of us poor folks are losing our minds? Don't have kids anymore americans, if they get sick, it will cost you more than your car does.

If I understand the OP the hero kept the patient company on the ambulance ride as a kind hearted thing to do. He then gets charged for the Ambulance ride AS DOES THE PATIENT. How much did that Ambulance make for this one trip .Any excuse to bill will do.

This is what happens when your God is Money. The American way of life is a fail of late.

P

reply to post by TKDRL


The governments solution is to make medicine a volume business, but when you run a volume business the service per customer goes down... Hospitals are cutting staff like crazy, and we're already seeing the end results of that:
Study links nurse burnout to higher infection rates
Higher volume = poorer care/pt...

many Doctors are considering going out of business, and many do not want to enter the medical field anymore because the workload is hellish vs compensation ATM.

Right now, like I said above, we only make a profit if we run a full lab, the government wants us to increase the number of people we run, and cut our income by another 30%. That's great if you can fill that extra bed every night, and right now, because the economy sucks, we only fill 2 beds at my lab about 75% of the time. So what good does it do for us to run more patients if we cannot fill more beds?

If that 30% cut goes through, my lab will be closing down...

As it stands, myself and numerous other people that I know in medicine, have not even gotten a cost of living increase in almost 7 years. They have been cutting both the staffs and the benefits. That certainly doesn't draw in the best or greatest personnel for your future medical staff either. People go where the money and benefits are, not where the BS conditions, high work loads, and low pay are.

reply to post by TKDRL

As I mentioned above, people also abuse the system and run up costs. People call ambulances to take them to the hospital, then AMA out, and walk to the nearby doctors office, movie theater, or shopping mall. Other folks use the hospital for mundane issues, because they want to get free care and know they cannot be rejected. People go to ER's rather then walk-in clinics because they feel they can get away without paying the bill, which is how many of your illegal's here get their medical treatment. People are also litigation happy in the US, which further drives up both hospital operating, liability, and insurance costs. All those savings get passed on to those who do pay their bills.

reply to post by pheonix358


No, he obviously went along to be checked out as a patient, and got billed as a patient.
They probably advised him to get checked because of his headache, and he didn't realize that he was going to be treated as a patient off his work insurance. In the end I'm sure that the hospital will waive the bill because of the publicity its generated.