Guy Explains Why Hospital Bills In The USA Are So Expensive

There are developing countries that are doing better..

It's so wrong. The bitter thing about this is, it barely affects wealthy people but has big impact on those who are not that well off. And with no proper healthcare they are still expected to be good tax payers?!? This makes my blood boil every time and I don't even have to deal with this kind of shenanigans 🤮

They need to be required to list the price they pay for the material, and only bill that. Then separate bill you for the work and accommodation.

Still remember being a teenager and going to the hospital. I was having a reaction to codeine, it felt like I had a ton of chest pressure. Spent so long in the waiting room by the time they took me back most of my symptoms had subsided but they had to DO something, right? They gave me pepto bismol for some reason, and the bill was thousands. lol

I wonder what it's like to have to haggle over your cancer treatment... just so you can find out if you can afford to continue living. Is this the "American Dream" I always hear them talking about?

They have to charge extra because insurance companies don't allow them to charge for the nursing hours. And nursing is why you're in the the hospital, you're not there for a once a day visit for the doctor, your there for continuous monitoring because you're not stable enough to be at home.

I'm not from the US, so I guess I'll never understand how negotiations in medical bills is a thing. It's a medical treatment, not a fecking FB marketplace transaction.

Everyone involved in orchestrating that scam and knowingly ripping people off like that should be in jail

TLDR: once NY determined that I was disabled and couldn’t work, they decided I needed to pay more for cancer treatment. When I first found out I had stage three breast cancer (at 32) I was waiting for my disability hearing (I have a genetic disease). I was immediately put on emergency medicaid, which covered everything in full. Half way through treatment, I had my hearing and won my disability. The government of NY then promptly kicked me off the medicaid and forced me to buy into a medicare plan that only covers 30% of most bills. It resulted in over $19,000 in medical debt for treatments that I literally would’ve died without. So basically, in my state, healthy people who are poor get their bills paid for, but once you’re disabled and poor you apparently don’t deserve as much help.

We once got billed $100 because a doctor stuck his head in the door and said 'hello, be with you soon'. The dude never assessed or did a thing to contribute to my stitches.

“Guy”???? That is Adam’s Conover. Show the man some respect. 🤣🤣🤣

I'm currently going through chemo. Each round costs $48,000. I need six of them...(plus scans, surgery, radiation, etc). I don't know what I would do without insurance.

Go to any Latin American country and see if there is any difference

This is why I don't pay for medical b******t. Listen me bills all the time then I don't pay them and then they send it to collections and I don't pay them either. I've not once been sued

Because they can get away with it

Canadian here. I was a very sick infant(meningitis) and had a long and complicated hospital stay. While my mom likes to joke that I've "used up my quota" of medical care, the fact is my parents never saw a medical bill for any of my care - not the hospital stay, nor the neurologist visits nor any other expensive specialized care I received. We apparently pay higher taxes than Americans, but if you factor in the out of pocket cost of insurance that Americans pay, life in Canada actually costs less. It blows my mind that Americans are being held hostage by such an expensive system when almost everywhere else on earth does things cheaper.

Do we have some sort of proof that's what the hospital is actually doing or are we just accepting some minor celebrity's words as fact? Hospital bills are ridiculous, that much is true, but I seriously doubt the prices are just arbitrarily set rather than a calculation based on a lot of data.

The best is when you show up at the emergency room after being hit by a car while on a bicycle. They take X-rays and tell you that your probably going right into surgery. I had a collar bone that was broken in two places. Once they found out I had no Insurance because the company I worked for offered it but it cost 2/3rds of my monthly income. So once they realize they would have to wait to get paid until the insurance company settled they sent me home with a prescription for pain killers and a referral to the same doctor who was on call. I spent a month fighting to get the auto insurance company to admit that they may have to pay so I could have surgery to repair my collar bone. The plate they used was 4 screws that cost $400 and 4 that cost $600 a piece, while the plate cost $2000 total cost was over $40,000. Then the screws failed and poked up through my skin they said I had to settle my previous bill inorder for them to fix it.

Mine tried charging me for Tylenol that I had in my purse. Uhm..no! After that, I nitpicked the bill and got it reduced by about 25%.

Just out of curiosity, does this count for vet bills as well when you live in the US?