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In America, it’s actually cheaper just to discard the kid and start over.
“Ah, shucks, this one broke! Shame, had a good run too”
IRL Roguelike. Restart when you get some some bad RNG.
Giving birth is also super expensive though
I thought there was going to be some punchline and I was quite confused at the end, what else would paramedics do if some kid was sick? Then I read the comments and remembered about America… I genuinely don’t know how people can live in a country that is so antagonistic to its own citizens.
They’d do the same thing but you’d have a five-figure bill.
It’s all we know and most of us don’t have any other choice. It’s wild the stuff humans can normalize when you grow up with it and are surrounded by it.
Acknowledging that leaving your dystopian hellhole called home is not a possibility for many people why are these people not on the streets protesting?
Diabetes care is criminal.
Maternity leave is criminal.
Labour laws are criminal.
And yet Americans writ large take it in the ass without batting an eye. Why?
What is the expected results of such protest the monied interests and the top half have most of the money like 88% of the wealth and closer to 100% of the liquid wealth. This money pays for the campaigns of the politicians who are beholden to it.
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Americans have been conditioned by media to think that their current state of things is desirable and even meritorious, as if having such services provided was…communist/socialist anit-american shit
What little care we can receive is contingent on having a full time job. Putting food on our tables and keeping a roof over our heads is also contingent on having a full time job, if not a second job on top of that. Everyone is working all the time. We don’t have time to go out onto the streets and protest. This is by design. This is our shitty system working exactly as it’s intended, and it’s designed to keep itself intact by forcing the people it fucks over to struggle to survive, so that we’re so preoccupied with existing that we can’t realistically enact change.
And there is much eye batting, don’t get it twisted. It’s just that batting eyes is about all we have energy for at the end of the day.
I work a salaried full time job that provides me absolutely zero health care coverage of any kind. I’m on the ultra-budget tier of healthcare.gov benefits and my taxes get brutalized every spring because I “earn too much” to be on it.
Given the opportunity I would gladly push a guillotine around town, and when that’s done I’d push it toward the state capitol and beyond. That opportunity will never come.
We’re slaves, it’s hard for slaves to liberate themselves in a police state.
I agree though, we have to fight back
I know expensive, shitty healthcare in the USA is a stereotype, but in my experience it’s also largely true. Maybe it’s because I’m not wealthy or connected enough to have access to the good stuff, though?
The bills for my latest medical emergency are rolling in now.
The $1,000 USD ambulance bill is almost a relief, since I’ve heard others say their ride cost several times more than that. I declined pretty much all medical care in the ambulance and all offers for medication/treatment, though, so maybe that’s part of it. Had I lost consciousness, I likely wouldn’t have been able to say no.
The $2,000 USD emergency room bill? That’s just the part that I have to pay out of pocket. The actual price they charged my insurance is $6,000+ for my slightly more than 90 minutes on a stretcher in the hallway. And it doesn’t seem to have covered anything specific because the imaging (which I didn’t even need), treatment, medications (which I would have refused if I knew how much they charged but they don’t know that and can’t tell you ahead of time), individual nurses, etc are all billed as separate line items. I was even charged thousands of dollars by a doctor I never even saw in person. I joked in another thread recently about $45 tylenol, but that’s actually true. I’m paying $45 for 800mg of tylenol.
Months later, the billing part isn’t even finalized. New claims/bills showed up literally 2 days ago, well after I thought I was done paying. Thousands of dollars out of pocket, on top of paying a thousand dollars a month for insurance.
At least the medical professionals that treated me were great.
At least the medical professionals that treated me were great
last time i was in the hospital in the states the nurses and the hospitalist intentionally tried to kill me via malpractice.
I’ve had good hospital experiences, but not in the last ten years.
As someone who hasn’t been to a hospital since he was 13 I would love to hear wtf I’m in for when it inevitably happens. Why would they do that? What did they do? Was it subtle? Stupid?
I’ve worked in a few US hospitals (in the lab, but we worked closely with nurses and doctors) and by far the biggest danger I observed (other than insurance practicing medicine without a license) was nurses and doctors making mistakes due to sleep deprivation. Doctors and nurses will work 14 hours, get called in to the ER multiple times throughout the night, and then try to work another 12 hour shift without sleep.
Another huge risk factor was overworking nurses by giving them too many patients to care for. Nurses need patient caps of 5 or 6 because each additional patient increases the risk of someone dying by 20%
short version, not subtle, very stupid. i had an acute condition with one and only one accepted course of treatment. nurse put in orders to do something very different, which likely would have caused a massive organ rupture if i wasn’t keeping track of every minutiae they did while trying to treat me. i refused the new treatment and wasn’t harmed, but the MD signed off on it. as it was i left the hospital severly dehydrated because they were refusing me IV fluids while i was NPO.
Last time I was in the states the doctors and nurses murdered me in my hospital bed.
Are you a newt or did it get better?
Am newt
I know expensive, shitty healthcare in the USA is a stereotype, but in my experience it’s also largely true
I had a brain injury from a bicycle accident. The fact that my health has bounced back, but my finances likely never will, tells me everything I need to know about our system. One injury, and I now have a lifetime of bills to pay off. I guess it makes sense in some sick way, I do owe them my life, but man, they don’t let me forget (even if my broken brain tries).
Over 60% of all private bankruptcies in the US are due to medical issues. The system is broken
Two major studies in California found 70% of the homeless were employed “productive” members of society before injury/illness forced loss of income, then housing. Yes the system is broken.
The system is working as designed.
It’s designed to be predatory and evil.
This is crazy. I once stayed at a hospital for two months, countless ultrasounds, even an invasive procedure where they sent probes down my veins, two MRI’s and the final cost was around 5k… payed by state supplied insurance. I payed 0 and even got payed 80% of my wages… cause that’s the law.
9 months of chemo, countless tests, scans, meds, consults, two stints in ICU…$0
'Straayaaaaa
In the US right? FMLA? I was also out for about 6 months but received full pay, not 80%.
FMLA is unpaid. You only get paid to miss work if you use your vacation time or if you had paid for short term disability insurance, otherwise you are fucked. I know a woman who was forced to return to work 6 weeks after giving birth because her leave was unpaid and she couldn’t afford to take any more unpaid leave
I did not need to use my vacation time and did not have short term disability. Sounds like my company did me a solid
And they probably even spoke English with him.
Of course they did. An US-american speaking any language but their version of English fluently is quite rare, if you don’t count the latinos
title sounds like a line from an Aesop Rock song
It’s probably a trap
I once was visiting Detroit and got very drunk My airbnb. wasn’t far from the bar and I was way too loaded for a taxi to take me back, and it was a nice night so I decided to walk back to the airbnb I made it about 200 steps and felt something Hit me in the head. Someone was grabbing at my pocket and I guess I successfully stopped them from stealth by my wallet since it’s all ripped.
Anyway my head is split open and there’s blood fucking everywhere. I tried dialing 911on my phone. Not sure if you’ve ever tried making a call on a bloood covered phone when you can’t see because you’re blind drunk and your vision is obscured by blood but it’s impossible. Anyway, a couple of people see me and get me an ambulance.
Now, I’m from Canada, and I THINK that I had international health insurance from work but I’m not sure. Anyway, they deal with the blood and tell me I’ll need stitches in the emergency room but I’m still loaded and the bleeding stopped so I ask if I can just leave and they’re like: no.
I call my buddy who shows up to take me back to the airbnb but I tell him: I’m not getting stuck with a fucking American hospital bill. Fuck this. Just walk out and I’ll meet you out front. I wait until the nurse is out of eye sight, crouch low and run past the admissions desk and out into the street, where my friend calls a very kind cab driver who sold us some decent cocaine.
In general, you’re allowed to refuse treatment. That’s bodily autonomy in action.
They’ll want you to sign a form saying you’re leaving AMA (against medical advice), but other than that and arguing with the nurses and doctors about leaving vs staying for treatment, they really can’t keep you… Unless you’re under arrest, which, it does not sound like you were.
In any case, it’s your life and your body, you can choose to, or refuse to, do whatever you want with it, provided that you’re not breaking any laws by doing so.
Bodily autonomy? In the US?
Friend, your body belongs to the state, which belongs to the corporations. That’s called freedom.
So glad I don’t live there.
I mean I believe you but the nurse told me I wasn’t allowed to leave so.
It’s not a prison.
That nurse is probably just bad at their job.
I hope the rest of your night goes ok then. Let us know when you get the stitches.
This was like 6 years ago. Didn’t get any stitches. I thought I’d have a badass scar but it faded pretty quickly.
Fucking Americans lol
Hey, don’t pin that one on us. Canucks are crazier than us about this shit
I am not going to defend the US Healthcare industry, but EMS is often? usually? a service of your local government in the US.
Here in Maryland, our ambulance are stored in the firehouses next to the fire engines and staffed by the firemen… Paid for by the county.
When I went to Austin for a bachelorette party, one of the girls passed out and hit her head and the ambulance that came to check her out was also free of charge paid for by the city. Now, their dismissive paternalism was also free of charge because it was Texas, but my point is: emergency services are frequently not part of the predatory American healthcare industry.
Like many services in the US, it is highly dependent on the region. In the places I’ve lived (in California and Washington state), each county generally contracted with a private ambulance company (or sometimes several, just to be confusing) to provide transport services. Even if an individual city’s fire department staffs their own ambulances, they may still attempt to bill insurance (since they’d be leaving money on the table at the expense of their taxpayers otherwise). Some of them may cover city residents free of charge but bill people from out of town. It just all really depends.
I would definitely dispute your last sentence — in many places, ambulances are absolutely part of the predatory American healthcare industry. Plenty of people will try to avoid calling an ambulance or try to find an alternate ride to the hospital, since they know an ambulance ride may end up costing them thousands of dollars.
Yeah, I’m in Washington state right now, and my county has a mix of public and private ambulance services. I got t-boned by a SUV once, a private ambulance company picked me up, and I found out later that they didn’t take my insurance and wanted $1500.
Only $1500? Was the hospital across the street?
Lol tell that to the $1500 ambulance bill I got from when they drove me 3 miles in Baltimore to a hospital
Oh and the dude I knew in Baltimore that ran his own private ambulance service. Yea, they’re not all funded through local gov and run by firefighters
Your comment made me look up the way Maryland does it, and yes, it varies a lot by county.
Have you received care from EMS without being taken to the hospital? The case posted by OP did not involve going to the hospital, and so I used an example that did not involve going to the hospital. I had a vague impression that if you require transport to a hospital, you are more likely to be billed for it.
I’m going to chime in with how it’s done in BC, Canada. It’s a very large ambulance service relative anyway considering it covers the entire province.
These are about decade old figures, but you get the idea.
Healthcare here is free except for little bits that aren’t. An ambulance trip to the hospital isn’t free, but it’s heavily subsidized and usually I believe able to be waived based on a sane argument of need or via benefits plans etc.
An ambulance ride to the hospital is/was $850 for a non-resident. Say a visitor from Antarctica or Washington. Flat, there’s so difference or accounting for if the ambulance gets torn apart throwing everything at you or you just slept.
This is way less if you don’t go to the hospital. I don’t remember exactly but I think between $150, $350, and the paperwork was missing your details. Somewhere in there.
For residents the trip to the hospital is heavily subsidized, but lacking any benefits or whatever it’s $80. I don’t know about the non-transport, but yeah.
t EMS is often? usually? a service of your local government in the US.
wow awesome. no one cares what level of beurocracy they are getting fucked by.
This is basically
Weed is legal in the united states
Yeah no. Not fucking federally. Not everywhere. Until that service is done the way the civilised world does it, you guys need to shut the fuck up
It’s not that I disagree that our system is shit, it’s more that it seems puritanical to require the US to be totally standardized across all 50 states. We’re 50 different states because we don’t like each other, and the animosity is growing. It’s enough to maintain the union with crazy red states trying to role back rights and illegally imprison people.
I don’t see Europeans standardizing social programs across all the different countries within the EU. Germany was loathe to even lend money to Greece following the 2008 recession.
it’s more that it seems puritanical to require the US to be totally standardized across all 50 states
no it isn’t. We expect the same from other countries like brazil or indonesia, india, china or russia.
I don’t see Europeans standardizing social programs across all the different countries within the EU.
The EU is very much not a country.
I showed up in Italy to work on a farm for a month.
Ate the wrong thing one night, and my airways started closing up. Despite my Americanism coming through “dont call the ambulance, I can feel the benadryl kicking in”, my hosts called an ambulance.
After a 45 minute ambulance ride, a 5 hour hospital stay including chest x ray, monitoring, and fluids, I was trying to pay up. The doctor lady just laughed at me as a I flashed my debit card. They sent me on my way with some albuterol for $0.
We really do everything we can to enrich health execs here in America. Crazy to think about the mental benefits of knowing you live in a society that at least has the capacity to get you through a medical emergency without bankrupting you.
Was that a work exchange situation?
Yeah, in most of the rest of the world people try to help each other out
Haha ew gross 💀
Ironically when we visited German my wife fell and people scattered and desperately avoided eye contact. I’m glad my oma was with us and able to get a first aid kit. My wife was fine in the end just scrapped up and sore.
I got the general vibe if I asked for help someone would have probably helped, but there were definently no volunteers
people in these comments act like this was a act of merciful kindness, the people at the ambulance just did their normal job in a functional system, they get payed and everything
Even in Canada and Mexico this mostly works the same
IIRC, an ambulance here in Canada costs 80 dollars, any treatment in hospital is free
A single accident or illness can ruin your life and your family
Spending a single day at school can kill a child
If they live though that day, they might learn that abstinence is great sex Ed
Police officers can kill you without reason with impunity
Your leaders are all millionaires who will do anything to squeeze money out of you and you never even protest?
The US is a god godawful place to live
Billionaires (with a b as white says).
Quiet frankly millionaires (at least 7 figure earners) while not awesome are not nearly as predatory as those who’s net worth are represented in billions.
That one’s been grillin’ since April, should be good.
I had a relative who once had a serious emergent heart problem (not a heart attack) in Italy. Ambulance to the ER, admitted to hospital for several days, ran a gazillion tests and procedures; huge workup. Was billed because no national insurance.
Grand total: €200. Not even worth trying to claim on American insurance.
It does seem to be a bit of a toss-up between countries whether or not you will actually get charged. Supposedly international visitors to the UK are supposed to get charged but no one seems to know how to actually bill anyone, so it never happens. Weirdly the government doesn’t seem all that interested in fixing it either, so it kind of just exists as a pseudo international free healthcare service.
I would think that giving people care doesn’t actually cost much, it’s having the capability that’s expensive. And the administrative work required to deal with the edge case of charging foreigners might not be worth the minor sums involved.
It’s what you get in civilized societies. Really the US is so far behind it gets overmaken by a bunch of what they consider 3rd world countries, while those countries have a war going on.
Just to avoid any false impressions: healthcare is not free in Germany. You should always get travel health insurance. Having said that, it’s pretty affordable. I pay about €80 a year for me and my wife for worldwide coverage.
Where do you get travel health insurance from?
From commercial providers. It’s not necessary for EU Citizens travelling inside the EU/EEA as they are treated like people in the national systems for emergencies.
But it simplifies a lot because you can go to any doctor and sometimes they play dumb and pretend they don’t know about the rules and want to force you to pay out of pocket (Happened to me in Austria, I’ve just reported them to the Austrian Health Insurance, he wanted 200€ which is outrageous overpriced and was a contracted doctor of ÖGK). Especially in Eastern Europe. But that applies only to GPs, Hospitals usually play by the rules.
And it’s also useful for travelling outside of the EU
Not necessary but some countries have a deductible. Like in the Netherlands hospitals will charge you up to €380 and only claim the costs above that amount from your insurer. So cheaper to get travel insurance.
If that’s all you’re worried about then paying a insurance 20-80€ a year to insure a risk of 380€ would be a pretty stupid idea, and on average certainly not cheaper
You don’t have to pay every year if you are not going on holiday every year. Also not everything will be covered by your normal health insurance, like if you need to get air lifted back home.
Especially in Eastern Europe.
In post-Soviet countries, it was sadly normal that doctors would demand bribes on top of state insurance. The most outrageous shit I heard was and ob/gyn charging a months salary for a birth, half a month if it turned out to be a girl.
Thanks. I should have been more specific on my question, thats on me. Like, would I get it through my current health insurance in the US, like an addon to my plan? Or would I get it through a provider in the country/EU where I would travel too?
Squaremouth (weird name) is like a kayak.com site for travel insurance. Just put in your details and it’ll give you a big list to pick from based on price, coverage, etc.
I don’t know much about the US health plans, you might check if they have some special offers, or if they are valid worldwide. I’ve bought mine through Allianz, a big German insurance company.
They seem to offer travel insurance in the US too. But it’s much more expensive and they have pretty low coverage limits in the US. (Here I pay 30€ a year and don’t have any coverage limits for medical costs, there I was quoted 400$ a year for much shittier coverage). But you can compare yourself
https://www.allianztravelinsurance.com/
https://www.allianz.de/gesundheit/reisekrankenversicherung/rechner/#/angebot
Same in Ireland but a trip to the emergency room (including ambulance if you need it) sets you back €100 euro which is about $110 USD.
2nd last time I was in one there was an American couple across from us whose daughter had gone into a seizure in their hotel. We ended up chatting a good bit and I honestly was very glad for them that they weren’t paying American pricing.
Last time I was in one we had a referral from our doctor so it was free (there’s a filtering process to stop people with a cold coming to emergency) Included an MRI for my daughter and we’ve a follow up coming. Again all free.
So when you say it’s not free, it’s strictly true but holy moly the difference in potentially life destroying cost and not having to weigh that up. It saves lives.
In Germany you would need to pay a copay for the ambulance between 5-10€, the emergency room would be fully covered. Only if you get admitted you would be charged a copay of 10€/day up to 30 days a year. For prescription medications there is also a copay between 5-10€ for each of them.
All Co-Pays are capped at 2% of your yearly income, or 1% if you suffer from chronic diseases
My son was in the hospital for 4 days and the charge was $20,000.
The ER visit before admitting was a separate $2,000 charge.We have insurance, so we only had to pay around $8,000 out of pocket. It would have been less, but some of the people in the hospital didn’t take our insurance, and our insurance also said that some procedures were overpriced so they only paid the amount they thought was fair.
We didn’t get to pick any of the people who provided care, and we were not presented with the ability to negotiate on prices to make sure our insurance wasn’t being taken advantage of while they were doing respiratory therapy on our baby.
Our entire system needs to be torn the fuck down and be replaced with something entirely free. I don’t even give a fuck about people abusing the system at this point. Fuck it, let it cover elective cosmetic surgery. Never say no to anyone unless the doctor says it first.
My taxes will go up, but I can fucking promise they won’t go up by as much as I’d be saving in premium.
Because of right, I pay hundreds of dollars a month for the insurance that then only pays once I get fucked hard enough, and then still doesn’t pay for all of it.
Fuck the entire industry, fire them all and seize their assets.And I’m well off compared to a lot of people.
Our entire system needs to be torn the fuck down and be replaced with something entirely free. I don’t even give a fuck about people abusing the system at this point.
Make a lemmy community and make people subscribe who want change.
Better yet, have Mario pay them a visit. They have more than earned it! 👹
The American system for me.
Halfway through the year cost so far:
Relatively inexpensive union insurance for the family $2310. Out of pocket expenses so far $3,700. Total $6010 so far…
Estimated total by the end of the year - $2310 in insurance premiums, 3,000 out of pocket.
Yearly estimated total $11,320.
2 years ago we had the corporate America special. Premium was $16,200, out of pocket was 8,000. $24,200 was the total cost. It was 26.8% of my gross income that year.
Well 2310$ per year isn’t that much.
In Germany the statutory Health insurance is 14,6% of your salary, capped at a maximum of 942€/month (half paid by you, half paid by your employer ), this also covers your children and your wife if she’s not working.
But on the other hand, there won’t be any significant out of pocket expenses here
Tourists pay for healthcare in Britain, except for emergency care, which is always free for everyone.
I pay $80 twice a week for coverage for my wife and myself in only a very limited fraction of US facilities.
To be clear, that’s 100× as much money for far less coverage.
Same in the Netherlands. If you are uninsured and not an EU citizen an ambulance can cost you €400 to €700. And even if you have European health insurance you still need to pay the €380 deductible if you need to visit the hospital. And if you are not an EU citizen but have travel insurance you probably need to pay the hospital bill upfront.
The Netherlands has a privatized health insurance system. So yeah don’t expect free healthcare if you visit.
I pay $250 in copay if I drive too close to a hospital in the US.
But after $5,500 out of pocket, the insurance will start paying.
It’s literally robbery. They’re legal thieves. They collect until you’re dead, and they sure as hell aren’t lifting a finger to keep you alive.
United Healthcare got caught forging DNRs. So they will definitely lift a finger, to kill you!
That’s literal, actual murder. No hyperbole.
Faking documentation to make people die
“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”
That’s basically free to Americans. We pay that per visit if we are lucky. Health insurance here exists to make a profit, not to help people out when they need it.
More death = More profit
It’s only the charge for the extra travel insurance. The actual health care itself costs a lot more and depends on your income. Don’t think it’s just 80€ a month. I wish it were
Correct. That’s just travel insurance. Regular health insurance is calculated as a percentage of your salary and it’s anything but cheap. A lot better than in the US, though.
I live in America. But I’m originally from Ukraine. Therefore I have many friends and family from there and because of the current situation I’ve known many people that came and are still coming over from there and they keep asking the same question: you really have to pay for the ambulance?
Then I tell them ambulances are privet for profit companies. And you can see them loosing all faith in America.
Personal anecdote: my father died of cancer 4 years ago. When they were transferring him from the hospital to hospice the paramedics asked him if he was ready and Dad said yes, he was ready for the last car ride of his life… They sent us a 5000 dollar bill for a 15 minute drive.
We didn’t pay it.
