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Ricky D
Trad climber
Sierra Westside
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I would like to know why every commercial for medication has all of the actors moving at half-speed?
Every ad for Cialis, Viagra, Humex, Celebrex, etc. has all of the "real people" moving so slooooowwww.
Is that so they don't hear the side effect warnings that are narrated at two times normal speech or did they all just get a colonoscopy at 10 grand a poke?
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Referring to dee ee's total $8000 bill, mostly paid by insurance: Thats enough to pay for 11.1 years of 100% health care coverage in BC $8000 buys me about 13 months of insurance. So the ratio of Canadian to American insurance is about 1/10.
% of GDP spent on healthcare: 18% Next highest country: France at 12%
USA: We're #1!
So do we get what we pay for?
Life Expectancy: We're #43 (79 years)
"Socialized Medicine" countries: Australia(82), Iceland(82), Israel(82), Italy(82), Spain(82), France(82), Sweden(82), Canada(81), Netherlands (81), Germany (81), UK(80), Cuba (79)
Hey, we're tied with Cuba!
OK, our life expectancy is slightly shortened by death and injury attributed to warfare.
Infant Mortality: deaths / 1000 live births.
USA 6.8; NZ 5.1; Greece 4.7; UK 4.9; Canada 4.8; Cuba 4.7; Netherlands 4.4; Germany 3.7; France 3.5; Norway 3.0; Sweden 2.6; Iceland 2.1
We're #1 again among modern industrialized countries, by a BIG margin.\
Excepting Russia 7.9;
And warfare has little or nothing to do with infant mortality, unless of course it's your country that's being blown to bits.
Afghanistan infant mortality: 119/1000. more than 10%
Iraq 39 - 4%
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dee ee
Mountain climber
citizen of planet Earth
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 2, 2013 - 05:04pm PT
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Lotsa' great info and anecdotes in this thread except for the lame anti-Obama comments.
When I tried to negotiate my bill I called the hospital billing office multiple times. I could never get anyone to pick up the phone. It's hard to do anything about that.
I hate being in debt and have been making monthly payments, it's almost all paid off.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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How long would a tradesman stay in business if he told a potential client he didn't know how much the clients remodel would cost..?
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Or if socialist Monkeys flew out of your butt whether you wanted them to or not....?
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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High traverse, regarding infant mortality numbers, which is the wife's turf, you should hear the seemingly nightly horror stories of the idiots breeding up a storm out there and how they willfully ignore advice. It is no wonder our infant mortality rate is so high. And these are the ones with good insurance!!! The just plain don't give a flying fug about themselves or their babies.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Reilly..Something you may not know is that a percentage of the high infant mortality rate is linked to on-slope shark attacks...
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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So, Reilly do you think the same idiots will have more or less babies with Obama Care
Coz, these people make few, if any, rational decisions. I am sure their breeding scedule would be the same if they were uninsured because they would just 'present' at the county. But then they would get little pre-natal which wouldn't matter since they just ignore the advice. I'm sure I will get royally flamed for being so un-PC.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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You can get an MRI here both fast and cheap.
Go find a clinic that specializes in dispensing ridiculous ammounts of pain meds. They'll get you an MRI lickety-split.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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We are humans, we are screwed up, war like heathens and socialize medicine is a utopian idea that will not work in a capitalistic society.
You mean like GERMANY, which conservatives love to hold out as an example of superb conservative capitalistic austere policy.
How come socialized medicine works in Hawaii? Mass?
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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So, Reilly do you think the same idiots will have more or less babies with Obama Care
Coz, these people make few, if any, rational decisions. I am sure their breeding scedule would be the same if they were uninsured because they would just 'present' at the county. But then they would get little pre-natal which wouldn't matter since they just ignore the advice. I'm sure I will get royally flamed for being so un-PC.
Ya gotta love a couple of white boys who celebrate the dirtbag lifestyle pronouncing their expertise(Ha!)about poor women. Pretty typical of white trailer trash.
And the interesting thing is how WRONG they are. We don't have to guess what will happen, the study has been done. They'll no doubt criticize it for being too small (>9000), including such a small age range (15-45), and being far too old (last year)
http://www.livescience.com/23726-birth-control-abortion-rate.html
"The impact of providing no-cost birth control was far greater than we expected in terms of unintended pregnancies," lead author Jeff Peipert, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Washington University School of Medicine.........has the potential to significantly decrease the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions in this country."
Between 2006 and 2008, 49 percent of all pregnancies in America were unplanned, according to the CDC's National Survey of Family Growth. About 43 percent of these unintended pregnancies ended in abortion. Meanwhile, a 2011 study in the journal Contraception estimated that unintended births cost U.S. taxpayers about $11 billion a year.
As a result, the researchers found, both teen births and overall abortion rates plummeted.
Among women in the free contraceptive program, the teen birth rate was 6.3 per 1,000 women, a huge difference from the national teen birth rate of 34.3 per 1,000 women.
Likewise, the abortion rate among women in the program was 4.4 to 7.5 per 1,000 between 2008 and 2010. Nationally, there are 19.6 abortions per every thousand women, a 62 percent to 78 percent difference.
So, keep up your dirtbag thinking, that is causing us taxpayers billions of dollars a year.
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axlgrease
Mountain climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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I had a nasty ankle bread several years ago climbing. It needed 3 surgeries over the next year and lots of PT. Fortunately I had insurance at the time - the charges before the insurance negotiated rate for the whole thing were >$120,000. I ended up paying about $20K out-of-pocket after insurance negotiated rates, deductibles, and copays. Some of the charges were reasonable, others were insane, e.g.:
 Ambulance ride to hospital (20 mins - county fire Dept): ~$650; less than I expected
CHP helicopter winch extraction: FREE; can't beat that - the pilot said your California car registration pays for the service
Emergency orthopedic surgeon: ~$2,000; steep, but not totally outrageous, especially since he came in from home at 9:00PM and was there till 2:00 AM
Anesthesiologist: ~$1,500; OK...
Hospital charges the night of the injury: ~ $23,000; WHAT? I was there from about 8:00 PM until 1:00 PM the next day! And it doesn't include the surgeon, anesthesiologist, ER doc, x-rays, and other stuff I got charged separately for.
After my last surgery (outpatient - went in in the morning, out that afternoon), the hospital part of the bill was around $25,000. There was a billing discrepancy between some codes the surgeon used, codes the anesthesiologist used, and codes the hospital used. My insurance and the hospital went back a forth about it for a year. After a year, the hospital just dropped it and I was never charged. They just wrote off $25,000 because they couldn't get the PAPERWORK right....
All this was on insurance I had while I was self employed. Over the next 4-5 years my insurance premiums increased ~200% -- nice. Then, a bit later when I had to switch insurance - I'm denied coverage because of "retained orthopedic hardware". So then I went uninsured for a couple of years. Filing grievances and disputes for denial of coverage was just a waste of my time. I had to fold my business and get a real job to get insurance.
Glad I did, though. 6 months ago my wife has an anaphylactic reaction after her periodic allergy shot. The ambulance ride ACROSS THE PARKING LOT to the ER was $2,100!
Overall, my experiences with the US health payment system tells me it is #@#%ed up. The "socialized" service I received (the helicopter extraction) was the only completely reasonable and efficient experience I had. I think I want more of that....
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mcolombo
Trad climber
Heidelberg, Germany
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I have been living in Germany now for almost 14 years. I have been to the ER twice and can go to the doctors whenever I want. I have always had excellent service and never had to pay a cent.
When I was laid off a few years ago the unemployment agency paid for about 15,000 Euros in training and certification.
I donīt mind paying a bit more in taxes.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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yep, Germany, where that experience would call you a "good citizen", but in the US would have you branded as a scumsucking freeloader by one of the major political parties and social movements.
As you experienced there, "it cannot work".....but we shouldn't let facts get in the way of rants.
I am continually amazed by the mindset that prohibits adoption of best practices by the US, that have repeatedly and consistantly show superior results at reduced cost.
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Don Paul
Big Wall climber
Colombia, South America
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dee ee is fine, its evel that has a problem. evel there is no reason to spend the rest of your life paying those bills. Just dont pay and change your phone number if collection agencies bother you. One option is to declare bankruptcy. Consult a lawyer, you may be able to keep your primary residence (if you own a home), your car that you take to work, and possessions up to a certain value. You may not need to declare bankruptcy though, if you can live with the collectors. After a few years the debt becomes unenforceable, and then (maybe 8 years) wont even show up on your credit report. Also, next time you need a $300,000 operation, consider having it done overseas.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Ken M, either you have serious reading comprehension problems or you are
wildly prone to unwarranted extrapolating. I merely commented on how
medical advice is rampantly ignored to the detriment of our infant mortality
rate.
My second comment rather clearly stated, IMHO, that I didn't think access
to insured medical care influenced their pregnancy rate. I suppose, for your
benefit, I should have reiterated that pertained to that demographic which
ignores medical advice.
How you extrapolate that into a celebration of the "dirtbag lifestyle" is
beyond me. That's an impressive stretch by anyone's standards.
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Gimp
Trad climber
Grand Junction
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Interesting subplot of this whole healthcare mess is the rising costs associated with hospitals buying up (really systematically wiping out private practices).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443713704577601113671007448.html
I believe the current medicare RVU (the work unit for medical practice) is about $34.00 with variables factored in from state to state. When you are in private practice this is the basis of your fee schedule for work performed. You negotiate with insurers for a multiplier to this basic number. From this fee you pay all your overhead (employees, rent, billing costs etc) and what is left is what you actually keep. So when you pay a private practice surgeon say $2000 for a given procedure he only keeps a fraction of this based on overhead which can be quite variable (for anesthesia usually quite low for other specialties it can be quite high). Once a hospital buys given surgeons practice a number of facility fees now can be applied to said service as pointed out in the above link. This means that healthcare costs for the same service go up. I would point out that in some instances the differential is so high in-terms of what hospitals charge for facility fees associate with a given now employed physicians services that they at times do not even pursue the "trivial" professional fee which the Doctor actually ran a multiple employee free standing business on(my personal first hand experience having been in private practice and having worked for corporate medicine).
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Gimp
Trad climber
Missoula, MT & "Pourland", OR
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Jan 28, 2017 - 05:43am PT
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At the hospital I work the only thing that there are always funds available for is another administrative position. Recently met with the CEO about the state of instruments in the OR. He is a CPA who migrated to "hospital administration". As we sat in his plush oak decor office with a view of the city he explained how he understood the issue but I needed to understand the severe budget constraints he was dealing with. I at one point interrupted him and said if we are so constrained how did you have the money to refurbish you office when you came 8 months ago. Classic answer: "well Steve I really wish I could have directed that money to patient care but its just a different budget line set forth by the board".
Bottom line is there are a lot of leeches to feed!!
http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/medical-economics/news/administrative-costs-are-killing-us-healthcare?page=0,1
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cuvvy
Sport climber
arkansas
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Jan 29, 2017 - 10:32am PT
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Insurance is expensive, but one of those high deductible plans can save you from very large bills which people are talking about. Most if not all should have stop losses, so even though your bill is a couple hundred thousand, you're not gonna be liable for nearly the full amount.
Yes, it isnt ideal here in the US, but at least we are not dodging metal containers filled with explosives raining down from above.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Jan 29, 2017 - 11:25am PT
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A couple of years ago I got a bad toothache while in Coyhaique, Chile. I went to see a dentist who spent thiry minutes with me. He took xrays which he gave me to bring back to the States, diagnosed my problem and gave me a prescription which I filled.
The total bill...visit, diagnosis, xrays and prescription was $22...shame on them!
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