Uninsured patient billed more than $12,000 for broken rib
American life
Making us shake our head: David Lazarus (30-Mar-07), Uninsured patient billed more than $12,000 for broken rib, The San Francisco Chronicle, online at sfgate
I sympathize with this guy, but I don't.
If conservatives have taught us anything – and I think they have – it's that we're responsible for ourselves. This guy was uninsured, which he knew at the time of his accident. And yet, he let the damn hospital do whatever they wanted to him. And now he's got a bill he can never pay off.
Get a clue, buddy: The hospital ran tests on you (along with everything else they did to you) because they wanted to charge you for the service (not to mention their intense interest in covering their own ass), not because they truly – in their heart of medically-informed hearts (where they DID harbor a specialist's opinion on what your health-status required) – think you actually needed a CT scan, et al.
The next time you're in need of our healthcare system's parasitic services, you do this: You tell the healthcare provider – and everyone else you encounter – that you're uninsured. Straight up; up front. You ask how much their service will cost. You demand to know. They will eventually give you a figure. When you sign the various waivers and agreements-to-pay, which they will put in front of you, you add to the papers a statement that you will be responsible for no more than the figure they quoted to you (or bump that figure up, if you want, or whatever; I have no idea if this is binding...). By doing this – even as you are experiencing the consequences of your injury, and your head is spinning, and you can't think at all – your efforts will elicit from your attending healthcare providers true information on what they think you actually need. You still won't be able to afford it, but at least you won't end up with a $12,000 bill.
The American healthcare system is not designed for the likes of the uninsured, but that doesn't mean the uninsured can't make pragmatic/difficult decisions on the healthcare they will purchase, when they are presented with the cost and botom-line consequences of alternative medical interventions. Which is a shitty compromise, but the alternative is a $12,000 bill, which only forces the receiver into bankruptcy.
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