Comment on I can't believe this is the only comm that will not throw a hissy fit about this.

• Professorozone@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  No. What happened was my wife worked for probably two years to get the insurance company to pay the full bill or have the ambulance company reduce it.

  In case anyone here doesn’t know, never pay the first bill you get. Wait until the final bill. The insurance company and the provider keep negotiating and the price comes down, often in a significant way.

  Anyway, the air ambulance service refused to reduce and just said they didn’t negotiate. That was just what they charge. The insurance company just kept saying that they already paid and weren’t going to pay more. Mind you after the $124,000 hospital bill, we had reached her out-of-pocket maximum of $16,000, which we did pay. Mind you, my wife was unconscious and actually never agreed to be airlifted. When it looked like they were going to sue us for the rest of the bill, my wife’s employer agreed to pay the bill for us. They were self insured and not happy with the carrier they had chosen. This apparently wasn’t the first issue they had had with their employees. It was a non profit and we were grateful for their kindness.

  Also, we had the same problem with the ground ambulance which charged $1600 to drive her from the airport to the hospital, a distance of about 2 miles. You can literally see the hospital from the airport.

  Also on a related note, since we had paid our maximum family out of pocket, I opted to have a recommended colonoscopy at that time. That’s when we found out that I am NOT family. Family=children. I’m a spouse and had to meet my own out-of-pocket maximum. It’s a really great system.

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  • Photonic@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Sounds awesome indeed…. And this maximum is yearly?

    We have a mandatory out-of-pocket maximum (set by the government) of ~ €400, which, if you don’t expect to use much health care, you can increase to ~ €900 in exchange for a reduction in your monthly fee. Still, some people complain about that maximum, but I think they would complain a lot less if they knew a little more about the US system.

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    • Professorozone@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      And worse than that, I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’m pretty sure that people who think we have the best healthcare have never actually used it.

      I think we have the best healthcare no one can access.

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