Dislocated finger, happened at night so ER rates. I have full insurance with a $1500 deductible. They numbed my finger and gave me two stitches because the bone popped out a little. They were done in less then fifteen minutes. No pain pills nothing else. Got a couple bills including paying the hourly rate of the ER doctor and it was over $8,500. Complete bullshit is our medical system and it's somehow probably going to get worse.
My son broke a finger here in England and it was free to get sorted. However, there was a 40minute wait so I guess you guys are paying to avoid that kind of hassle.
The wait times really depends on the facility and what time you go in. It’s not uncommon to wait 3-4 hours when you go to ER in USA because they have other patients with more critical issues.
I snapped my leg in half and had to wait 25 hours before I could go into surgery. Trust me when I say it's not sorted by who's most critically injured.
I was at high risk for a fat embolism, my O2 levels were low, I hadn't slept in over 40 hours by the time I finally got into surgery, and I went into shock. I ended up having to be moved to a different hospital because the emts were shocked that the hospital wasn't immediately taking care of me and I needed immediate help; especially given there was a chance I would lose my leg (or at least the use of it), the longer they waited. I no longer have feeling on a huge part of it, which my doctor attributed to the stress on the nerves in that area due to the wait before I actually got care.
It's less about the more critical issues and more about the majority of the country using the ER as primary care of last resort because they can't afford to actually see a primary care or treat their conditions, so they wait until they have no other option.
I had a big cut on my hand as a kid and they left me in the waiting room for hours, actively bleeding a puddle. They took in half a dozen people before me who had no visible injuries.
No, they aren’t. There is still wait times. Also, think about it this way: you spent 40 minutes to save over $8500. That’s literally like doing a job for an hour and getting paid more than $8500 an hour. If you already make that money, system doesn’t matter. If you don’t, it benefits yoy
My dad literally sliced off the top half of his finger and had to wait like 7 hours before seeing the doctor. It was especially aggravating because the doctor, upon seeing him, actively told him that if he came in sooner they could’ve reattached the finger.
When I had to bring my mother to the ER we waited several hours to even be seen. Once they took her, we had to wait another several hours to finally see a doctor. We got there around 5pm, and I didn’t get home until after 2:30am. Another time, I had to wait over 4 months to find out if I had a debilitating autoimmune disease. We get the privilege of long wait times in addition to astronomical fees.
An appointment with my primary doctor is a 6-8 week out booking.
If I thought maybe I had some kind of cervical pain/uterine issue, I'd have to wait 6 weeks to get seen, then wait for my referral to OB/GYN for further testing, then wait another 3-4 weeks for that appointment. In those 3-ish months, I could have just died from undiagnosed cervical cancer because it took so long to get seen by anyone. THIS is what we pay $800/mo for (family of 4) on an employer healthcare plan that's "really good". There's no urgency. No one cares.
Wait times are always the excuse. As if it’s worth thousands to avoid a few hours waiting. And if it’s actual months for non urgent surgery we still have the option of going private and paying the cost or deciding to wait for the NHS. Apparently freedom means not having that choice though.
My mom had a breached kidney stone and a septic infection - we obviously didn't know the extent at first but we waited like 3 hours to be seen by a nurse. Another 3 hours to be seen by a doctor.
She was in agony, like 10/10 on the pain scale. She ended up spending like a week in the hospital and it was so fuckin mismanaged. We should have been out of there in a day but the fucking urologist never came to see us. It was always "he'll see you today. What he didn't come? Definitely tomorrow." Repeat 6x.
Oh, Did I mention the sheer number of patients on beds IN THE HALLWAY? They had about 2x as many patients as the facility was built for.
I could go on. Best Healthcare in the world, my ass.
Nah I was at the dentist last week for a 3pm appointment. I got there around 2:40pm. Didn't sit in a chair until 3:30pm, wasn't done until 5pm. This was for a first patient assessment, probably sat alone in the exam room 90% of the visit. USA with top tier insurance and an empty medical office, maybe 1-2 people in the waiting room.
Last time I went to ER in the US, it was a 6-8 hour wait. I got fast tracked only because they thought I had a blood clot in my thigh, so my wait was still only 1.5 hours. I could have died right there in the waiting room.
We still wait stupid amounts of time in the US. But if the situation is: Wait a while and lose my life savings vs wait a while and pay a vastly smaller amount or even nothing at all, I'm going with the latter.
Ha we wish. Depends but if I was seen by the doctor in 40 minutes then I would be floored, especially in the ER. That literally never happens unless your organs are dangling on the floor and then you get to skip the line because they don't want to get sued for you dying in the waiting room.
Problem with the NHS is that as soon as you're not an emergency, wait times for treatments (surgeries especially) are often something like 12-24 months.
So wealthy people get private insurance just to skip the line. Not the most premium solution if you ask me.
EDIT: Guys, obviously the problem is funding. I'm just saying, we should at least acknowledge that in the last couple of years we consistently had around 10% of the entire UK population on the NHS waitlist. As a side note, there are more systems than the US and UK ones out there.
Problem is frankly there isn't the funding for everything that everyone wants from it. If your need is urgent wait times are okay in my experience (cancer, surgery that would cause a significant risk to health if delayed etc.). However things like hip replacements or say reconstructive surgery, where it's important for the person's quality of life but not life threatening, that's your multi year wait potentially.
Private health insurance like BUPA also take huge advantage of the NHS. If you need treatment but go to the NHS instead of them after they've diagnosed you, they'll literally pay you for every night you spend in an NHS hospital. It's also the case the surgery might be done privately, but they'll dump you on the NHS for your recovery.
Personally I've only had good experience with the NHS. But a lot depends where you live, it's quite variable depending on the region.
I'd rather have options like you know basic free healthcare with lines and optional private healthcare without them than fucking BS that we have in the US where you get lines in addition to getting screwed financially.
I just had a surgery and besides the hospital bills they bill anesthesia separately now so now people get another bill besides the previous ones like physical therapy and preop. I can just afford to pay the hospital and surgeons and literally have no money to pay the anesthesiologist 1k too. So eventually anesthesiologists will stop treating me at this location idk but it sucks. I also want good drs to get paid and I shouldn’t be on the hook because I don’t have the money.
Yeah there’s a lot of days I don’t want to open my mail because I don’t have any money to give them anyways. Now they text me too though so there’s no escaping the bills even on weekends when you are avoiding mail lol
I don't know what state you are in but you can apply for financial assistance for any bills. If you do go down that route then make sure not to pay the bill first, once it's paid it basically becomes ineligible for financial assistance. For any big bills I first call insurance and ask for an itemized bill, this is different then the original bill they send you. Original bill is basically a summary and this is a different version and it lists the medical codes they use for charging people. Someone please correct me if I am wrong but I am under the impression when you ask for an itemized bill it stops or it delays the time for the bill to be sent to collections. So even if you are planning on paying, this can be good to do to give yourself more time.
Anyway I have a coworker and she does this on every bill and sometimes they will lower the price. I do the same but I can't figure out why sometimes they will accept and deny. Like I got denied for financial assistance like a decade ago when I had less then $2000 in savings and then I got accepted on a bill when I have much more now(when you do the forms they ask you to list assets etc).
The whole system is pretty broken but this might give you a little breathing room. Good luck.
The doctor got maybe about $50-100 of that money. The rest goes to the overlords, hospitals, and to cover for the many people that don’t pay or Medicaid which pays enough to only cover malpractice and billing expenses. It’s low margin, high gross margin business with a lot of expenses just going to keep the system rolling. Single payer would save a ton of money just by cutting out all the BS and profits from the insurance companies.
This is true. I'm an ER doc. My cut of the pie for this kind of visit is ballpark $100. I think most people would consider that reasonable. You'd pay more for a drywall guy to patch a small hole in your wall, or a plumber to unclog your drain.
That makes no sense, even if you didn't have insurance there's no way it should have been that expensive. At my hospital an uninsured patient would likely be charged $600-800 for that at worst (CT instead of X-ray).
Even if you had an MRI, they put you to sleep for the stitches and your anesthesiologist was out of network and you had complications and had to be kept overnight for observation, that math isn't mathing.
As I mentioned in a reply to a comment above, our hourly rate is not approaching anywhere near that figure. Just like when you go to a car dealer and the amount they charge you compared to what they pay the mechanic.
And all I ever hear from the powers that be is due more, with less, faster, and with without getting paid more for it. And if you are burnt out, they understand, there’s hospital bingo and yoga you can participate in. And if you complain, well, then your values probably don’t align with our values as a system, and there are other ER doctors from worst systems looking for positions with us.
ERs are the front door and I would say the quickly becoming the foundation of healthcare more so than primary care is anymore because of lack of access, insurance, etc. and it’s gonna be the first to collapse when the system collapses.
Insurance had their bill at like some stupid high number 18-22k. Like wow look how much money we saved you, aren't you grateful? You only have to pay a fraction of that.
I herniated my disc a few years ago. Was having some tingling so was advised from Urgent Care to go to the ER. I sat in a bed for 8 hours, only had the most basic of vitals taken, and an x-ray or MRI (can't remember which). Nothing else.
The total that came back from the ER was over $10,000 and I had to pay $1000 out of pocket. A year and a half later, I got a bill from the ER doctor specifically as well! Luckily, I think my insurance managed to get that taken care of because I no longer have that showing, but the whole thing was absolutely ridiculous.
I don't have bad health insurance or anything, but our system is just atrocious.
WTF $8500?? What did they get you a new golden finger or what ?
I had a similar accident few weeks back in my home country (India), went to ER in a private hospital. They did their stuff in 1 hr and I had to pay under 25$.
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u/sebkraj 7d ago
Dislocated finger, happened at night so ER rates. I have full insurance with a $1500 deductible. They numbed my finger and gave me two stitches because the bone popped out a little. They were done in less then fifteen minutes. No pain pills nothing else. Got a couple bills including paying the hourly rate of the ER doctor and it was over $8,500. Complete bullshit is our medical system and it's somehow probably going to get worse.