No health insurance?

[JustJason]

Anybody not have it that has been to the Doc's lately? Unfortuneatly I have to go to the hospital. I'm expecting an astronomical bill, probably in the 15k+ range, more if I'm going to need surgury. Anybody have any experience with this? I know the hospital needs to get paid. But it's just not going to happen unless they are fine with 100 bucks a month for the rest of my life or something to that extent. Think they'll let me work it off?

 

[Limited-Time]

Re: No health insurance?

Figure on paying 50 to 60% of the actual invoice price, if you can pay all at once. If not most Hospitals now have finance departments that handle long term payment requirements. If you can swing it, may be cheaper to obtain a loan up front in order to pay the hospital and benefit from the reduced rates.

 

[jkust]

Re: No health insurance?

I would suggest thay you look into limited medical benefit insurance. It is similar to a major medical policy but provides for low limits many times on an indemnity basis. These policies are cheap but of course do not offer catostrophic coverage but many times cover inpatient surgical as well as Rx. With the options available from Limited Medical aka mini-med to short term medical and the multiple others, there are few reasons not to have health insurance. The problem you face here is that you will now be subject to preexisting conditions clauses since these policies are individual not group policies. Additionally because a PPO is attached to the policies mentioned above, you will receive discounts that you will not get when paying cash payments. As an absolute last option, because you will be "pre-exed" and likely not qualify for insurance now, you look into a medical discount card. There is no insurance associated but it lets you buy into one of the PPO's for a small fee and will potentially save you a lot of money. These exist for dental discounts and are actually valuable to have in your situation. When you get the bill they simply discount it as per the PPO contract in place for the facility where you were served. As to your question, I am pretty certain that they will not let you work it off.

 

[avenger79]

Re: No health insurance?

I have had some minor work done with no insurance. Broken bones and such, no surgeries. They will drop the price if you call the billing dept and explain you have no insurance.........maybe. They did for me.

what I was told by my bank is if you have med bills outstanding they do not count against your credit. They cannot go after you if you are making even a very small payment against your bill monthly.

 

[strokeoluck]

Re: No health insurance?

Think they'll let me work it off?

We hit a tough spell a number of years back and the hospital billing department was all over me (rightfully so, even though we all know they raise the rates 2x on an individual vs. the insurance company; but I digress...). I was sending them money, but it wasn't enough in their opinion. I finally wrote a personal letter to the President of the Christian hospital asking him to take a look at the situation. After that someone called me and worked out a plan. Once things improved personally/financially I paid it off about nine months later.

So yes, I think they'll work with you. All lenders (which they will become if they do the work and you can't pay it off) realize it's tough to squeeze blood from a turnip, therefore they're flexible.

I know very little about health insurance, but is there a way for you to join any sort of "group" to gain access to reasonable insurance?

It really is a shame that the U.S. doesn't have some sort of solution for situations like this. Good luck.

 

[JustJason]

Re: No health insurance?

In Mass, if your underinsured/not insured and if you are below a certain income level then you can sign up for 1 of 4 massachusettes subsidized plans. Which I did today when i went to the ER. Only problem is Mass is backlogged 3+ weeks in processing my application.
1 lady said that as long as I didn't lie on my application Mass would backdate it to the day it was filed.
Another lady said she had no idea and I would probably have to pay up front.
Either way.... I went in today... may have to go back in a few days. We'll see what happens.

 

[strokeoluck]

Re: No health insurance?

Oh yeah, I forgot about the new Mass. insurance deal. Let us know how it all works out.

 

[jkust]

Re: No health insurance?

In Mass, if your underinsured/not insured and if you are below a certain income level then you can sign up for 1 of 4 massachusettes subsidized plans. Which I did today when i went to the ER. Only problem is Mass is backlogged 3+ weeks in processing my application.
1 lady said that as long as I didn't lie on my application Mass would backdate it to the day it was filed.
Another lady said she had no idea and I would probably have to pay up front.
Either way.... I went in today... may have to go back in a few days. We'll see what happens.

There is no free lunch in Health Insurance. I work with and know several Brits and the stories of universal healthcare are horrendous. If you are really desparate a little known fact is that Hawaii mandates all employers to offer health insurance for everyone who works over 20 hours a week. So, I understand you are a Marine Mechanic. Just go to Hawaii, start your sole Proprietorship and you will have access to health insurance with no pre-ex. I will spare you all my conservative rants about the "uninsured". Also if you are a vet you should have access through the VA. My father is a combat wounded vet and although he has health insurance he likes and has good things to say about the VA. His lunch seems free but the dozen AK-47 scars all over his body say differently.

 

[JB]

Re: No health insurance?

Ten years ago, when I was between retirement COBRA and Medicare I got into the secret universal healthcare system that exists in most places in this country.

Heart attack. Needed bypass surgery, NOW. When it was all over the collections of bills.. .Hospital, anesthesia, surgeon and a bunch of specialists. . .came to a bit over $200K. That would have made a big hole in my retirement savings. As it was, each creditor offered to settle for about 40%, cash. I was lucky enough to have the cash. It still made a big hole in my capital.

I asked one manager if an Insurance company or Medicare would have gotten the same offer. The answer was no, someone has to pay for the patients with no money or insurance.

 

[amendegw]

Re: No health insurance?

I asked one manager if an Insurance company or Medicare would have gotten the same offer. The answer was no, someone has to pay for the patients with no money or insurance.

I don't think that's exactly true. I have insurance thru Aetna and (if my services are in-network), the EOB's will often show negotiated discounts of 50% or more. Blood work bills are ridiculous - often times the lab will bill only 10% of the pre-negotiated rate.

I think this is one of the problems of our health system - the insurance companies have negotiated lower rates with health providers. If someone decides to "go it alone", they don't have the negotiating power of the insurance companies.

Furthermore, for anyone over 50 or with pre-existing conditions, it's impossible to get affordable heath insurance unless your employer provides a group plan. And, if you lose your job, you're SOL.

...Jerry

 

[jkust]

Re: No health insurance?

If someone decides to "go it alone", they don't have the negotiating power of the insurance companies.

Furthermore, for anyone over 50 or with pre-existing conditions, it's impossible to get affordable heath insurance unless your employer provides a group plan. And, if you lose your job, you're SOL.

...Jerry

Jerry, like I mentioned above you can buy into disount networks for very little per month and pay prenegotiated rates so you gan "go it alone" and get discounts. They are great for cash buyers. They may or may not be as big as the Aetna network discounts depending on which you choose. There is an education element at play here. There are a lot of options but it seems so few folks know about them. I sometimes get these network discount spam faxes and think what a bad way to market the product. A spam fax almost ensures people will think your product is a scam. I agree about the being older issue and the difficulty of pre-ex. Like I said though, move to Hawaii and you are guaranteed insurance if you are employed 20 or more hours. It is major medical coverage and the cost is reasonable. My folks are doing exactly than very thing soon...not for the insurance but it will be an added benefit if they want it.

 

[salty87]

Re: No health insurance?

lost my job and went with assurant health plan instead of the RIDICULOUS cobra pymts. it isn't full coverage, only for a major bill....$2500 deductible or whatever you want to pay for. peace of mind in case something major happens, fraction of the cost. i never really used my employer sponsored full coverage before. well, there was that one time i broke my leg wakeboarding...$$$.

as said though, pre-existing conditions change things alot.

 

[dave11]

Re: No health insurance?

If you are a veteran, go to the VA hospital.

 

[amendegw]

Re: No health insurance?

Jerry, like I mentioned above you can buy into disount networks for very little per month and pay prenegotiated rates so you gan "go it alone" and get discounts. They are great for cash buyers. They may or may not be as big as the Aetna network discounts depending on which you choose. There is an education element at play here.

Jkust,

The "education element" is extremely important here. The discount networks I've read about often times restrict you to health services that are hundreds of miles away. Make sure your local hospital and the doctors you plan to visit are "in network" for the discount network. If they are, great! Go for it. If not, you could find out the you are paying for a worthless plan.

This this "in-network" vs "out-of-network" issue is even a problem with large programs like Aetna. Recently my wife had a routine colonoscopy. We asked the facilility and physician that performed the procedure, "Are you in-network with Aetna?" Answer: Yes. Well, when we got the bill, we found the Anesthesiologist was out-of-network and we got a $350 bill from him.

This issue is complicated multi-fold if you need a more-complicated procedure such as a heart bypass. You may find that you're billed "full boat" (pardon the pun) for many parts of your bill. All this happens at the time that you're very sick and don't have the time nor the energy to adequately research your options.

Let's hope Obama and the Republicans can come to some type of agreement to fix this system. I'm not very optimistic.

...Jerry

 

[JustJason]

Re: No health insurance?

The doctor I had was named Dr Dragan Petrovik. He was Serbian. Nice enough guy but a bit on the hard side to understand. On wednsday I had blood work, physical exam, couple bags of saline (apparently i was dehydrated) and a CT scan. At about 9 at night the doctor told me the results of the CT narrowed it down, but he wanted me to stay over night on fluids and have a colonoscopy in the morning.
Having been already invaded, plus not having insurance I said no thanks. I told the doctor I really can't afford to stay over night, as this visit was already going to kill me. He litterally looked at me and shook his head and said "I really wish you would stay, its to bad you have to make health decisions based off of money, this countrys health system is no good". At least i'm pretty sure what he said... He was hard to understand.

 

[Silvertip]

Re: No health insurance?

Any doctor that tells this country's health system no good deserves to be flogged. I really feel for those who don't have health insurance but I also get angry over the fact that I (via the government) should pay for someone elses. We keep hearing that so many Americans don't have health insurance. While that is to a certain extent true, a very high number of those "elect" not to have it even though their employers offer it. Expensive you say? Yes it is. But make better financial choices. Health care is a more important choice than that new car or pickup sitting in your yard. Sorry for the rant folks, but lets get our priorities straight. The main reason health care and insurance is high is because of the "free health care" the hospitals must eat. Remember before the election how California politicians kept telling us illegals and minorities were not a drain on the healthcare system. By golly it is now an issue since hospitals all over the country are closing because they can't meet expenses. Universal health care is another government program that will be run about as inefficiently as medicare and social security. I use medical equipment and the price my insurance company pays for stuff vs the same stuff I can buy directly on the internet is roughly a factor of five. 80% of the bill is therefore for the benefit of having someone else file paperwork with medicare. Socialism is fine until you run out of someone elses money!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[tx1961whaler]

Re: No health insurance?

You forgot one thing:
Profit. Health insurance companies made well over a billion dollars profit in 2007 in California alone. I won't even get into the profits of the drug makers.

The fundamental issue that we in the US struggle with is exactly what services are "optional" and what services are "necessary". Normally services that are deemed "necessary" are normally provided or heavily regulated by the government.
Some examples of things that have traditionally be deemed "necessary":
Defense of the country
Police protection
Fire Protection
Water supply
Electricity (based on our deregulation fiasco here in TX, it needs regulation...)
Basic food supply (yes, it's somewhat regulated thru price supports)
Roads
Boat Ramps (couldn't resist....)
Education (probably the weakest example)
Basic communication (the airwaves and phone lines; remember Ma Bell?)
Basic old-age pension (now that the Wall Street boys have shown their true colors again, I've heard no more talk of privitization...)

Things that we deem "optional" are left to the free market to provide. I remember a quote from a lefty political science professor :"The free market is a perfect system for providing people things that they don't need."
Examples:
Cars
Boats
Gasoline
Houses (thing of more "luxury houses")
Caviar
Big Juicy Steaks
Clothes
Computers
The Internet (whatta you mean, iboats is optional ???)
Furniture
Electronics
and the last two that we're discussing:
Medicine and Health care

We just can't decide which slot to put health care in, and we do a very poor job of trying to stick it into both. Is basic health care a necessity, or is it an optional, luxury service? And what is basic health care? How do we handle end-of-life issues? One third of Medicaid costs go toward trying to prolong the inevitable. Medicare spending in the last two years of life averaged $25,343 per patient in Wisconsin, lower than the national average of $29,199 and much lower than the $39,810 spent in the highest-cost state, New Jersey. But profit drives innovation, so how can we innovate in a restricted market?
I feel very blessed and fortunate to have been covered by private insurance coverage for my entire life. I also realize that I'm one layoff away from not having coverage, and there is no guarantee that I can even get individual coverage on the market. I could handle the $1000 a month for awhile, but it would be tempting to go without. I have never used $12,000 in health care per year in my life. Do I gamble with the odds?

 

[SuzukiChopper]

Re: No health insurance?

This exact topic is why I've been having a hard time deciding to move anywhere but where I am. I'm diabetic and sure being unemployed right now I pay for my insulin, test strips, pen needles and various other drugs... but if something bad happens I know I can go spend 6 days in ICU to get better without fearing the cost of any treatment I get. Or I can go to the ER, be treated and not have to worry.

The one difficulty we face though with our health care 'benefit' is that if you need a transplant or surgery (in some cases life saving procedures), you get to sit on a waiting list... FOR YEARS, especially if it's an 'in demand' procedure. There is no election for us to be able to just pay to have it done.

I feel for the people in the US that don't have coverage and just can not afford it. Life then becomes a matter of 'can I afford to fix myself'.

 

[tx1961whaler]

Re: No health insurance?

Yep. It's a very complicated issue, and many entrenched interests are involved. The insurance companies certainly don't want to give up their big $$$, employers really don't want the last benefit they can hold you hostage with to go away, and we don't want rationed health care.

 

[bassman284]

Re: No health insurance?

Yep. It's a very complicated issue, and many entrenched interests are involved. The insurance companies certainly don't want to give up their big $$$, employers really don't want the last benefit they can hold you hostage with to go away, and we don't want rationed health care.

You're getting rationed health care now. It's just ratioed by your ability to pay.