• AlexLost@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Yeah, but also have you seen the bill reduction that comes when you don’t have insurance. Suddenly it’s only $7000 to fix your broken leg instead of $173000. It’s like magic

    • mang0@lemmy.zip
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      5 days ago

      Don’t have incentive to check if this is an realistic example since I live in Europe but that sounds bad. In e.g. Sweden, health care costs caps at ~$100 a year. America is supposedly richer than Sweden, should be no problem fixing this in that case

      • Almonds@mander.xyz
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        5 days ago

        There’s a reason every American except the upper class was cheering for Luigi. It’s not even a new phenomenon, ACA (Obamacare) was supposed to lighten the load on the working class.

        Before Obama, my parents had Blue Cross Blue Shield who pre-approved a procedure. My parents still had to pay $250k out of pocket for a life-saving skeletal surgery for my little brother, after the insurance “paid” their part

      • xorollo@leminal.space
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        5 days ago

        Lmao. I just paid 500 for two wisdom teeth to be removed. Insurance was pre-approved, but dr. Is submitting it incorrectly, so they called me expecting a CC to cover the remaining 1900. I emailed them the same instructions on submission that my insurance company sent to them and asked them if they had done that first. We were PRE-APPROVED because while I switched insurance companies this year to ensure we would have oral surgery providers in-network, apparently the insurance website wasn’t accurate and nobody is in network.

      • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 days ago

        For my wife’s PT, I received a recent bill of $5300. Insurance reduced to $1100. I owed the copay.

        That said, just for PT for my wife, I’m past your cap every month of the year, and I pay extra for the coverage I have.

        Yeah its bad.

        • xorollo@leminal.space
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          4 days ago

          Yep, and that’s just the copays for actually using the insurance. That doesn’t even count the monthly cost of insurance even if you do nothing. I’ve spent years never using mine because I couldn’t afford anyrhing beyond perhaps the basic copay for a visit.

          • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            4 days ago

            Oh definitely.

            I have good coverage provided by work for me only, which wouldn’t cost me anything, and is not common for people.

            Add my family at the base and its good, but now a few hundred a month.

            Add them to a level thats appropriate (considering kids, meds I need, stuff my wife needs, etc) and its an order of magnitude more expensive, but comes out cheaper than out of pocket for just those bits.

            Its horrendous.

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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        4 days ago

        as a fellow swede, i have learned that you simply have to accept that america is so terrible that it’s not something we can really grasp, we’ve been told for so long that america is at least okay to live in and it’s just not true at all and it’s very difficult to break through that cognitive dissonance.

    • Soup@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      The $70 Advil still kills me and it’s probably gone up since I learned about it. It’s all just a big open-air scam and most of the fuckheads in that country think doing anything about it is a bad thing.

      They seem to want this, and I don’t know how to help them if that’s the case.