* IN THE USA
Yeah but soon to be in Canada and other countries with socialized medicine because the idiots somehow think the US is better off (despite all meaningful metrics to the contrary).
The USA doesn’t use metric, so you can’t use their metrics.
*Taps forehead meme
Damn
Ah, see… they don’t give a fuck about the medical care, or the patients, or even the metrics. it’s all about how much money they can extract from the system at the expense of all else.
It’s really not the doctors charging crazy amounts, it’s the hospitals. MBA types got into medicine and squeeze it like any other industry. GI does a scope? Doc gets $200 for doing the procedure, facility gets $5k for a facility fee.
100% agree here. As someone who has worked in medical billing, unless it’s a small private practice (in which case it would not apply here), the doctors don’t give a shit about you paying the bill.
There is a whole department of people who specialize in nickel and diming every possible thing that was with range of you, at a markup that would make any decent person blush.
Then that money goes to the hospital to turn an insane profit.
Yeah, pretty sad that being in hospital administration is now typically more lucrative than being an MD.
But don’t forget about the insurance companies - they’re just groups of bankers and lawyers working together to figure out how to squeeze as much money as possible out of every aspect. The worse coverage they provide, the stronger the insurance company gets (the race to the bottom).
Insurance companies are a new level of evil; they fight both the person and the hospitals to pay as little as they can; their practices are in large part what drove hospital billing to be what it is.
Then that money goes to the hospital to turn an insane profit.
And as often as not, that profit goes directly to the catholic church to fund child molestation, among countless other unsavory things.
The doctor has no idea what anything costs
Edit: unless it’s a one of the admin slash doctors or a private practice
And, more to the point, is the last person that’s going to deign to spend their extremely overbooked (by the same admins) time directly communicating with patients about anything that’s not the literal bare minimum diagnosis / prognosis/ treatment plan.
Even private practice doctors don’t usually know what they cost. At least, not the ones I go to. They know if something is really expensive, but that’s about it.
Doctor doesn’t tell people what they owe, it’s usually the billing department or their office manager who does (at least in the US)
Source: This was my job after college. I worked for a mental hospital, and it was my job to tell people how much their hospital stay was going to cost. A lot of the time, these patients were hospitalized because they’ve tried to commit suicide. So glad I don’t work there anymore.
Thank you. Physicians are just employees of the hospital like nurses. They can try to keep the cost down by not ordering unneeded tests, but a majority of the time they can’t do anything about prices.
Whats cool is that physicians aren’t allowed to own hospitals due to fear of “greed”. But people whose entire career is business and making money can :).
A baker can own a bakery, a lawyer can own a law firm, a doctor can’t own a hospital.
The US is a mess.
Doctors can run their own practice.
They did usually end up paying or not?
For some of them, I was able to sign them up for Medicaid, so their stay could be covered. Lots of people set up payment plans. For the people who didn’t/couldn’t pay, we would send them to collections. My hospital very, very rarely wrote anyone off. IIRC the cost for one night without insurance was around $4k.
I’m trying to imagine what it would be like for them to be that low in life, attempt suicide, end up hospitalized, then hit with a massive bill to crush them further. Some countries do a much better job at caring for their population than others, that’s for sure.
For sure! It was definitely soul crushing, watching what very little hope people had being quashed by the ridiculousness that is US healthcare system. There were many times where we’d call to collect from patients and we’d speak with loved ones who told us that the patient ended up killing themselves shortly after discharge.
What’s even more infuriating is that my coworkers and I made about $16/hr while our CEO raked in $150k+ a year.
Gross and ignorant post. It’s the insurance and it hospitals. Doctors, nurses, staff, etc get paid either way.
Doctors get paid enough to have muiltiple luxury cars and giant McMansions, and take straight up bribes from pharmaceutical companies to push high-profit medications on patients even when they’d be as well served by a far cheaper alternative. Meanwhile, the rest of the staff works 70+ hours for near-poverty wages.
Doctors are in on the scam as much as anyone, the inhumane hours are just part of the membership fee.
Is this an american meme i am too Australian to understand
It is, yeah. American healthcare is insanely expensive.
This extends to pets. It cost us thousands of dollars to lose our dog.
Reminder for pet owners to consider pet insurance. With a good vendor, it’s not as expensive as you’d think and can provide peace of mind.
Not naming any recommendations here to avoid the perception of advertising.
And get it while they’re young, because once they’re old the insurance companies will say no.
Incorrect. Doctors don’t know the cost of anything 😅
a quintessentially American meme
