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Comment by FussyZeus | Hacker News Reader

So if you go to a collision specialist with a flat tire, it should cost $26,000 right? Because they were prepared to bend your chassis into a straight line again, even though you didn't actually need that?

My wife was in a bed for 3 of the 4 hours, seen by two nurses for maybe 1 of those hours total, and the doctor for barely 30 minutes while she took a large dose of her standard drug that we get over the counter for $20 a month. I'm not saying people shouldn't get paid, but two thousand dollars? And that's AFTER insurance, by the way.

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It always amazes me that my fellow Americans worry about socialized medicine. We already have socialized medicine; you show up in an ER, you get treated whether or not you can pay. Instead of paying for the "freeloaders" out of taxes, we pay for it by lottery - we bankrupt a handful of random unlucky stiffs who happened to get sick this week.

Well, if you go to a collision specialist who's legally prohibited from turning away anyone with a bent frame regardless of their (current or future) ability to pay, it's not unreasonable that they'll charge you more than Jiffy Lube does when you can pay. That overhead has to be covered somehow.

You have reframed the argument! To use your analogy; You didn't have a flat tire, you had a bent frame!

A collision specialist will charge a greater rate for services than a local tire shop because; the tooling is greater and the staff skill levels are greater.

>two thousand dollars? And that's AFTER insurance, by the way

You never mentioned that this was after insurance. If your bill was vastly more than $2,000 - I can agree that we have a cost issue (stemming from insurance interference in the marketplace).

Oh you're right, I should've told my wife to calm down with her gasping for air until the morning when I could take her to a more wallet friendly clinic.

I can't tell if you're clinging to this argument out of pride or if you're just deliberately refusing to understand what "emergency" care is for some reason. Maybe you haven't had the experience of dialing up a significant other's parents to let them know what's going on and which hospital you're going to in the middle of the night, but let me tell you that planning out which hospital was going to screw us the least in the pocketbook was NOT in the forefront of my mind.

Edit: Full disclosure, this was the best case scenario: In network hospital and everything. I research this stuff ahead of time for this exact reason. The insurance company only covers 60% of the visit until I spend something like $4,500. When you make under $40k, $2,000 might as well be $4,500 might as well be a million dollars, it DOESN'T MATTER because it's still going to ruin you for a long time.

>$2,000 might as well be $4,500 might as well be a million dollars

I can only imagine how silly you are trying to be!

The thing is, medical bills in the US are blown out of all proportion, and have nothing to do with actual costs.

This has been well documented and studied time and again.

It's not like Sweden or Denmark have much worse hospitals or doctors -- on the contrary, even a crappy US hospitalization will cost you several times more than what it would cost you there.

Heck, I was taken into a first class private hospital in an (advanced) Asian country, stayed there for the night, was taken care of by 4 nurses, had several exams/tests made, was consulted by 2 doctors, oh, and they even got me there by ambulance after a friend called (I had fainted atm).

I expected the worst, but the next day I was asked to pay something amounting to $50 -- without even having an insurance coverage (as I was just visiting).

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