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Comment by astockwell | Hacker News Reader

> luckily my wife doesn't work so I didn't have to take time off for all the phone calls and following up that was required

This.

This is so horrifically true, it takes call after call after call (and emails, and faxes, and snail-mail claims forms that take "30 days" to "process") to get anything changed, and by then you have collections companies harassing you and your credit goes down the drain. Meanwhile you must keep working and taking care of family and dealing with the actual illness/issue that led to the medical visit in the first place. It is insane.

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A friend of mine was in a sports accident almost two years ago. He had a good medical insurance plan for exactly this possibility.

He fractures his pelvis into 14 pieces, and broke another dozen major bones including both femurs.

The surgeries are still ongoing although he is mostly himself again. But even two years later, he is facing a daily barrage of calls, being put on hold, no callbacks, paper shuffling, records from hospital to hospital, faxing permission sheets, fighting with the insurance company (who has threatened to drop his insurance multiple times) and on top of it all, his landlord is trying to evict him.

It's been horrible to watch. It's like the insurance company is trying to kill him with stress.

> It's like the insurance company is trying to kill him with stress.

A health insurance company, no less.

These stories have me at 'WTF USA'. Like seriously, how does the US society think this is ok? Can anyone explain this to me?

Is it a 'won't happen to me' sentiment? Preferring the freedom of literally landing on the streets with one accident since you're presumably fully in charge? I do not understand, though there must be an understandable reason.

It's unbelievably horribly fucked up.

I think the only reason anyone can think it's OK is (1) they haven't had a major medical expense yet and (2) their political tribe tells them capitalism is the answer for everything.

Honestly, healthcare in the US is so broken I don't see how we avoid a crisis in the next few years because of it. Maybe it will somehow pop like a real estate bubble (sad when that's the most optimistic thing you can hope for).

It's becoming increasingly obvious that the political tribalism is insanely strong. Enough to prop up things that might've seemed outrageous a year or two ago.

> He fractures his pelvis into 14 pieces, and broke another dozen major bones including both femurs.

That sounds horrific. What sport was this?

Paragliding. He competes at the top level, and the accident occurred in competition. Think Nascar crash.

Also, don't forget that you'll frequently need to deal with multiple bills, each potentially requiring separate work to resolve.

If you take an ambulance to the emergency department, see a doctor, they order a scan, the scan shows appendicitis, and your appendix is subsequently removed, this can easily lead to six different bills:

  - Ambulance
  - Facility
  - ED doctor
  - Radiologist
  - Surgeon
  - Anesthesiologist

And that's assuming that the ED and hospital are under the same company (not always), and that no off-site labs are used. You may not have ever heard of the radiologist or anesthesiologist. I once had bill collectors calling me re: a radiologist I'd never heard of, who managed to ruin my credit for a good six months until I figured out what the bill was actually for.

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