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Comment by spinlock | Hacker News Reader

I think there are "bad" guys. I've pointed out to a doctor that their agreement said that I would agree to pay any charge they decided to bill me for. I pointed out that I was in their office because they were in network for my insurance and that I couldn't agree to pay literally anything they decided to bill. So, I asked them to tell me what the maximum they might bill would be. And, they kicked me out of the office.

So, yes, if you refuse to be transparent in your billing and you extort money from your patients by refusing them treatment unless they agree to pay literally anything for service, you are a "bad" person.

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> So, I asked them to tell me what the maximum they might bill would be. And, they kicked me out of the office.

Sounds like dental care in Canada.

A major area of Canadian health care which is not covered by the socialized system ends up looking a lot like the US system? How expected.

The funny thing is that dental care in the US is the exact opposite. If you ask $RANDOM_DENTAI_CLINIC what the cost for $RANDOM_PROCEDURE will be, they can quote you a price that will generally be pretty accurate.

I'm told this came about because historically more people had to pay for dental services out of pocket, so dental offices were used to having standard fees that they could just look up.

Also most dental insurance will only pay up to $10-5k total per year, so its not some unlimited spout of money you can abuse like medical insurance in the USA. Some dentists offer a direct subscription plan that costs around the same amount of costs as a dental plan directly as a result.

> so its not some unlimited spout of money you can abuse like medical insurance

Apropos of outliers, this type of attitude is problematic and emblematic of issues in the US.

"Needing healthcare" is not "abusing medical insurance".

I think he means the hospitals abusing it by billing inflated charges - not patients using healthcare.

Yes I meant that, thank you :)

I'm pretty sure your parent comment was characterizing the doctors and hospitals, not the patients, as abusing the system.

>>So, I asked them to tell me what the maximum they might bill would be. And, they kicked me out of the office.

There are of course shitty doctors, but playing devil's advocate for a minute: you were arguing about theoretical billing scenarios while there were other patients in line waiting to be seen. So it's not exactly surprising that he got fed up and kicked you out.

wrong. I was asking about a specific procedure that I made an appointment for. They gave me a form -- after I got to the office -- which said I agreed to pay any amount they decided to charge. When I asked for clarification, they refused to quote me a price.

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