Man diagnosed with coronavirus near Seattle is being treated largely by a robot
edition.cnn.com
edition.cnn.com
Ambulance trips in the states are routinely $3,000. my trip to the ER after a wreck was $3800. If you dont have insurance, how do you pay for an "isopod" and a quarantine with a medical robot? What reasonable insurance company would ever cover these expenses? (mine hardly covers birth control.)
Healthcare is private here. When i go to the hospital they ask if "i am a member." Do these treatments take place at in-network facilities? is there such a thing as an in-network facility for being quarantined with an incurable new disease? Can I be compelled to pay for health services in this case if i DO NOT want them?
Its at least reassuring to see CNN is dancing around the HIPAA implicationf of misidentifying or identifying the patient...although I wonder if its only because they recently emerged from a slander/libel lawsuit for painting a highschool kid from kentucky as a racist during a rally.
If you have decent insurance, you pay your maximum out of pocket and insurance pays the rest (at negotiated rates).
If you don't have decent insurance, you declare bankruptcy and the hospital ends up paying for all except the few dollars they are able to get out of you. This is pretty much the same situation as when homeless people show up at an ER, which is legally obligated to help them regardless of ability to pay.
It might say that your hospital stay is covered on paper ... but then at the hospital the robot (or another doctor) might not be billed through the hospital and some outside group that is suddenly out of network.... there's no way to know.
When I had severe hypokalemia and was effectively paralyzed several years ago [1] (sorta comical read) they never once asked me about my dietary intake, instead they assumed I had some rare genetic disorder (in the ER the doctor literally told me "we're googling your symptoms") and once I was admitted they paraded 3 doctors through my room and billed me for 5 or 6 'consults'.
While I considered my insurance to be 'good' getting dinged for each of those 'consults', 2 times each, despite only ever having seen 4 doctors total (one an ER doc that was probably a year or two into his medical career) face to face once each I ended up paying 10-12 different 'consul' fees, then a portion of the ambulance, then a portion of the room, the two different physical therapists they sent by after declaring me a 'fall risk' since I came in functionally paralyzed, then a portion of all the tests. From the time I set foot in the ER until I left I was there about 37 hours.
All they had to do was give me some oral and IV potassium and I was fine. I actually diagnosed it myself, with no medical training whatsoever, in the ER unable to move 45 minutes before they did. My mother was there and after I'd somewhat calmed myself (I could not move, I could barely move my fingers) I told her it was probably a sodium potassium imbalance and I could probably still make it to work for overtime that morning. I ended up paying a little bit under 7k$, 1/4 of my gross income at the time, with my 'good insurance'. Took me 4~ years to pay it all off.
[1] https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2013/2/19/flashback...
Another major annoyance -- if you have surgery, the hospital usually gets their money from you right away. However, you're going to spend the next 18 months receiving random bills from various different firms representing nurses, doctors, lab technicians, etc. related to your procedure, many of which come down to "stuff we decided to do while you were unconscious."
The worst-case max out of pocket for any insurance plan in 2020 is:
$8,150 for self-only coverage
$16,300 for family coverage
In America, it is important to have liquid savings to handle life events like losing a job or a serious health issue. We get taxed less, have fewer safety nets, so we need to build our own safety net. You can argue that one way is better than another way as a big picture, but many people misconstrue the individualist vs. collectivist societies as a serious moral issue instead of a choice. Some of the details of each can be serious moral issues, but the big picture is simply a difference in priorities.
Bottom line: If you can come up with $16k/year to cover medical expenses for a serious issue, you won't go bankrupt.
How / when you might hit it is an unknown from plan to plan for the reasons I noted.
If you hit the max it is irrelevant, I am talking about hitting the max and going bankrupt.
The costs of a given hospital visit is still an unknown leading up to the max... and how quickly you hit it is an unknown... and thus actually finding "descent insurance" is not easy.
As far as I can tell you seem to just be hooked on this concept that after you hit the max you're not paying and that somehow means something. Perhaps you feel that hitting the max is a trivial thing?
https://time.com/5555988/medical-bills-out-of-network/
This lady had insurance, and yet was stuck with a $227,000 'balance bill'.
I'm no mathematician, but $227,000 seems to be a bit higher than the 8.5k max that this thread keeps citing.
This kind of issue should be taken into account when choosing an insurance plan. If you choose one which has a restricted network, you have to be more diligent about where you get your care in emergencies.
Medical billing is nonsense though. Just because someone sends you a bill does not mean you owe it or will ever have to pay it. This is one of those details and rare occurrences which get way out into the weeds and doesn't really support the argument of which type of health care your country should provide. There are similar edge cases in social medicine where some situation or another is appalling. Extreme cases need to be handled, but unless they are common, they shouldn't drive the debate.
2. Did you notice the anecdote in another part of this thread where an approved, in-network procedure at an in-network hospital had an out-of-network anesthesiologist, because every single practicing anesthesiologist in the region is out-of-network?
3. As a buyer of health insurance, how can I even know, ahead of time, that there's a problem, like what was listed in #2?
4. As a non-buyer of health insurance (Because my employer chose which one to buy), even if I knew about #2, I don't even have any choice in the matter!
It's ludicrous to expect people to do all the research they need to do, to avoid getting bitten, in an industry that is as hostile to transparency as the medical billing industry. Where do you even start? [1]
> Medical billing is nonsense though. Just because someone sends you a bill does not mean you owe it or will ever have to pay it.
Is this legal advice? Because as I understand it, there are plenty of places which will happily garnish your wages over medical debt, and there are plenty of hospitals who won't write off outrageous balance bills if they discover that you actually have savings in the bank. (Oh, and the ones that will forgive it... Are robbing the public, because they get to claim that write-off on their taxes. As a taxpayer, that's my favorite part of 'charitable debt forgiveness'.)
[1] And even if you could do that research, the problem of balance billing comes from your insurer, and the hospital not agreeing on which services should have been paid for, and sticking you with the problem. You cannot predict that, at all, because it is always an after-the-fact case-by-case scenario.
For example, the French tax bracket for income between $28k and $81k* is 30%
In the US the rate in that bracket is 12% up to $39k and 20% after. If I did my math right that averages to 18%.
That isn't high income earners saving on taxes, that's a 40% lower marginal income tax rate for the middle class in the US vs. France. There are also many other sources of tax outside income which are different and higher in countries with social medicine.
* converted from EUR to USD
(taxation is complicated and making apples-to-apples comparisons is hard. it is easy to argue about fiddly details and hard to avoid a long list of caveats)
The poor and lower middle class aren't in any better position to save tens of thousands of dollars for medical emergencies, despite the lower taxes. Lower rates don't help, when your income is low.
And in California, that difference is a lot less than 12%.
The US median income is $63k... $16k would be 25% of that.
Lack of food (9 days), and lack of potable water (72 hours). Since we seem to be leaning towards the opinion that the gov't needs to provide everything for us and we should have minimal/no responsiblity for our own sustenance, repair, or longevity, where's the Free Sh*t Army slogans for no-cost food and water?
Interestingly enough, most economic studies of social security show that putting the same money into a low-risk index fund would've netted more gains, plus that money would've been available to the person with far fewer 'strings attached' (vis a vis able to be withdrawn earlier if desired, descendants/spouses able to withdraw in case of untimely demise, etc). Coerced gov't meddling, again, has proven to be the more-painful economic road to go down, as opposed to letting individuals choose what to do with what they've earned.
>folks on social security
I notice that you call some people "folks" while others are simply "receipients". Do you think poor people are human?
The difference is for people with no or low incomes as the tax is used to pay for these. Social security.
My friends from other countries say, not really when you add everything. Then add the US's system of 'private taxes' which drive up the cost of things like health insurance, schools, etc.
My cost was 10 times his. His whole family for less than half the cost of just myself. My initial suspicion was he got generic and I didn't. Nope, same box. He's said before he has 'good insurance' but it's almost always just talk. Guess it wasn't in this case.
Does that mean the entirety of your life savings and any liquidatable assets?
What about non-retirement investments? Aren't you only allowed to put so much into a retirement plan per year?
Yes, retirement accounts are limited in terms of annual contributions. But bankruptcy protection is one factor to consider in whether to max your contributions and/or to pay ahead on the mortgage on your primary residence.
I think the OP's question was more: who decides this person gets treated by a state-of-the-art robot, while this person gets a prescription and told to go home and rest?
Which tangentially makes all the Rand Paul bullshit about doctors being slaves under a universal healthcare system kinda moot.
I know intelligent people aren't making that argument but it's a reasonable counterpoint in case you come across one of them
If we accept the premise that being legally compelled to treat a patient makes a doctor a slave, it is perfectly reasonable for Rand Paul to argue against the expansion of such a law. Similarly, the current existence of such a law does not contradict his moral stance unless he advocates or supports the current system, which he does not.
He makes the argument entirely because he was searching for something to support his platform, not the other way around. He doesn't appear to even delve into the issue beyond healthcare == slavery but rather focuses on supporting his strange forever contradictory hyper-capitalistic vision. As such he waives any possibility to debate the issue from the position that he doesn't support the current solution because he doesn't support anything.
My mom worked in healthcare billing her whole career. My understanding is that half the reason medical bills are so high for normal people is they need to cover the costs for the people that need and have received care but were unable to pay.
In this particular case, it's a matter of national security, so I'm sure the needed funds would magically appear if needed.
Thing is the state hospitals will actually try to cure you; and they are fairly good at it. Harborview (part of University of Washington) is the only L1 trauma center in the region.
For-profit hospitals stick it to the taxpayers by doing this. It's a good argument for some form of universal healthcare, since we're paying one way or another.
Sounds totally fair and reasonable to the people who get crazy high bills for the one thing a year that they need it for, despite paying hundreds a month in premiums for the "privilege" of also paying for people who can't. What a system.
In addition to that, workplaces also give out limited number of sick days, so people don't go to the doctor and go to work instead. They ride in public transportation to get there, maybe stop at the store on the way back if symptoms haven't gotten too bad, handle some produce and so on. Well we see where this is headed. I think once something like this virus comes to a large city in US, it just has a pretty good chance of spreading and in large to our broken healthcare system.
Otherwise the person could just choose to freely infect as many people as they want because they can't pay for specialized treatment.
Is that not the case?
I'd assume the US has programs/budgets for this sort of contingency funded at the federal level?
I recall an article a few years ago about the google founders (?) paying for kids in San Francisco to get vaccinated. The comments were split between Americans praising the act and Canadians that were confused.
They were $20 or so in Quebec if you weren't in an at-risk group. https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/advice-and-prevention/vaccin...
Also the hospitals can write these costs off of their taxes in various ways. If outbreaks like this cost them millions in expenses they have tax loopholes and it ends up costing them nothing.
If a company spends X dollars on something, they don't pay X dollars less in taxes. They pay X dollars * their marginal tax rate less in taxes.
Now they may be able to apply for grants or other types of funding, but there is simply no way to "write things off" and then get them for free.
This page has a lot of good info:
https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2017-00615
Particularly the "Payment for Care and Treatment" discussion here, which talks about public comments and even gets into the ethics of what you can make someone pay for compulsory treatment or isolation:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/01/19/2017-00...
And the rules in 70.13 and 71.30 here and here:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/01/19/2017-00...
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/01/19/2017-00...
Excerpt from the rules in 70.13 (which I think covers domestic stuff):
> Director may authorize payment ... Payment shall be secondary ... after all third-party payers have made payment in satisfaction of their obligations ... For quarantinable communicable diseases, payment shall be limited to costs for services and items reasonable and necessary for the care and treatment of the individual or group for the time period beginning when the Director refers the individual or group to the hospital or medical facility and ends when, as determined by the Director, the period of apprehension, quarantine, isolation, or conditional release expires.
In practice, that poor bastard is gonna get a huge bill for saving the rest of us from his illness. I hope at least his friends buy him free beers for a while.
I understand that comparison of mortality rates is difficult, so this does seem "more deadly" than the flu, but likely we have no idea of the actual number of people with it, both for reporting reasons and because many people may just have minor symptoms.
But, if we use SARS as a comparison which also had this level of pandemic fear+isolation (and was way way worse handled in China at the beginning) I think final stats were like 1000 deaths worldwide. Compare that to what, over 2k deaths in just the US every year from the flu?
I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned (it is new and unknown, and seems to have a higher mortality rate than other viruses) but it seems this level of treatment (and entire city-wide lockdowns in China right now) is like Ebola level precautions for what seems like a difficult but fairly standard level respiratory virus?
Honestly curious here from medical professionals/epidemiologists..
Please don't spread bad information if you don't have the background to talk about it.
For example, initial reports only days ago claimed that human-to-human transmission was not possible, but that's been disproved already. Combine that with the government's mismanagement of SARS/African swine fever, and you've got plenty of reason to speculate.
Don't be a conspiracy theorist, particular when the "unknowns" are just - and there is no nicer way to put this - ignorance of internationally sourced public epidemiological data. The first cases of this occurred less than 7 weeks ago. If someone can't intelligently process news about this topic, they shouldn't add to the already large level of concern and confusion about it.
I agree, but this is just the information that the vast majority of the public is receiving from the media. Perhaps you should direct your displeasure in that direction.
>> It's sequenced already. There's a reasonable R0 for it. There are patients that have gone through the entire lifecycle of the disease while under observation. There's already a RT-PCR test for it. It has known similarities to existing coronavirii that are well understood.
Major publications are not smacking you over the head with jargon like R0 or RT-PCR tests. Those words mean nothing to most people. What matters is relatable things: how does this impact my travel plans, what precautions should my co-worker take on his business trip to China next week (literally).
>> Don't be a conspiracy theorist, particular when the "unknowns" are just - and there is no nicer way to put this - ignorance of internationally sourced public epidemiological data.
Is this not exactly the problem here? The government's response to the outbreak was slow, with reports of local officials suppressing information. When information became available, it was factually incorrect (human-to-human transmission) and propagated. The way this played out is remarkably similar to SARS. And much like SARS, the credibility of the government handling the outbreak has significantly harmed the public's trust. There is much reason to believe that the Chinese government is not being forthcoming with information.
>> If someone can't intelligently process news about this topic, they shouldn't add to the already large level of concern and confusion about it.
The question was "why /this/ level of isolation is necessary". He answered that question by saying "we don't know how bad it could be". He isn't shouting off the top of a roof to distrust the CDC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
> The 1918 influenza pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920; colloquially known as Spanish flu) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus.[1] It infected 500 million people around the world,[2] including people on remote Pacific islands and in the Arctic. Probably 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million (three to five percent of Earth's population at the time) died.
Lowering risk to medical personnel is crucial to prevent degradation of health care capability.
This seems to cover it [0], an "early estimation" gives a high R0 number indicating a higher transmission rate (more worrying than mortality rate).
Also worth noting, WHO initially suggesting a lower R0.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comments/et8zs8/novel_cor...
> It is new and unknown
Better be safe than sorry. Can you imagine what we sould say if the virus ended up spreading and killing a fair amount of people just because we couldn't be bothered taking a few precautions?
The reasoning is simply that there is no good reason not to do it.
This level of care prevents spending much more money monitoring/treating many more people that this patient might have been in contact with otherwise (some of them being doctors and expert on this kind of disease that we don't want to have to put in isolation for a week when we need them the most).
Do you think it costs more to operate the robot than the robot company will make from the good PR this sort of headline generates for them? How many more hospitals and doctors will invest in the field of robotics and this company specifically if they can say it was them to helped get this virus under control? Not to mention the ISOPOD manufacturer, who will no doubt be fielding new orders after this article.
There is no good reason not to do it because, even if this turns out to be a slightly more harmful flu, the lessons, experience, and data gained from using these procedures and technology will enable a better response the next time something similar happens, and next time might be the "real deal." To hell with financial responsibility if stopping a global pandemic is on the line!
I'm suggesting that there is a spectrum between "taking some cold meds and still going to work" and "locking down entire cities and treating people with robots" and that many considerations go into where we decide collectively (and individually) to be on that spectrum.
I'm not arguing this isn't dangerous, that there isn't unpredictability or anxiey about something new, or even that the precautions aren't necessary, I'm just curious as to why this particular coronavirus has landed on the far right side of the serverity-of-precautions scale.
--
(I mean there's also "no good reason" not to make sure the entire world has access to clean drinking water and antibiotics and those things kills a fair amount of people...)
The death rate for the flu averages around 0.1%. The Wuhan virus is currently just over 3%, the 1918 flu that killed millions had a death rate of around 2%. The flu is deadly, the Wuhan virus is currently 30x deadlier than the flu. Additionally, flu vaccines already exist as well as anti-virals that have been shown to work on the flu. There is no vaccine for the Wuhan virus nor am I aware of any anti-virals that have been shown to work on it.
We know exactly how deadly the flu is (i.e. not very), how to prevent and treat it and we can accurately predict how it will spread.
The coronavirus is a zoonotic disease, a virus that jumped from animal to human this doesn't happen every other day. Most of these diseases are very deadly, much more than your regular flu. We also don't know much about it or how to prevent/treat it.
So again the reason why we take a lot of precautions is that a lot is unknown about this virus and its effects.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-coronavirus-...
> Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
Turning off trackers is harder, you do the same geo IP, but then you have to find all the places you put trackers, and disable them, and test the site without them, and somehow make sure when the next tracker is inserted, it doesn't go to EU. If your code is well managed, it might be easy, but if you're a newspaper, who knows. They may have several different generations of template systems, with older articles staying on what they were published with, or older articles may be static html with embedded trackers.
Supporting the GDPR isn’t free, those technical and legal costs have to be justified by saving an appropriate amount of lost revenues.
All laws are nuanced, just thinking that you are already doing the right thing isn’t enough to avoid legal liability.
Personally I don't have a stake either way in the matter. I can see the argument from both sides. But the entire point of a business is to generate revenue, and we can't do that if we start trying to comply with every local chirp and by-law places decide to pass.
As for the Tribune's availability it sucks, but is not surprising. They are a big paper in the Midwest, but they definitely do not have the resources compared to bigger publications, nor do I think do they have any kind of focus on the international market.
It looks fairly similar to this telepresence robot from Cisco: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/collaborat...