My wife was in labor for a bit less than a day. Baby was fine, everything good, but apparently we were taking too long. Doctor demanded we do a c-section. When we said we wanted to wait, she walked out, slamming the door. We got scared, they made 60K for about 20 minutes of work. Guess what the c-section rate at that hospital is? 50%. Not kidding. I'm in the wrong business.
A friend of the family was unexpectedly laid off, with insurance expiring at midnight the same day. She had the first of many grand mal seizures around 3 hours after the insurance expired.
The doctor who was first called in to the ER specialized in one type of cancer. He mother suspected she had a second type of cancer, and if so would be eligible for a free research study. Because she didn't have health insurance, she got whatever doctor the hospital assigned and she kept getting this guy. He refused to sign off saying she had the second type of cancer and he refused to admit her to the hospital, even when she was having more than 4 grand mals a week.
About a month and a half after her mother initially contacted them, she got them to look at her records, and the research team determined that she did in fact have the cancer they were studying and flew her out to their research facility. Unfortunately, by the time she got there, the researches said the cancer was 1-2 weeks beyond the effective window for their proposed treatment.
In the meantime, Florida legislators were working a bill to eliminate the bonus for specialists called into an ER. The young lady returned to Florida in time to see the bill passed. On her very next trip to the ER for a grand mal, the doctor that had several dozen times previously refused to admit her to the hospital finally admitted her (now that he wasn't going to get any more bonuses from ER visits)!
To add insult to injury, the young lady was a veteran from the first Gulf War. She died a little less than 3 months after being laid off. The VA still hadn't processed her paperwork to get her in the system.
It was not only excruciatingly depressing watching this young lady and her family's battle with cancer, it was a serious wake-up call about the problems with our health care system!
Maybe the doctor slammed the door because she was really looking forward to going shopping with her bonus (like an angry retail customer that once told me I was "taking money out of his pocket" because I wouldn't give him an expired sale price on a stack of blank CD-Rs).
AFAIK it's nigh impossible to get away with this in the EU, or at least in Belgium. Belgium's worried about an increasing C-section rate, but at 20% it's still far below those in the U.S. it seems (which was ±33% in 2010/2011).
Also: is the cost actually USD $60,000 or is that a typo? That'd be about 10 times the rate in Belgium!
Our deductible sucks so we do this all the time. If you have cash in the bank, ask what they'd be willing to do if you pay 100% today (money now is worth more than the same amount in the future, and a lot more than money discharged in bankruptcy).
Challenge every line item. Every $600 bandaid and sleeping pill. It really helps here if you have evidence of what someone else paid for the same or similar procedure.
If they won't budge, take a payment plan with the absolute lowest possible monthly payment you can get them to accept.
It's completely normal to be billed $2,000 and pay $3.59 for something. I don't even know why they bother with the fake number in the first place.
It also cost $0 total, with a baby delivered and 5 days in the 'new-parents-hotel' at the hospital, which included monitoring, help and instruction, and vaccines.
No he wasn't. That number is fake. They get about $700.
Did I misread that ? If not, it's just insane.
Or are you under the delusion that you don't pay for it? Just because you aren't charged doesn't mean you haven't paid for it, and probably more in taxes.
Some countries prefer to pay for this stuff via taxes, others individually.
And in the US free insurance is available for pregnant women who can't otherwise afford insurance, and has been for years (i.e. nothing to do with obamacare).