Health Problems

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Frenzied Wombat

Potato del Grande
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I don't think you can be fired for having cancer in the states, but I may be wrong. What would happen is you'd be put on short term disability for three months, and then long term disability after that. How much money you collect off both is dependant on how good a disability plan your firm has, though you always have the option of buying your own from Aflac or similar.
 

pharmakos

soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
<Bronze Donator>
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At least around here it happens... It might not be legal, but I live in the middle of nowhere with a shitty economy, where people are happy to land a job paying $12/hr. I assume they don't list "cancer" on the termination slip.
 

Onigen

Golden Knight of the Realm
163
232
So pretty much all the fearmongering about US health care costs are only applicable to people without insurance or stupid people who don't get travellers insurance if they go there (it cost me 50€ to be fully insured up to like 250k damages when I was there few years back).

Also woke up with a random damn infection on one eye, guess a trip to the hospital in schedule for today.
 
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sleevedraw

Revolver Ocelot
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So pretty much all the fearmongering about US health care costs are only applicable to people without insurance or stupid people who don't get travellers insurance if they go there (it cost me 50€ to be fully insured up to like 250k damages when I was there few years back).

Also woke up with a random damn infection on one eye, guess a trip to the hospital in schedule for today.

$10k plus the insurance premiums that you have to pay. Arguably the US system works pretty well if you're either a light healthcare consumer like myself (single, healthy, because you can get a high-deductible plan with low premiums and sock away money in a HSA) or a "frequent flier" who is in and out of the hospital twice a month (no offense to any cancer patients; you need it for the most part.)

The people who have it worst off are the "moderate" consumers, like people in their early 60s who need to spend $3-5k total on a MRI and total knee surgery, but don't quite hit their deductible or OOP max.)

You can also get screwed pretty badly if you aren't advocating for yourself and proactively checking drug prices and insurance procedural requirements/what individual plans will and won't cover. For example, my primary care doc wrote a scrip for minocycline. It's 5 times the cost of doxycycline despite being therapeutically equivalent in most cases, so you bet I had him rewrite the scrip. I am a nurse by trade, so I know these things, but most people don't.

People like to say that the US system is free market, but it's anything but; it's a cartel without pricing signals. American Medical Association places an artificial cap on med school admissions to keep MD salaries high via artificial scarcity. Inability to buy insurance across state lines. In ability to compare apples-to-apples if you are trying to shop around for elective surgery. You get the idea.

We also should be focusing more on primary care and prevention rather than hospital care, because it's much cheaper to prevent than it is to treat. Zerocare in theory made some halfhearted steps in that direction, but it came with a whole lot of baggage.
 
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Kuriin

Just a Nurse
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1,020
So pretty much all the fearmongering about US health care costs are only applicable to people without insurance or stupid people who don't get travellers insurance if they go there (it cost me 50€ to be fully insured up to like 250k damages when I was there few years back).

Also woke up with a random damn infection on one eye, guess a trip to the hospital in schedule for today.

So...so...absolutely ignorantly wrong.


On an unrelated note. For all the medical folks on this board. We had a patient come in via code 3, sepsis alert. IVs placed, sepsis bundle protocol initiated. Patient was pretty much GCS ~11. Responsive to sound, unable to open eyes, barely able to move extremities. Pale as a motherfuck. Perfusion was almost nonexistent. Cap refill >10 seconds, lips were cyanotic. OK... Place a foley in him to see if he's having any output. Out comes 1200mL of clear yellow urine. We are freaking out at this point that the full bladder was tamponading a bleed and sure enough. Yes.

Patient began seizing. EKG showed inferior acute MI. Patient by this point was unresponsive. We got him to CT scan and I call lab for stat H/H. His hemoglobin was 2.1 and hematocrit was 7.8. Intubated, we started the level 1 rapid infuser and poured 8 units of PRBCs, 4 bags of platelets, and 4 bags of plasma.

A 4 hour code. I was drained. My bladder was full. I wanted to drink myself to death. Got him stabilized and sent him to ICU.
 
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Onigen

Golden Knight of the Realm
163
232
So...so...absolutely ignorantly wrong.

Which is why I was asking on the previous page, because I am ignorant on your system and was curious to known how the differences on our health care systems really are. The only replies were towards "insured people don't have to fear bankruptcy". The only real images we get here (Finland) of your way of handling health care tend to be alarming, high costs and people left on their own accord.

For an example of costs here from yesterday (the eye infection thing): 0€ for doctors visit (already filled the 700€ calendar year cap) and 30€ for the medicine (on non-threatening they only cover about 60% of the cost, on cytostatics and such it would always be 1.90-3.90€)
 

Kuriin

Just a Nurse
4,046
1,020
Even if you are insured, you still need to pay for the deductible. But, before that, you need to make sure you are in an IN-NETWORK hospital/provider in order to be covered. Then to be fully covered, you need to hit your max-out of allowance (which is typically anywhere from 1.5 to 20k).

We get women for pregnancy tests in the ER. A $5 pregnancy test ends up being >$50 copay.
 
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Frenzied Wombat

Potato del Grande
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I have a CT scan done every 5 months. They take literally 5 minutes. They cost something like $4k per scan. Bonkers

Yeah it's retarded. But look at the "negotiated rate" or "Insurer rate" on your statement. The CT clinic charges 4k, and the insurance company has a negotiated rate of like $500, of which you pay your co-pay out of. Same with blood tests. A standard blood panel has a bill of like $1200, but the insurance company only pays like $125 for it all.

I always wondered that if one was uninsured and you were paying cash, whether you could get the insurance company rate as well, or whether you'd be stuck paying the ridiculous full price.
 

alavaz

Trakanon Raider
2,001
713
I don't know how it is state to state but in NC some medical providers have a cash rate that is better than insurance rate. My insurance will also negotiate with out of network providers on my behalf. I got a 1200 bill from an ER Dr that they got reduced to 300 for me.
 

sleevedraw

Revolver Ocelot
<Bronze Donator>
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Yeah it's retarded. But look at the "negotiated rate" or "Insurer rate" on your statement. The CT clinic charges 4k, and the insurance company has a negotiated rate of like $500, of which you pay your co-pay out of. Same with blood tests. A standard blood panel has a bill of like $1200, but the insurance company only pays like $125 for it all.

I always wondered that if one was uninsured and you were paying cash, whether you could get the insurance company rate as well, or whether you'd be stuck paying the ridiculous full price.

Most providers will negotiate a lower rate for you if you self-pay, especially hospitals, because the vast majority of them are nonprofits and can write off rate reductions as charity care.
 

LiquidDeath

Magnus Deadlift the Fucktiger
4,827
11,111
Most providers will negotiate a lower rate for you if you self-pay, especially hospitals, because the vast majority of them are nonprofits and can write off rate reductions as charity care.

They also prefer to have cash in hand immediately rather than try to chase down delinquent bills for a higher amount. Ends up costing them less in the long run.
 

Frenzied Wombat

Potato del Grande
14,730
31,802
Yeah makes no sense that they wouldn't negotiate. If they tried to saddle me with a 4K CT scan bill that they normally only receive $500 for from insurance, I would tell them to fuck off and wait for a collection agency to come after me, then negotiate it to half from there.
 

pharmakos

soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
<Bronze Donator>
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So I started doing the ketogenic diet to see if it would help my cancer, and my latest tests show that it's been working amazingly. My CT scan shows that all my tumors are shrinking, and my serum tumor markers went from a 91 before the diet to a 5 now after just a week and a half on it!

I'm over the fucking moon right now. We are going to continue with immunotherapy to make sure that it will be gone for good. Who knows, I might have to keep on this diet forever, but I can live with that. :)

Lumi was right, who would have thought.
 
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Oblio

Utah
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I am about 90% sure that I have Kidney Stone. I had one about 12 years ago and it was by far the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. This should be a fun night 😂
 

jayrebb

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
13,856
13,724
So I started doing the ketogenic diet to see if it would help my cancer, and my latest tests show that it's been working amazingly. My CT scan shows that all my tumors are shrinking, and my serum tumor markers went from a 91 before the diet to a 5 now after just a week and a half on it!

I'm over the fucking moon right now. We are going to continue with immunotherapy to make sure that it will be gone for good. Who knows, I might have to keep on this diet forever, but I can live with that. :)

Lumi was right, who would have thought.

Then you'll do the right thing and lobby for his unban from this thread then?