Guess I got damned lucky with my cardiologist. After a cardiac stress test, the diagnostician noted something really weird in my EKG, and referred me to a cardiologist. He diagnosed coronary artery disease, and recommended stent placement. I told him "Doctor, I need to be frank with you. I have no insurance, no savings of any import, and few assets. I simply can't afford to do this."

He said "I can't afford to have you die under my care. I will perform the procedure, and we can talk about payment later."

I underwent the procedure, and immediately felt twenty years younger. I never got a bill, and when I called to ask him, he told me not to worry about it until I was in a position to do so. I'm guessing that happens in perhaps one in a brazillion cases. That man is a farking saint. He gave me my life back. I can't imagine being hounded by a debt collector on death's door.

kronicfeld: cman: Do you know what the best way is to avoid a debt collector?

Pay your bills?

I get collections calls and letter for a guy named paul all the time. I am not paul, I have never been paul, and the debt collector seems wholly unconcerned with that triviality, so long as he gets paid.

buckler: Guess I got damned lucky with my cardiologist. After a cardiac stress test, the diagnostician noted something really weird in my EKG, and referred me to a cardiologist. He diagnosed coronary artery disease, and recommended stent placement. I told him "Doctor, I need to be frank with you. I have no insurance, no savings of any import, and few assets. I simply can't afford to do this."

He said "I can't afford to have you die under my care. I will perform the procedure, and we can talk about payment later."

I underwent the procedure, and immediately felt twenty years younger. I never got a bill, and when I called to ask him, he told me not to worry about it until I was in a position to do so. I'm guessing that happens in perhaps one in a brazillion cases. That man is a farking saint. He gave me my life back. I can't imagine being hounded by a debt collector on death's door.

Cool story, Bro.

Seriously, that's Cool. If only more Doctors were like that.

kidgenius: Elandriel: cman: America: Where its patriotic to not pay one's debts

Will you give it a rest? The average person can't pay a goddamn $70,000 medical bill when they need emergency surgery and are in the ICU for a few days. That doesn't mean they're a deadbeat.

True.

But, there are the cases mentioned where people already have outstanding/past due accounts and are coming back for more care. If I'm the hospital, I would be pissed that I have to give care to this person that has already shown that they can't or won't pay for the thousands of dollars of service I'm about to give them.

Agreed, the poor should die, they shouldn't get follow up care for their previous emergency condition.... it just isn't practical for poor people to expect to see a doctor twice while still being poor.

kronicfeld: Marcus Aurelius: That's not a very popular solution, considering that the majority of personal bankruptcies are over medical bills.

Fallacious statistic. The majority of personal bankruptcies list a medical provider as a creditor or claimant. That is not the same as the claim causing the bankruptcy.

Here's a better statistic, nearly 73 percent of the debt discharged in personal bankruptcy courts in 2009 (most recent I could find) was owed to medical providers, pharmacies, and hospitals. Tell me again how we're going to fix the economy without tackling the issue of healthcare financing reform?

Silly Jesus: Ghurni: Silly Jesus: Mitch Taylor's Bro: Silly Jesus: Or, alternatively, they could be stopped from taking stealing it.

"...I will remember that I remain a member of society with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, be respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter.

May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.*"

* As long as they can afford it.

You can't eat good will.

Then don't take the damn oath.

So doctors, nurses etc. should work for free and that's what the oath advocates?

The oath quite clearly does not advocate, in specific or in general, that doctors and nurses should work for free. You're not that obtuse, so stop playing like you are.

But neither does "a right to life-saving, emergency healthcare equate to "selfishly placing demands on a doctor's/nurse's time/expertise," as you are so eager to imply. The oath requires that a medical professional use their expertise in support of life, whether "...sound of mind and body..." or "...infirm." Beyond the importance of that simple charge, the proper measure of a society ought to be the manner in which they treat their lowest members.

You can say "I do not believe that people in our society have a right to life-saving medical treatment." That's fine. But to do so, you must also be willing to say, "It matters not to me whether children starve and die in the streets." Further, you must not complain when it happens to you.

So which is it to be?

I love me some fresh tuna.

;)

P.S. Sadly, the great predator of the sea is on the decline...humanopathy, for sure.

thamike: jbezorg: StanTheMan: change1211: Wow, that is just pathetic. Remind me again why socialized health care is a bad thing for the US?

Because, as with anything else, healthcare gets worse when it becomes an entitlement.

On threshold of the door to the ER, the public servants who get you there or help you get there, the Police, Fire Department, EMTs and Search & Rescue, are looked upon as heroes. Just don't you dare put public servants on the other side of that threshold because that's un-American and those people are swine!

"Help! POLICE?"

"911 Dispatch, what's your emergency?"

"I'm raping myself."

"Can you repeat that, sir?"

"(muffled noises) my! SELF!"

"Why are you doing that sir? Is there any way you can stop for a moment?"

"STOP?"

"Sir."

"HOW CAN I STOP RAPING MYSELF?"

"Sir you need to calm down. You need to get to a room without sharp corners."

"BUT I'M AMERICAN."

"Sir, please--"

"WHAT?"

"Please calm down. I will send an emergency response team to your address, if you give it to me."

"THERE ARE MEXICANS EVERYWHERE."

"Sir? Are you lying on your side?"

"Blargh!"

LOL.

Seriously. People will accept and demand a socialistic system. right up to the point of the EMT's carrying them through the doors of the ER. Then do a complete 180 on that position when they get to the other side.

Even if they are raping themselves. Or shot themselves. Or if they were assaulted. Or a victim of a hit and run auto accident that was medivaced to a hospital. Who then wakes up to find out that they now owe $6,000.00.

It's like they've had the concept pounded into their brain by someone to do that complete 180.

Silly spit?

Ghurni: Silly Jesus: Ghurni: Silly Jesus: Mitch Taylor's Bro: Silly Jesus: Or, alternatively, they could be stopped from taking stealing it.

"...I will remember that I remain a member of society with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, be respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter.

May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.*"

* As long as they can afford it.

You can't eat good will.

Then don't take the damn oath.

So doctors, nurses etc. should work for free and that's what the oath advocates?

The oath quite clearly does not advocate, in specific or in general, that doctors and nurses should work for free. You're not that obtuse, so stop playing like you are.

But neither does "a right to life-saving, emergency healthcare equate to "selfishly placing demands on a doctor's/nurse's time/expertise," as you are so eager to imply. The oath requires that a medical professional use their expertise in support of life, whether "...sound of mind and body..." or "...infirm." Beyond the importance of that simple charge, the proper measure of a society ought to be the manner in which they treat their lowest members.

You can say "I do not believe that people in our society have a right to life-saving medical treatment." That's fine. But to do so, you must also be willing to say, "It matters not to me whether children starve and die in the streets." Further, you must not complain when it happens to you.

So which is it to be?

Are you kidding?

It's: "I do not believe that people in our society have a right to life-saving medical treatment." up to the point when it's their life.

If I run a business...

...and people can't afford to pay me.

But I have to provide my services. (Cause people dying is kind of a no-no).

I would try to find a way to cut my expenses.

/That dose of advil wasn't really $25...ya know?

jbezorg:

Are you kidding?

It's: "I do not believe that people in our society have a right to life-saving medical treatment." up to the point when it's their life.

And that's the whole point. No one held a gun to a pre-med's head and said, "You will enter a section of the service industry that is valuable and absolutely necessary for society to function. Moreover, unless you're okay with people dying specifically because you refuse to act to save them, there's going to be times where you aren't getting paid on a bill."

We cut through a lot of bullshiat if we just recognize a right to basic, life-saving medical treatment as a fundamental right of citizens.

Silly Jesus:

You also don't seem to be able to make the connection between money coming into the hospital and money going out to the employees.

This is exactly the reason why I support mandatory health insurance.

If a doctor is required to provide a service then the patient should be required to pay. Otherwise doctors experience something like what the the retail trade calls shrink. They have two choices. Absorb the loss ( sometimes by cutting jobs ) or roll the loss into the amount they charge the patients who do pay. Since medical costs often exceed a person's income, sometimes exceeding several years of the patients annual income, and Doctors have to provide emergency life saving services regardless of an individual's ability to pay, individuals should be required to participate in a shared risk pool. i.e. an insurance plan.

This is also the exact reason why I find the statement "I shouldn't have to pay for someone else's medical bills. They should just go to the ER." so stupid. When a for-profit hospital has to treat someone who "steals" their services you think they just do nothing about that loss? They do exactly what every retail outlet does with shrink. They increase their operating cost and charge the paying customer more.

CSB time:

I have recently been contacted by a debt collector for a $330 bill to a local hospital I had to visit about a year ago. I fully accept responsibility for the debt and both times have verified my information. When asked how much I could pay I told them that I could pay about $20 a month to get it taken care of. Both times they told me that was not enough and I had to pay more. I gave them the option of accepting that or getting nothing. I am broke and that is all I can afford. I never realized that even when you TRY to pay your bills with these bottom-feeders it still isn't good enough. Not really sure how to go about paying this because they have still refused to send me a bill

buckler: Guess I got damned lucky with my cardiologist. After a cardiac stress test, the diagnostician noted something really weird in my EKG, and referred me to a cardiologist. He diagnosed coronary artery disease, and recommended stent placement. I told him "Doctor, I need to be frank with you. I have no insurance, no savings of any import, and few assets. I simply can't afford to do this."

He said "I can't afford to have you die under my care. I will perform the procedure, and we can talk about payment later."

I underwent the procedure, and immediately felt twenty years younger. I never got a bill, and when I called to ask him, he told me not to worry about it until I was in a position to do so. I'm guessing that happens in perhaps one in a brazillion cases. That man is a farking saint. He gave me my life back. I can't imagine being hounded by a debt collector on death's door.

Dang, that's some amazing stuff there. There don't seem to be many people left these days with that degree of humanity. And yeah, I think I'd be comfortable calling someone like that a saint, with only slight exaggeration. There are very few callings higher than caring for your fellow man in such a way.

I know I got lucky with the hospital system here when I showed up in a panic with chest pains that turned out to be some weird deep muscle strain. Most of a day there, blood work/ekg, xrays, etc, and the total ended up being a 50$ copay and nobody even seemed to care that I'd come to the ER for something that turned out to be trivial (which I know intellectually was a good idea, but which I felt very embarrassed about anyway). I just wish things could always work out so sensibly, and it's really dumb that we even have to worry about those sorts of horror stories even being a possibility in this stupid country.

change1211: ladyfortuna

I was trying to avoid repeating the story again (I get involved in the cycling threads over this one), but here you go. She was riding with, I believe, The Hilly Hundred ride out of Bloomington IN back in 2009, not registered on the ride but with a bunch of friends. They were all going down a hill out in the middle of nowhere, maybe 20mph, and an SUV was slowly also descending with the blinker on to make a turn, generally being safe with all the riders around, when a bunch of idiots rode THEIR bikes in front of the SUV causing her to hit her breaks. Because there were so many riders around, my sister had nowhere to go and ended up hitting the SUV. All of her friends I spoke to at the hospital, at least a half dozen people, said the unknown morons up front caused the whole thing and we never did get their names.

She broke her occipital bone under her eye, hit hard enough to get a subdural hematoma, damaged the nerves in that same eye (had to have surgery a year later, still has a small blurry spot in her vision), cracked her kneecap and got various other contusions etc, and spent about a week in ICU, and another six weeks or so in a rehabilitation hospital up in Indy. She lives in Ohio so it was all out of network too, and it took her until late last year to get all that insurance crap settled since medical billing kept changing their minds.

If she hadn't been wearing her helmet, she very well might have died, and even then since she hit on her side it didn't do as much as it might have otherwise. She's still got memory and occasional speech problems too although that's mostly cleared up.

Our father and I immediately drove out there and he stayed for nearly a year with her to help her get back on her feet. Having repeated the story a couple of dozen times is the only thing that keeps me from freaking out about it even now. The amazing thing is she's an English professor and has returned to teaching.

buckler: Guess I got damned lucky with my cardiologist. After a cardiac stress test, the diagnostician noted something really weird in my EKG, and referred me to a cardiologist. He diagnosed coronary artery disease, and recommended stent placement. I told him "Doctor, I need to be frank with you. I have no insurance, no savings of any import, and few assets. I simply can't afford to do this."

He said "I can't afford to have you die under my care. I will perform the procedure, and we can talk about payment later."

I underwent the procedure, and immediately felt twenty years younger. I never got a bill, and when I called to ask him, he told me not to worry about it until I was in a position to do so. I'm guessing that happens in perhaps one in a brazillion cases. That man is a farking saint. He gave me my life back. I can't imagine being hounded by a debt collector on death's door.

That's awesome. I have a co-worker that found out he had an artery 90 percent blocked and needed a catheter procedure pronto. They told him they needed his deductible first. He was broke and had to borrow the money from a few different people.

I'm going broke paying my premiums and I can't afford the deductible on my plan. I'm trying to do the right thing and all I'm getting is a broken down body and a stack of bills to juggle. Socialize the damn system already and watch what happens when people aren't broke anymore because of sky high insurance premiums.

Silly Jesus: omnibus_necanda_sunt: Silly Jesus: omnibus_necanda_sunt: Silly Jesus: change1211: Silly Jesus: insertsnarkyusername: Silly Jesus: I think that a lot of people don't know where healthcare comes from. They don't see it as a commodity. Yes, the system is broken, but a great deal of people, with emergencies and non-emergencies, don't see the cost of their treatment as a real thing. They think that "oh well, I can't pay" just makes it all go away and the hospital continues on unscathed. You just received a good/service for free, that means that someone just worked for you for free. At some point people can't work for free anymore.

And who is to say that you are entitled to the uncompensated labor of another man/woman to begin with? By virtue of you being born are you automatically entitled to whatever portion of another man/woman's life that it takes to keep you in good health?

On the one hand I can't see turning someone away that truly needs help...
BUT
I also can't see saying "hey, you, come here and give me a portion of your life, I am entitled to it."

Do people truly believe that, by virtue of our very existence, we are entitled to a portion of the life of another?

Last time I went to the ER 5 stitches and and a shot of novocain cost me 600 dollars. This isn't even mentioning the fact that after the injection I waited for 2 hours for a doctor to come back. When she did I was told I could have another but it'd be about another hour and she didn't know when she'd be back. Next time I'm coming in without ID and giving fake info. Start making prices approaching something reasonable and I'll agree with you.

/45 minutes of labor involved, 15 minutes for the doc and 15 minutes each for 2 people who may have or may not have been nurses to grill me about payment info until I started shouting at them to sew my farking hand up and showing them the visible bone.

Generally if someone does not like the price of a good or service, they don't get said good or service. Y ...

Clown Jesus shouts.

FlashHarry: cman: This is Fark, an arm of the Democratic party. How dare you make such a statement on this site.

[i33.tinypic.com image 394x517]

awww, poor guy, i guess you missed all the NRO, WND, RCP, daily caller, blaze, fox, and townhall links that are regularly greenlit on fark.

I'm not entirely sure whether the modmins green politics tab threads for lulz or because they generate more ad impressions, but you must admit that they're intentionally trolling everyone as hard as they can. Maybe even each other.

Silly Jesus: Kittypie070: Look at how programmed Silly Jesus is, still dancing to the blind idiot piping of his goddess Ayn Rand.

Look at how he keeps repeating Her mantra against reality.

Did you read the article on cats causing schizophrenia?

So says the schizophrenic religion.

STFU, man.

Yer foundation is light on bricks, man.

All Y'all's bricks be made light.

Rebrick now.

Fair warning.

;(

I'm feeling Earth-angry.

*sigh*

Nabb1: I'm betting this is aimed at people who come into the ER for every damned thing under the sun, like a cold or a hangnail, and not people with legitimate emergencies. I'm not advocating the practice, but I can see where they'd have a problem with repeat deadbeat customers abusing the availability of services.

Here's the problem with that:

There's a certain subset of the population, let's just call them "professional failures" who stubbornly continue to exist in spite of whatever utopian ideals are currently in vogue. I'm talking the people who just simply are not adults in a meaningful sense, who flounder through each year, and are fundamentally spectators to their own lives, not actively engaged in any meaningful way.

By and large, it is this group of people who run up the vast majority of avoidable emergency medical expenses.

The problem is, our whole system is based around trying to offer incentives and disincentives to the average person, to steer them in the proper path. So it completely breaks down when someone is so farked up the traditional disincentives no longer apply.

That's why we force independent contractors to sell all their tools and go into bankruptcy when their wives get cancer (shoulda told your dreams to fark off and kept kissing corporate ass, pal!).

But it breaks down when a person is so far from stable that normal disincentives fail to apply. How can you garnish negative income?

So while I can understand the motivation of trying to have some come-to-Jesus meetings with these 5%ers, good luck getting blood from that farking stone, pal. What, are you gonna take 10% of their food stamps?

So to justify the continued existence of these positions, they are going to have to go after the low-hanging fruit. People who actually have any means to pay. Which means the independent contractors, people going through divorces or other temporary extingencies, etc.

And hey, with any luck, dinging them for thousands of dollars might just be the final straw that sends them into a death spiral of poverty and debt. Yay, capitalism!

Tl;dr: however well-intentioned, its gonna end up farking over the folks who are still trying, not the folks who have just given up on life.

werekoala: Nabb1: I'm betting this is aimed at people who come into the ER for every damned thing under the sun, like a cold or a hangnail, and not people with legitimate emergencies. I'm not advocating the practice, but I can see where they'd have a problem with repeat deadbeat customers abusing the availability of services.

Here's the problem with that:

There's a certain subset of the population, let's just call them "professional failures" who stubbornly continue to exist in spite of whatever utopian ideals are currently in vogue. I'm talking the people who just simply are not adults in a meaningful sense, who flounder through each year, and are fundamentally spectators to their own lives, not actively engaged in any meaningful way.

By and large, it is this group of people who run up the vast majority of avoidable emergency medical expenses.

The problem is, our whole system is based around trying to offer incentives and disincentives to the average person, to steer them in the proper path. So it completely breaks down when someone is so farked up the traditional disincentives no longer apply.

That's why we force independent contractors to sell all their tools and go into bankruptcy when their wives get cancer (shoulda told your dreams to fark off and kept kissing corporate ass, pal!).

But it breaks down when a person is so far from stable that normal disincentives fail to apply. How can you garnish negative income?

So while I can understand the motivation of trying to have some come-to-Jesus meetings with these 5%ers, good luck getting blood from that farking stone, pal. What, are you gonna take 10% of their food stamps?

So to justify the continued existence of these positions, they are going to have to go after the low-hanging fruit. People who actually have any means to pay. Which means the independent contractors, people going through divorces or other temporary extingencies, etc.

And hey, with any luck, dinging them for thousands of dollars might just be ...

Well-writ.

;)

You know what I love to think about? The fact that Homo erectus - about 1.8 MILLION years ago! - was evolved enough to provide care for the sick and injured among them. These people who were supposedly less "evolved" than we are provided food to those who were too sick or injured to hunt for their own. They provided medical care to people with broken bones, birth defects, and other disabling or life-threatening conditions.

And yet Homo sapiens sapiens? We would rather allow the weak, the sick, and the injured among us to die from neglect than to give of ourselves in a way that our primitive proto-humanoid ancestors did.

/I haz a sad. :(

sigdiamond2000: Nana's Vibrator: What about late night debt collection calls to your house for people you're related to but live 100 miles away? Or people you're not even related to and don't even know? Because that's what I keep getting.

There is no reason to let debt collectors get away with stuff like this.

I can almost guarantee you can get them to violate the FDCPA after you have your lawyer send them a letter telling them to stop contacting you. These idiots can't help themselves. Most collections agencies knowingly violate the FDCPA because they know they can get away with it.

I've made thousands of dollars in the last few years suing these morons, and you can too.

1) Get a lawyer.

2) Have the lawyer fax them a letter telling them not to contact you anymore.

3) Wait until they inevitably contact you anyway because they're either sleazeballs or because the fax machine is broken in whatever storage unit they're running their fly-by-night operation out of.

4) Win a settlement because they don't want to be bothered with fighting you in court.Profit.

5) Repeat.

Seriously. It's like a license to print money.

You are the only person to actually have more than a ? for step 3.

Bless you sir!

/+1 internets

Bundyman: CSB time:

I have recently been contacted by a debt collector for a $330 bill to a local hospital I had to visit about a year ago. I fully accept responsibility for the debt and both times have verified my information. When asked how much I could pay I told them that I could pay about $20 a month to get it taken care of. Both times they told me that was not enough and I had to pay more. I gave them the option of accepting that or getting nothing. I am broke and that is all I can afford. I never realized that even when you TRY to pay your bills with these bottom-feeders it still isn't good enough. Not really sure how to go about paying this because they have still refused to send me a bill

I ignore medical bills.

Fluck them, this country sucks and medical care is supremely expensive.

/And our system sucks.
//Throw them in the trash unopened until we become a real country.

All I can say is if I took one of my children to an ER, regardless of whether or not I owed that hospital a debt, and some douchebag debt collector interfered with my child getting the care they needed, then that debt collector would learn just what it's like to be a patient in that hospital.