Crash! Bang! Wallop! What a healthcare system

[touchingcloth]

Let's imagine you're an idiot, in America. If you have a big car accident, how do they find out which hospital is in your correct insurance network, or even that you are insured, or that if you are insured you consent to the 9 million dollars it costs to be taken away in an ambulance?

Is the situation in reality less mental than the one I have in mind?

[bgmnts]

I know in The Sopranos they do a "wallet biopsy" which I assume is to check that they have insurance etc. I'm assuming the emergency service paramedics search for the details on arrival?

Presumably, they give you the basic level of care then tell you to fuck off once they realise you're too poor for healthcare?

[Endicott]

That's what happens to Cutty in The Wire.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I thought life and death stuff got done regardless and you got a whopping big bill whether you were insured or not, and people without insurance probably have to declare bankruptcy to escape it, and the healthcare system had insurance against that.

I might be incorrectly filling in blanks from the fact people without healthcare have been known to let minor, easy to fix ailments escalate to things that have caused them to be admitted to A&E though.

[Emma Raducanu]

They come over here and steal our healthcare system.

[Zetetic]

you got a whopping big bill whether you were insured or not, and people without insurance probably have to declare bankruptcy to escape it, and the healthcare system had insurance against that.

Insurance companies are much better equipped to challenge the bill than individuals, plausibly wiping 90% of it out from the start.

What US healthcare providers charge by default has little direct relationship either to the cost of providing care or what they expect to be reimbursed.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Yes I figured that prices being enormously inflated were the response to, but also the cause of people defaulting.

[Zetetic]

It's still easier to explain than pre-COVID England.

[idunnosomename]

um yeah I think if you hurt yourself the fix gets done whether you want it or not basically. what a steal!

[canadagoose]

If I was American I reckon I'd be FUCKED

[MrMrs]

I genuinely don't know how these people survive? credit cards?

[touchingcloth]

I genuinely don't know how these people survive? credit cards?

Back alley major trauma surgery, one assumes.

[Zetetic]

What's even the appropriate health geography for England any more? Whose codes do you use to identify these? ONS? ODS?

How many characters long are these?

NO ONE KNOWS

[kngen]

A quick scan of r/personalfinance or r/legaladvice will show that people getting taken to OON (out of network) hospitals without their knowledge after an accident etc, then being landed with fucking massive bills is depressingly common.

Almost as common is cunt redditors telling those same people who were probably at death's door that they should have got an Uber to the hospital of their choosing if they wanted the hundreds of dollars a month they pay in insurance premiums to mean anything, and anything else is tantamount to communism.

America is a tremendously stupid country at times.