I lost somewhere between $4,000 - $7,800 in a single week. · 5:08pm Oct 19th, 2020
In other words: The American health care system is fundamentally evil.
I really do try to see good things in contrary points of view sometimes. I'm willing to admit why an argument I've made in favor of or against something has been wrong, and a fair amount of my friends can testify that I've (reluctantly) conceded when I've screwed up and need to consider a different point of view and/or apologize.
But I'm not conceding this one. Privatized health care is, in practice, exploitative to a degree that crosses over from callous and into actively malicious. Institutions who regularly exchange amounts of money that I'd never be able to imagine doing anything with in my lifetime routinely collaborate in-house or between-houses to extract the maximum possible amount of money from sick and desperate people who genuinely believe that doctors are supposed to heal people. That might be the case in countries whose medical systems are actually interested in treating other people, but in the United States medical institutions are really just megacorporations flying under different flags who incidentally happen to be in businesses people associate with getting better.
You're being had. I've been had. I've been had for a while, actually, because while I've known that the American medical industry was awful, I've never actually been hit with it quite this badly before.
In Equestria? Discredited. In America? Probably could make enough to retire in a month if they had the right credentials.
But this is obviously my fault, right? After all, it's not like they took this money right from my hands while laughing in ways that would make Nightmare Moon envious. Naww - I made the calls in the first place to give up that sort of money. Let's look at the two biggest mistakes I've made in god only knows how long.
PART 1: The MRI ($2,000.)
To paraphrase a doctor's discussion with me over the phone, while I was trying to get an unrelated issue remotely looked into (and which they did jack shit about, story for a different day):
Medical Professional: "We notice that you haven't come in for an MRI in five years. You're supposed to have one every six months."
Stupid Horse: "Last time I went, I wasn't meeting the poverty line on income and you still charged me a little over $300 for it."
MP: "Yeah, but it says here you have gold-level insurance. Insurance will help cover for it."
SH: "I got the gold insurance because, given my pre-existing medical conditions, it was cheaper than any of the plans I was using before. It's still $60/month more expensive than what I had last year and roughly $100/month more than it was three years ago. I didn't get it because I wanted to be spending money on stuff like this."
MP: "But look at the coverage you're getting! Plus, the MRI clinic is in-house."
SH: "I don't know..."
MP: "Well, if you've been worrying about any signs of possible increases in brain damage, let us know.";
SH: "..."
For people who don't yet know: I'm an epileptic.
This isn't anything new. I started having seizures late in my life, when I was 21. It runs on my dad's side of the family, skipping generations; my grandfather had it, but normally symptoms start showing up during childhood, so the family sort of assumed that I got lucky and never bothered to tell me about it. My sisters never got it. While there are many different types of epilepsy, this is the classic one: blacking out completely while muscles contract madly, unable to do anything but convulse until the lack of oxygen caused by not being able to breathe causes me to pass out. I've had a few seizures in my life: before I started taking the right sort of medication for it, and (much more infrequently) afterward. I don't have a problem with the meds I'm currently on, since they've helped a lot and the meds I tried before it had unsustainable side effects.
That doesn't make it happily ever after. Dependency on my new medication aside, the first few seizures I had were so bad that I've had some thinking problems ever since. My memory, post-seizures, is kind of ass: Occasionally, I'll forget what I was talking about in the middle of talking about it, and need prompting to remind myself of what I was going to say to complete a sentence. Often, I'll forget things that I did days before, and try to repeat conversations or deal with day-to-day problems that I had already said or dealt with. Sometimes I zone out for indeterminately long periods of time; sometimes (if people prod me back to reality,) I only lose a few seconds of my life, and sometimes I lose multiple hours and completely forget what I was supposed to be doing when my brain wakes up again. Sometimes (though it was a lot worse when I was just starting out on the meds,) I'll have problems saying things entirely, like my brain isn't connected to my mouth, and I'll struggle to utter even short, simple words.
The first MRI said this all "wasn't a problem worth looking into more now, but we should monitor the condition just in case." Then they hit my broke ass with the fine without fixing anything or promising any sort of solution.
But when these problems persist years and years later, and start to feel worse over time, the question over whether this might be necessary again comes up. In particular, memory and zone-out issues have become more of a problem over the past year. The doctor's implications that my brain might still be a problem weren't totally off-base: they were just said for self-serving purposes.
But me? I was a fucking idiot. I though, man, something might really be getting bad there now and I might actually need to get it looked at after all. I checked my insurance plan one more time to see if they would cover it, and it said yes, yes, this was the sort of thing it would cover, especially for in-house procedures.
And I didn't call and find out exactly how much they meant. Or, for that matter, how much the in-house scanner was planning to charge themselves for.
Now, I'm aware that medical equipment is expensive. I'm aware that it needs to be precise, reliable and exacting in measurements. I know building an MRI machine wasn't cheap, even before the selling price markup.
But charging six thousand dollars for less than an hour of their time? I fucking refuse to believe that they needed even a fraction of that amount to recoup the cost.
And my insurance company was so nice, they decided to work more closely with the MRI technicians than they would have out-of-house to make sure that the "savings" would go right to me. Awfully nice of them to only charging me $2,000 to help compensate for the cost.
Yeah, I'm really feeling those savings
Good on you and your steadily increasing profit margins for saving me so much money
I'm fully aware that the company makes enough money per year to make this chump look destitute.
So, yeah. That was already a sucking chest wound to my savings account, enough so that I was genuinely hysterical after having the news broken to me. It was, after rent and other mandatory living expenses, something I can't really afford on an unstable job footing and the sort of income bracket that gets me reduced-cost housing. A cursory check of my banking account confirmed that, while I don't technically need that much money right now, it wasn't by any means a trivial amount of money.
So I could probably try to survive. So long as no other astronomically high medical bil-
PART 2: The ER trip ($2,000-5,800.)
-FUCK!
FUCK!
"It's probably just an anxiety attack," the last technician I saw said to me before I checked out. "You should talk with your doctor about it, but otherwise we can't tell if anything's wrong with you."
"Thank you," I replied.
What I should have responded with: "So you're going to bill accordingly, right?"
Fun fact: ER visits are also, theoretically, covered by my insurance. That's why I haven't put down a solid figure on what I actually owe: If the figure are what I think they are after going through the fine print on what specifically is covered in an ER visit by my insurance company, then the least I'll have to pay is another $2,000. It could be that they decide to cover less. It could be that they decide to cover nothing at all, at which point the whole $5,800 is put on my shoulders.
Because the eventual conclusion of all this was that I had an anxiety attack.
Do I have a history of anxiety attacks? One, back in college, which felt manageable enough after it was said and done that I didn't feel the need to go into college health services for it. That was it.
What I was feeling at the moment I called 911?
Well, I could barely breathe. Actually, breathing was a 50/50 sort of thing: I'd routinely get close to ten seconds without being able to actually get air into my body. I nearly blacked out on three separate occasions while trying to calm myself down, trying to tell myself that it wasn't anything serious.
But did I know it probably wasn't anything serious? Hell no. I live alone, with an unstable batch of organs squished together in my body and a brain that refuses to cooperate sometimes. But this wasn't anything like a seizure - normally those hit hard and fast enough that my mind cuts to black before I really realize what's going on. This is long stretches of me trying desperately to get oxygen in my lungs, struggling to stand up and stagger outside so i could meet with an emergency crew. This is me not having a clue what the hell was going on, other than that my body was not cooperating and I didn't understand why and I legitimately felt like I could die in the next few minutes for reasons I didn't understand at all.
Because this "anxiety attack?" Wasn't triggered by any environmental stressor. No major shock to my system. Nothing big on the news. No event that could account for it. It's just one morning, I found it hard to breathe. Then it got harder, then it got harder, and then I couldn't breathe at all.
By the time I actually got into someplace where they were examining me, my heart rate was going far, far higher than it had ever climbed in my entire life. I was, at my best, barely lucid. And I still alternated between breathing "barely" and "actually, no, not breathing." I have no idea what they stuck me with, but what they stuck me with and squirted into my veins made me lose my last gasp on the world around me, and by the time I was aware of my surroundings I had no idea what had happened, what time it was or what was going to happen to me next.
Apparently, they gave me stuff for my muscles to relax. Lots and lots of the stuff. It helped. It didn't make it go entirely away, not then, not now, but it helped. Then they talked to me for what felt like the shortest permissible time, gave me a discharge summary and shooed me out the door. Anxiety attack is the conclusion. Further treatment: Talk to a doctor tomorrow via webchat, see about getting remote therapy sessions set up, possibly look into medication.
I keep having days where breathing feels difficult. It usually lasts for hours. Sometimes, trying to practice breathing exercises helps, and sometimes it doesn't.
Nothing in there about the cost. In fact, I didn't realize how little my insurance was likely to cover until I called the clinic's billing department this morning, asked them to go over some files, provided a bunch of information and received a verdict.
And only then did it sink in how much shit I was actually in.
I know that there are people who are going to say this is entirely my fault.
"You didn't need to go in for an MRI. That's a luxury."
"You didn't need to call ER. That's a luxury."
"You're bad at managing money."
"You make america look bad."
>Implying that america can look any worse than it already is
>Implying that america can be much worse than it already is.
But the fact of the matter was, I was a fool. I trusted advice that promised that it would help me, and it didn't. I trusted an institution that promised it would help me get through this, and it didn't. I trusted that my problems, problems I still feel and still worry about, are problems that could, or would, be treated. Or, at least, that they'd at least try to make some sort of effort.
And that's the story of how I got scammed out of thousands of dollars. That's the story of how I did things in the name of trying to fix problems with my body and how I was punished for having the audacity to think that my problems were things that licensed professionals, whose job is ostensibly to care about this sort of thing, would give a shit.
If I emigrate, I won't be selfish enough to deny that money is a very real reason why. I've learned valuable lessons about how expensive it is to live in america if something's actually wrong with your body. And I've learned valuable lessons about what's affordable and what isn't. Getting sick isn't affordable, especially if you're predisposed towards getting sick.
As of now, all I can do is wait to see how much of the ER bill is going to settle on my shoulders. While I'm doing that, I'm going to apply for financial assistance. Which, of course, is going to be handled by an institution connected both to the clinics and the insurance companies I attached myself to. Quite honestly, I'm expecting to have to wait for two months after submitting all the relevant documentation before being told "I'm sorry, while almost everything fits under our assistance guidelines, there are two technicalities and as a result we can't help you with anything. But hey we have a monthly payment plan if you don't mind interest."
I don't know what to do about this. I might have to beg for money. Maybe I can manage this on my own; maybe I can't. If nothing else, I guess I know to never engage in any sort of enterprise with the medical system ever again, because it'll hurt me far worse than my health problems could.
To anyone taking the time to read this: Thank you. If you see me asking for donations at some point in the future, well, you know why.
And to anyone who legitimately believes that privatized healthcare is superior to the alternatives:
Fuck you.
No, seriously, go fuck yourself. If you're a friend, maybe I'll try to hide my disgust at that point of view. But if you're just a casual acquaintance or some schmuck who's reading this post for giggles: I can't wait for the day your beloved medical system funnels thousands of dollars out of you because you had the audacity to seek help, regardless if it's for a heart attack or a broken bone.
I'd say you deserve it for lauding that point of view, but honestly nobody deserves to live in a country that treats its citizens like this.
Except, perhaps, for the cunts running this fraudulent circus.
I'm sorry you had to go through that Petri, and that it's costing you even more stress and heartache after the fact. If you do need help, I'll offer as much as I can.
The ongoing saga of Estee's mother would have disillusioned me on the American health care system if my sister's earlier experiences hadn't already done so. (Long story there.) Sorry they got you coming and going.
I'm sorry for your suffering, both physical and financial. Nobody should have to fear becoming broke due to medical bills. :/
America is the greatest country in the world!*
* If you're rich.**
** And also white.***
***And also don't have an "abnormal" sexual or gender identity.****
****And, y'know, if you can blissfully ignore how your lifestyle is only possible through what amounts to economic and ecological genocide of underprivileged people both at home and abroad.*****
*****Until we decide suddenly and arbitrarily to add another category that you don't fit in which necessitates your destruction.
EDIT: >inb4 a chud yells, "If you don't like it, then leave!", because LMAO we literally can't thanks to how badly the chuds fucked up our coronavirus response and, by all accounts, will continue fucking it up until they're/we're all dead.
And those people can all go right to hell! :)
Medical billing fraud is sadly a very real thing, and I suspect you may be a victim.
MRIs are horrifically expensive (a new MRI machine costs $2-3M to install, plus about $5M on cost of maintenance over the 11 year lifespan of the machine), but even on a modern MRI machine, that MRI should have cost you no more than $2,500-3,500 (unless they put you on a 7-tesla machine, which I really, really doubt they did). The average for a MRI brain scan is about $860 - $1,300, depending on what exactly they're doing.
$6k between the insurance payment and your own copayment is beyond extreme and I suspect you're being taken for a ride. $2k out of pocket is about twice the average total cost of a MRI brain scan.
The same applies to the ER bill; the average ER bill is $1,300. Being charged $5,200 is about four times the average, and you didn't require particularly expensive care.
My advice would be to fight this. Those prices aren't normal, I suspect you're being defrauded.
Ugh, this all sounds so awful, Petri. Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help (besides offering my support from afar.)
5381724
And yet here you are, listening to me.
I'm so sorry, Petri. I really wish there was some way I could help you out. I do think it's worth trying to fight this as hard as you can, just because...well, fuck.