It’s also contemporary. There have been plans circulated (within the last 2 yrs) which propose allowing anyone to buy in to Medicare under the same conditions as seniors can. I probably should have remembered that everyone here is a Bernie bro and probably thinks of M4A as Bernie’s version (which actually changes Medicare for seniors too).
fyp
Yeah, I’m pretty sure if they get a steady dose, they can more or less go forever. I remember seeing something (long time ago, not sure if it still exists) about a program in Switzerland where the government just gave addicts some heroin (IIRC) to shoot up. They were on a certain quota, they would come to the facility, get clean supplies, get their dose, and go home. Many were able to live completely productive lives otherwise (held down good jobs, had families). There was no attempt to get break the addiction as all had tried and failed multiple times. So they just decided to give them the drugs as safely as possible. At at least based on this one report, it seemed to work.
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My girlfriend worked for an organization that facilitated something like this. One of their clients came in every morning, got his methodone and went to work at his job as a bank manager.
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When people post these anecdotes it seems like your first instinct is to question the OP, like they’re leaving out key details, and not painting the whole picture. Your incredulous rather than empathetic tone, especially given the state of US is healthcare, I find off putting. Maybe I’m reading it wrong. Carry on.
I’m skeptical. Sounds like socialism.
(Glad your kid got that dealt with. Clogged ears are surprisingly annoying.)
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https://twitter.com/sarahkliff/status/1356621359883902976?s=21
Hospital refuses to bill insurer so they can pursue the patient directly for 5x. USA #179.
Extremely normal country
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I have to stop reading this stuff before I have an aneurysm.
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Every time I see this thread bumped to the homepage I immediately get angry because I know I’m about to read some bullshit. Today’s bump didn’t fail.
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“If there is a patient that has viable coverage from multiple sources, it would be a reasonable position to seek payment from whoever is going to pay more,” said Joe Fifer, chief executive of the Healthcare Financial Management Association, a trade group of hospital financial officers.
Guillotines are the only solution to this.
Surely they must be able to get bipartisan support to reform this. But maybe not. Hospital lobby is strong. I don’t know if it needs to be done on a state by state basis or if the federal government can pass something that will fix it in all states.
I guess if I get in an accident, I ain’t settling until I see the bill. And I’m just going to assume that the hospital is coming after me, so if the bill is $X, I’m going to be pushing for $X + whatever I feel a fair settlement is.
I hope personal injury attorneys advise their clients of this shit when negotiating settlements. This is something that they ought to be highly aware of.
Another thing I thought I had heard of is sometimes the insurance company goes after the settlement. So, insurance company pays the hospital (which accepts the payment), and then the insurance company goes after the settlement money claiming that the person who caused the accident was at fault and they need to compensate the insurance company. I didn’t see that in the article, but I just skimmed it pretty quick. Obviously as far as the victim is concerned it’s the same fucking problem.
There’s no need to reform this specific thing right? The people in this story sued and won.
https://twitter.com/sarahkliff/status/1356621376271040518?s=20
“Judge, by letting us take more cash from the defended by not charging the defendant’s insurance you’d be fulfilling the purpose of that insurance, to teach people life lessons. Really makes you think judge”
Well, there was more than one story.
I suppose this if this specific thing happens to you in Indiana, then you’re maybe OK. And that’s a big fucking maybe.
To get what she was entitled to she had to wait four fucking years, hire an attorney, and go through litigation. Maybe the next person won’t have to go through as much.
Also it’s not entirely clear that you will be OK. It’s not inconceivable that an imaginative attorney can just come up with a different legal theory to place a lien on the settlement. Then the victim will have to choose between litigating that and maybe eventually getting what is due or accepting some lesser amount to avoid all of that.
I’m also not clear on whether the hospital can still appeal the ruling. It seems to have been made very recently.
Furthermore, according to the article, the ruling does not prevent the hospital from placing a lien. It simply says that it has to reduce the lien to the amount Medicaid will pay, but they can still do it. It should be clear how that can be exploited.
Let’s say you have a settlement for 10K and hospital bills for 6K of services, but medicare would only contractually pay 3K. According to the ruling (at least as NYT reported it), the hospital can still place a lien for 3K against the 10K settlement (pre-ruling they could have placed a lien for the 6K). Now, you might think, “Why would they do that if the can just get 3K from Medicaid?”. The answer is because they can use that 3K as leverage.
They place the lien against the settlement anyway. Then they tell the victim they will withdraw the lien for 1K. Victim will do it because at least they will get 9K of the 10K settlement, when the hospital could stick it to them and they would only get 7K (hospital can still do this). Hospital takes the 1K and then bills Medicaid for 3K.
Now there may be a problem with this strategy depending on the precise wording of the hospital’s contract with Medicaid. They would have to structure that 1K payment as something that was specifically not a payment for medical services. But once again, it wouldn’t surprise me if an clever attorney could figure a way to run this scam or something similar. And if the patient wants to try to fight all this bullshit, they can go through years of litigation to get what is due.
But we can even forget that and go even simpler. As I’m sure you are aware, Medicaid can take fucking forever to pay and often they won’t pay out what they are supposed to. It can take the hospital months or longer and multiple appeals to get Medicaid to pay what they are supposed to. What they can still do is place the lien against the settlement and leave it in place until Medicaid ultimately pays. That could delay the victims receipt of the settlement substantially. Some victims may just choose to pay off the hospital so they can at least get some money fast. This is not unlikely. as many accident victims may not be financially able to wait.
I know, TLDR.
Cliffs: Maybe OK, but very possibly not.
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With the appeals exhausted, the $898,000 bill landed. Bard could see right away that handling it the typical way, with a payment plan, was not going to work. If she chipped away at it at $100 a month, settling the obligation would take more than 748 years. “It would take so long I’d be dead,” Bard said.
Bard could see no way out. On Oct. 7, she posted a photograph of the $898,000 bill on Facebook. “When Dignity Health (the company I work for) screws you out of your daughter’s insurance…” she wrote.
A week later, ProPublica, which had been flagged to Bard’s case while reporting about health insurance excesses, contacted a Dignity media representative.
The next day, Bard got a call from the senior vice president of operations for Dignity Southern California, who apologized and said she’d heard about the situation from the organization’s media team and would help. Two days later, Dignity added Sadie to the plan, retroactive to her birth date. It would cover the bills.
Democratic states need to pass statutes with massive civil penalties for that crap.
Just SOP in USA #1
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Yea a friend sent me this and I thought it was the onion but not in USA #1