You know that for such situations hospitals have programs for low income people. Given that your student probably does not have his own house or a lot of money on savings, hospitals would wright many fees off.
My local hospital gives a 50% discount off of their usual and customary fees. Those are set at roughly 500% of Medicare allowable. So, those āaltruisticā discounts are typically like 50% off of a $10 Big Mac.
It depends. If a student gets 5k bill and has 0 dollars with no property and is in hospital (not able to work for a while, unemployed), they cannot demand payment plan or any payment. Patients need to fight it (provide documents with 0 income, last year tax return or absence of such due to lack of income), but it is possible to do.
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Thatās how it works for DH on his Advantage plan. I guess it varies from state to state, as we discussed at length in another thread.
@momsearcheng a hospital write off would no doubt have affected services. Many families we met were dealing with lawyers and legal battles over services including access to continued PT, OT and cognitive therapy- even with private insurance.
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I am too. I spent literally years fighting over 2 personal claims, and similar over a few patient claims. I knew I was right. And I persisted until they fixed all of them (and we are talking many thousands of dollars)
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I agree that without insurance services would be denied. But arenāt we have a law now that everyone should have some kind of insurance?
- You have to actively sign up for it in many cases.
- The government penalty for not having it is $0.
- In some states that did not expand Medicaid, one can have too much income for Medicaid but not enough for subsidized ACA.
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No that provision was never passed. Everyone does not have to have health insurance.
It varies by state, I saw a graph yesterday where I canāt remember.
The lowest state was Massachusetts with only 3% of residents that have no insurance, the high was Texas I believe with 16%. Michigan the state I reside in has 6%
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@momsearcheng insurance is not just provided . You have to sign up. In my state anyway there is no longer a penalty for not signing up.
We have Medicare A/B & BCBS PPO. We have āexcellent coverage.ā Our D has just the BCBS PPO. Itās still excellent and even allows her to go to any participating & preferred BCBS provider anywhere in US. We have mostly been able to resolve most of our differences with insurer with a minimum of fuss, for which I am grateful.
Iām sad and sorry that so many have to fight so hard for what should be no-brainer coverage.
Originally, I was told that no lung transplant medical centers were available on the West Coast that are participating and preferred & I believe the nearest was in AZ (where Iām not seeing any providers currently). When I called recently (now that Iām on Medicare as of 2 years ago when I turned 65), they said that UCSF (where I have one of my lung docs) IS participating and preferred for lung transplants, which is a comfort but Iām hoping I will never need it. I really didnāt want to have to start care at a new place for potential transplant.
It was passed but the Republicans overturned the mandate. Not meaning to be political since this isnāt that forum, but that is what the voting record shows.
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Thanks. I wasnāt sure of the particulars.
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I met numerous people during my cancer treatment who couldnāt afford care who were dependent on charitable contributions. One man I met was from Florida, Iām in the Philly area, and he was receiving lodging, transportation and assistance with medical costs.
The total cost of my care was over $350,000. Thankfully, we had no issues with our insurance except for a few newer medications, but the hospital was extremely helpful.
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One of the things that keeps the current system in place is that most people donāt have big problems with their insurance so they think it wonāt happen to them on their insurance. Many people have little problems that they finally get resolved or ignore so they figure itās just an occasional glitch. But the light that this murder has shone on UHC et al, is that itās not just a few people, itās a third of all claims! Itās not just small things, it can be life-changing. And it can happen to anyone, so if it hasnāt happened to you, you are just lucky, so far.
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I think may people donāt bother to fight about denials, especially when the amounts are small. When I have the time & energy, I fight for the principle because I donāt want insurers to mess over patients and it really irks me when they do. If they deny tons of people for ālittleā claims, it adds up because many donāt have the bandwidth and sometimes the skills to fight to get what theyāve paid for and entitled to.
Our system definitely needs to be fixed and improved. My Physical Therapist often speaks to me about her struggles to get reimbursed for her services.
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My daughter has had the same experience, she also works for a fortune 50 company with great healthcare insurance and benefits.
Other than the endoscopy this year, we never had problems either which is why I paid instead of fighting more.
But since we had to navigate the marketplace, I have much more awareness of what others go through.
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Yes, we will need to go through the marketplace next year and Iāve been overwhelmed researching.
You have to look at the summary of benefits and search for confirmation that the medication you take is covered. It was the 4th person I talked to who told me I needed to do that.
Itās been a journey. And had to read the fine print.
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Itās not easy, because it doesnāt work like youād expect a normal market to work. You can pay more and in some columns actually get worse benefits.
The first thing I did was to eliminate Exclusive Provider Networks (EPO). They are cheaper, but if you end up out of network, there will be zero coverage. Itāll be just like being uninsured. You can look in one of the comparison columns to see if it has out of network coverage. If the answer is noā¦run away.
Once down to just PPO, still verify that they have out of network coverage.
Lastly, some have drug coverage for an additional cost, but youāll get a negotiated price even without drug coverage. If you take just generics, you really donāt need it. I reviewed it with our local pharmacist and he said that our drugs would be the same price either way.
Good luck!
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