What I'm paying to find out I don't have breast cancer. I have insurance. (Ultrasound and mammogram in the USA)
Healthcare can't be left to the free market. Simply because the demand part of the market isn't free.
My country screens like 10% of total (mostly) boob-havers per year for free (the number would heve been higher if more ppl decided to get tested). So basically everyone is invited, with mobile test units (just big containers/trucks) roaming around the country for the elderly, or for a bit more remote villages, or just to spread awareness & make someone get screened out of convenience.
Since September my wife has had about ten CTs, three MRIs, two major surgeries (the last one 7 hours long), one emergency surgery, weeks of chemotherapy and radiation treatments and about 8 weeks hospitalised including some time in the ICU.
Total cost: $0
Unless you count the cost of parking when I visit her in hospital, in which case I’ve spent about $170 USD
This is in New Zealand with a publicly funded health system.
In Canada and something similar. My aunt got breast cancer and my mum has since been diagnosed with leukemia. Of all the stresses they have dealt with, money has never been one of the things.
It's absolutely cruel that we would do that to a human being in such a tough time. Why any nation would prioritize profit over someone's well being is beyond me.
That said, Canada isn't perfect either my son is diabetic and we still have a lot of profit inducing flaws. It's just when you compare them with "the greatest country in the world"... Well nothing really compares.
Edit - changed pancreatic cancer to leukemia. No idea why my brain wasn't working this morning. Point being fuck the BRCA2 mutation.
My wife's experience and costs were about the same for similar breast cancer treatment in Canada.
Our parking fees are a bit more expensive...
A cancer diagnosis and complications from chemotherapy. It’s been rough on her but she’s an absolute trooper.
First of all, I am glad you do not have breast cancer.
In the Netherlands...Every year or two a buss comes to our village where one can get tested for breast cancer.for free.
Close.
It is the Borstenbus, which translates to Breast Bus.
But it is all over the Netherlands, not only in Brabant. So it couldn't be called that.
Shame. Three legged alliterations are objectively superior.
On the bright side, I now know that the Dutch use the same word for breasts we Germans use for bristles.
Land of the fee.
In Sweden there is no cost for this whatsoever. Most things are free or have tiny bills. I'm not saying it to make you feel worse, just pointing out that America is bordering on not being a civilized country anymore.
As a bonus, we don't have any Musks here.
Land of the fee
Hhh. Nice.
just pointing out that America is bordering on not being a civilized country anymore.
Looking across Pacific Bathtub USSA seems to be shitshow in every aspect of life. Meanwhile about EU I mostly say "EU, I belive in you!"
As a bonus, we don't have any Musks here.
We do, but we call them Rogozins.
As a bonus, we don't have any Musks here.
Don't we? The "IF Metall" union would probably tell you otherwise
I mean, who are we talking about? I admit I don't follow news much but which Swedish guy is rich like Musk? I know we have wealthy bank families and so on of course, or Axfood etc.
I haven't followed it but it's hilarious to read about:
unions across Sweden banding together against the carmaker, blocking imports at ports and refusing to repair damaged Tesla chargers, among other actions.
Postal workers have stopped delivering mail to the company, including license plates. A local court of appeal also overturned Tesla's attempts to have license plates directly delivered from the Swedish Transport Agency.
unions in Norway, Denmark, and Finland have now said they're also ready to stop unloading cars from ships, according to the Financial Times.
Respectfully, punching down does nothing but make people who are suffering feel worse. Posting here about how much better you have it than us isn’t helpful. We already know how messed up it is here.
Yeah I know. It's just such a contrast between how the country markets itself VS reality. We have almost exclusively American and British TV here and it really is quite a shock when you see what the country actually is.
But if there is a world war, we will appriciate support from the US of course. One thing they are awesome at is armies and weapons.
One thing they are awesome at is armies and weapons.
You say that, but we couldn't defeat a bunch of horse-riding semi-nomads with Kalashnikovs after 20 years in Afghanistan.
No but the US has always been bad at guerilla warfare. Same in Vietnam. Whatever nomads the US are fighting at the time are using intelligence rather than raw military power, and it's the only way to fight a more powerful force.
Do you know that though? Because the internet is flooded by Americans defending their shitty system.
For those unaware how Health Insurance works in the states.
You can have health insurance all you want. Especially if this bill is recent, they will cover a large part of the cost, but most people are still on the hook for Usually between $1000-1500 of all healthcare before insurance REALLY kicks in. This is called the Deductible (and Out of Pocket) expense. You also pay a 'Premium', essentially a subscription cost that normally comes directly out of your paycheck.
For single coverage, just yourself, it's about $1200. For family coverage, where your insurance covers everyone in your house, It's usually double that. So ~$2,500-3,000.
So this person probably hasn't had any bills yet this year. Once they pay about $1500 in costs, everything after that becomes (mostly) free. Depending on what you have, insurance will pay anywhere from only 80% - 100% of the cost from whatever the procedures and meds are.
Then funny part is that some places in America the cost is so high, this might be a situation where their insurance DID kick in already and their insurance is still making them pay that much. Or it's a case where you get a bill for that much but your insurance hasn't paid it yet... so it looks like you're supposed to... so you do... then two months later you get a check for that amount.
It's so. Damn. Silly. And I resent Republicans every day for it. That's not even the Fascist MAGA Theocracy republicans. Just your stock standard ones lmfao.
Most
That could be true, but do you have a source for that? A significant portion of people are on Medicare/Medicaid, which usually doesn't have deductibles that high.
i can't give you a source for "most people," but personally my out-of-pocket is $6k for myself, $12k for my family. about the only thing covered before that number is met is yearly physicals. i pay about $500 a month for this (after my employer's contribution). dental separate, no vision.
I really don't understand why there is anyone against universal health insurance in the states.
Pretty much everyone is guaranteed to get major hospital bills at some point in their life. They are paying massive fees to insurance companies to line their pockets instead of hospitals to provide better service.
Sure, taxes will go up a bit to cover it, but what you'll pay in taxes over your lifetime is going to be no where near what you pay in insurance and healthcare procedures.
I pay $0 annually for insurance, and I can walk in to see my doctor at any moment to consult on something for $0, and if something needs to happen I can get blood work and X-rays for $0, then go to the hospital for surgery for $0 (maybe a $5 parking pass).
So if I had insurance like that and I actually had cancer I'd pay the first $2,000 and then literally all treatment after that would be free regardless of cost and then I just pay like the standard insurance price?
Presumably your insurance would then go up after that or does it only go up for other cancer related stuff?
well it depends.
for major surgeries, no. after you satisfy your deductible, you're likely to pay a co-insurance on your procedure.
co-insurance is the percentage you're personally responsible.
so lets say your procedure is billed by hospital for 50,000. and your co-insurance is 20%.
you would be paying 20% of the 48000, so 9600.
up to your "out of pocket maximum", which can be like 15000 to 30000 or whatever.
if you've already paid like 10k already this year then you would just be paying up to 5k for ur cancer treatment.
confusing? yes. fuck health insurance so much.
No the treatment would not be free, most plans will also only cover a certain percentage of the overall procedure so on top of your annual deductible which mine for example is 7,500, there's also certain procedures that are not covered at all and the rest of the procedures are at a 70-85% coverage, which is still better than them not covering anything I guess but still pretty dog shit for an insurance that you're paying over $100 a month that's tied to your employer
It's pretty confusing, but basically your insurance won't cover much until you meet your deductible for the year. After that, your coverage depends on the policies of your insurance company. Some stuff may be totally covered, some partially, some not at all. And there's really no way to know what costs what until you get it done.
This is the part that drives me bats. For any other service in any other industry you can get a quote first, but for some fucked up reason healthcare in America doesn't work that way. The hospitals and insurance companies just do whatever the fuck they want, and you get to find out afterwards if you could have afforded it, i.e. after it's too late. It's such bullshit.
Indeed, I hate it when people are like "you shouldn't pay that much, you need to shop around". Assuming you even have multiple hospitals to choose from, tell me you don't get "I don't know" 9/10 times when you ask about the cost of a procedure.
You should also hate Joe Lieberman. He scuttled a public option for the ACA, which likely would have prevented a lot of the shenanigans insurance companies pull, as they would be competed right the fuck out of business with a robust public option. Japan has private and public insurance and costs are generally low for health care. Most kids get it completely free
IDK about how Japanese insurance works, but of course they will want kids' healthcare free. If not then their already dropping population would drop even faster.
Those amounts you mention. The 1200-3000 dollar ones. Call me silly, but I have no clue if that’s monthly or annually. The whole situation there seems so alien. Healthcare, but also salaries and cost of living. (E.g., $45k/year is a pretty good salary here, while I think it is a junior-ish salary in the states, right? >$100k/year is rare as rocking horse shit here at least.)
Goddamn... as a fellow celiac sufferer, I'm very sorry to hear that. If the blood tests are pretty conclusive, you can probably assume it's celiac without the colonoscopy. The downside is that if you start a gluten-free diet now and decide to get a colonoscopy later, it might now show anything since you're off the gluten. Best of luck!
Oh I've had the diagnosis for a few years, and I've totally adhered to the dietary restrictions I was given. If I so much as question whether cross contamination may have taken place, I don't eat the food.
I'm pretty well stable now and no longer shitting myself. But I know I'm at greater risk of things like colon cancer, which is something that my family has a history of.
My insurance would "cover" it in that it would go towards my deductible, but that's still thousands of dollars, and we had to buy a furnace this year because ours died. I'm thinking about going and having it done in Mexico. I have in-laws there.
Edit: They did more than just blood tests. I'm not going to post all my lab results here obviously, but I can tell you I took shit samples there more than once, and amid all these tests all I could think about was the cost.
My wife has a chronic illness with expensive drugs.
Healthcare is around 35% of our families gross income when you include in the cost my employer pays, what I pay, plus deductable and copays.
I avoid going to the Dr as much as possible because I have a separate deductible. If I went for everything I should it would be closer to 40% of our gross income.
That country is fucked up. You people really have to come together and demand universal healthcare, as impossible as that sounds.
Obama improved a lot through Obamacare, but it's really hard to get a good system in the USA as a lot of people are strongly against free and universal health care, even though it'd likely decrease the amount they have to pay for their own health care too. I really don't understand it.
Oh, it's very easy to understand. They're worried their tax dollars might help someone who "doesn't deserve it", so they'd rather not help anyone.
I broadly agree with that, it’s better from the former system in the way that walking on glass is better than being on fire.
As with a large portion of our fucked up politics, the answer for why people are like this here IMO goes back to conservative talk radio post-Fairness Doctrine. For people who haven’t lived in the rural US, especially before satellite radio, I can’t emphasize enough how much the massive amounts of extreme conservative talk radio shows impact the stuff you hear every day. When the majority of Americans never travel abroad to see otherwise it’s easy to just accept the conservative propaganda that you half listen to for hours a day, every day, for decades.
Out of curiosity, why are they doing a colonoscopy rather than a gastroscopy for Coeliac confirmation? The disease affects only the small intestine, and so an upper small intestinal biopsy is sufficient and doesn’t require uncomfortable fasting/dietary practice before the procedure, and is a cheaper, quicker and safer procedure.
My confirmation was blood test and then gastroscopy - after the biopsy it was confirmed.
They did some labs and gave me my diagnosis. The way it was explained to me was that they wanted the colonoscopy to check for things like scarring and so forth.
To be clear, I'm not a medical professional, so my attempting to answer "Why would they..." is pretty fruitless. I have no idea; that's why I was seeing my doctor lol
Ahh okay, so it’s not confirmatory for the diagnosis but rather assessing the impact of living with Coeliac? That makes sense. I’m having a full endoscopy/colonoscopy later this year for a similar purpose. Fingers crossed everything comes up clear for you mate!
Honestly I could be remembering wrong. This was 2020 and 2021, and I haven't been back to the clinic since December 2021 when they charged me $200 out of pocket for just an office visit. My whole point posting that comment isn't that I have celiac, but rather that I can't afford this shit.
Yeah after 7 years it falls off your credit report.
On top of that, most major credit bureaus don’t even calculate small medical debts(less than 1k I think) under $500 against your credit score.
I mean don’t quote me on this, verify.
OK so I got home and did a quick google to fact check myself, here is the article regarding the subject from experian: https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/can-medical-bills-affect-credit-report/
Notably it falls off your credit report 7 years after the delinquency date- meaning whenever it was originally due, not when it was sent to the credit agencies and not when it went to collections.
From transunnion: https://www.transunion.com/blog/credit-advice/how-long-do-collections-stay-on-your-credit-report
Medical collection debt with an initial reported balance under $500 and paid medical collection debt no longer appears on credit reports.
I wish I would have known this when I thought my life was over after having appendicitis the one year of my life I couldn't afford insurance. Thanks for letting me know. I'll keep it in mind.
I've got to say there's no way my debt would ever be less than $1k though. I'm pretty sure my deductible is $5k, but I've also given up on the whole credit score thing. I always get emails that it's dropped or whatever, and I'm just numb to it at this point it's just background noise
I edited my reply above with some sources.
The credit score system is bullshit, but it can be played. I opened like 13 credit accounts in my early 20s and keep them rotated, because of that my total line of credit is ridiculous. I don't use it all very much, but on paper it makes my credit utilization look like 1-2% of my total limit, which raises my score significantly.
the idea of a revolution is dead. there's no way people are going to keep their digital limb aside for a moment to think that they are getting scammed by corporations everyday.
we're frogs in the boiling water
The "frogs in water slowly brought to a boil" meme is totally false. The frogs jump out when the water gets too hot for them, which is long before it's boiling. Just saying ;)
All I can say is that there was once some site where I had great difficulty finding a valid username that wasn't already taken, and this name worked.
Oh, but we have the best healthcare system in the world (which is why I'm thousands in medical debt despite having good insurance with no sign of a diagnosis or treatment) and you have super long wait times in other countries (which is why I had to wait almost a year to get a new neurologist when my old one retired).
But hey, we keep the health insurance industry making money for its shareholders, so there's that.
My wife and I have 'the best insurance in the city" we've been told by practitioners. Standard bloodwork costs me several hundred dollars.
Honestly do not mean this as a troll, but each and every one of us should call our house representative and let them know that we would appreciate more assistance from them when it comes to how much we have to pay for our out of cost expenses.
https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Just stating our displeasure with the current costs here on Lemmy doesn't help resolve anything.
Sadly, this is my representative.
The good news is he isn't seeking re-election.
FYI, that double link as one link isn't working right for me.
It throws up a harsh pop up with a close button that doesn't actually work when you try to close it, and the formatting was all off.
I had to strip off the http one, and keep just the https one.
I’m not sure why it didn’t work, but 12ft.io is used to beat paywalls.
Yeah I looked it up, so saw it was legit/its purpose.
For what it's worth it I was using DuckDuckGo browser on Android.
I had shitty insurance when I worked for a major retailer, and I had to go to the ER.
My copay was $300 plus 40% of the bill.
Turned out uninsured people making under $100,000 a year got a 90% discount at that hospital, so it was actually more than 4x the cost because I was insured.
I've shared enough specifics about my various careers on here that saying exactly who I worked for at different periods of my life can really narrow down my identity.
Might be cheaper to buy the equipment at that point.
But seriously: That is not at all what the insurance pays. Prices are ridiculously inflated to give ridiculous discounts to greedy companies. Patients and Doctors get the short end of the stick.
The insurance didn't pay anything at all.
They negotiated the rate down massively, and then required me to pay 40% of the sticker price, so they get away paying nothing despite getting 500 a month in premiums between me and my employer.
I've got to be honest, as a fellow American with chronic health problems, that seems dirt cheap for a diagnosis.
Don't disagree, but it's not a bad price if you're an American stuck with our shitty, exploitative system.
The problem is that Americans pay both taxes and these outrageous rates for medical. People throw around the oh it's just in your taxes as if Americans don't also pay taxes. Ours just get wasted on useless fucking defense contracts
That's why it's cheaper though, and why you also don't go broke if you're poor and have health issues.
Per capita, American spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, and that's including all the people that leave things untreated because they can't afford treatment. It's not more expensive because the care is necessarily better than other countries; it's more expensive mostly because of a lot of overheads in the US system. Paying for basic health care as part of taxes usually also means that it's a single-payer system, meaning the government negotiates pricing for the entire country, rather than having lots of insurance companies that each do that separately (usually including a healthy profit margin for themselves). That's one reason why medicines are so much cheaper in other countries.
Americans pay more in taxes towards healthcare than any other country, and then pay for private healthcare on top of that.
I pay less taxes than the average American, therefore my healthcare is free for me in comparison. I also don't pay for private insurance either.
Ex wife was denied a mammogram due to having too many, according to her insurance company. Cancer runs in her family and doctors have discovered lumps they want to keep an eye on.
Mom died of breast cancer. On my bd last month.
She felt a lump, didn't get it checked, figured it was a bit of fake titty that broke loose. Would have cost too much to get looked at.
Found she had breast cancer. Her chemo stent got infected, wanted to wait until Monday to have it seen. Would have cost too much.
Husband drove her 2-hours through 14° weather, snow and mountains and all, to the ER. Dead within 24 hours.
But hey! Another dead conservative Boomer! Win?
There's absolutely no win there. I have a similar experience just before COVID, and the only saving grace was all his treatment - and the cost when he chose plan B - were both readily available and both cost-free.
It's unmitigated cruelty that you need to grieve while dealing with that healthcare system; and second-guess with the what-if thoughts as well.
We tell the stories of the people we lost in COVID, and it helps to laugh together, and I hope you have a similar outlet to make room for some peace eventually.
Human to human: I am so, so sorry for your loss and hope you are able to accept it and eventually still live your life to its fullest. I imagine that's what she would have wanted. Nothing else I say should diminish that.
[She] didn't get it checked, figured it was a bit of fake titty that broke loose.
What does this mean!? I don't have breasts, so I have no personal experience but is it common for parts of them to break loose??
Another dead conservative Boomer! Win?
I'm sure you're hurting, but this is a lot of projection. Did anyone actually say this (either online or in-person)!? If so, they are a bad person, no matter their political affiliation or beliefs and you should stay away from them...
I'm assuming she had breast implants and she thought one of them ruptured. It happens and isn't life threatening.
I'm sorry that it wasn't the case though.
Congrats tho. Just lost a friend to breast cancer that was suspected years ago but not confirmed until december. Seriously, congrats.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but shit like this is what prevents people from taking preventative measures.
Can confirm. Had my mammogram last month and they recommended an ultrasound because my breast tissue is dense. I've had it once before with no problems, but my husband's company switched insurance providers and it kicked in January 1, so now the lab where I normally go isn't in-network and every lab that is in their network wants to charge me hundreds of dollars. This is with good insurance. (My husband always picks the most expensive insurance package because we're getting older.)
Money is a little tight right now because I'm in between jobs, so at this point I've given up. I'll look into it again when I'm employed again but it's just not affordable at the moment.
Its purposeful. It's done this way so that there are legal ways of justifying the death of millions per year as they are deemed unprofitable.
I think this is one those situations where "I did all that for nothing" is way better outcome
Sometimes it feels like you should get something for all that money. Like maybe just a little bit cancer, to make the tests feel worth it.
This is sarcasm, obviously.
I'm having a tooth extraction at an oral surgeon later this month and I just found out I'm paying $450 for it. If there's a complication it'll be $1100. I also have insurance.
I'm so used to it, I was expecting more. "that's it?" - i thought to myself, in this boring dystopia.