America is a dystopia. It's perfectly capitalist.

Mono swelled my throat shut a while ago. Urgent care sent me to the ER. ER looked at my throat, said they can't help Mono. It cost $780 and 6 hours to find out they can't help me.

Taxes pay more for healthcare per person in the US than the NHS. So taxpayers pay enough taxes for healthcare to get free healthcare, but then they have to pay a premium per month to get healthcare, but then they have to pay for more than the service cost in copays to pay for healthcare.

It is insane how americans are paying for triple or more for healthcare and getting none,

Where the hell are you getting $75 urgent care visits? And $20 doctor visits? I have a high deductible plan and these are like $150 for a doctor and $250 for urgent care.

My wife had a cyst drained and it cost us over $1,000 between 3 visits and them draining it once. Draining it was $600.

That is FAR too much for monthly insurance, you might want to shop around on marketplace instead of going private

Pretty sure the advice here is to just go anonymously suicide by cop. When you do that in GTA you wake up fully healed outside the hospital. Must work IRL too

Hell yeah, double emergency

True but that won't be me, I've had plenty of experience with medical emergencies and know how to handle myself.

See that's how they track you

Theoretically this is possible to do if you've avoided any documentation your entire life, or more likely, the hospital staff just dont care enough and forget to find out who you really are before letting you leave.

But realistically the hospital is going to have the cops come in and do a background check on you before even letting you get further care after lifesaving measures. And if you dont give up your information then your most likely getting ICE called on your ass...

It's not really about DNA. Deliberately using a false name to escape money owed? In any other context, no one would consider that anything other than fraud. It's only understandable here because of the unique dysfunction of our medical system. But unfortunately, legally speaking, it's no different than any other fraud. Obtaining a good or service with no intention of paying for it is legally simply theft or fraud. It's no different than if you dine and dash at a restaurant. The hospital can absolutely report you to the police in that case. And it's not like the cops are inexperienced with tracking people down of unknown identity. The hospital will have a lot of details about you - your gender, height, weight, age, ethnicity, etc. And your medical treatment may leave behind identifying marks or scars, your blood type, etc. that could make you easily identifiable once caught. And above all else, they'll have video of you in the hospital.

Even if you were a complete unknown in the system, the police could easily track you down. They catch people who rob gas stations with far less info than what you give to a hospital, even using a pseudonym.

Now, if you were actually charged with fraud or theft, a judge would likely go easy on your for this type of crime. Juries would be very sympathetic to someone who did this. So you would probably avoid jail time. But at the very least the court would still order you to pay the hospital what you owe them.

Don’t worry, we’re painfully aware.

Yeah for real, the hospital gave no shits until the phrase “insurance fraud” came up and suddenly everyone was super nice and accommodating 😮‍💨

This was a for profit religious hospital known for their poor ER performance but it was the closest one and I was throwing up from pain in my mom’s backseat so we figured how bad could it be.

Dam, I'm sorry you went through that. That's horrible

Stabilize for anyone unfamiliar is

Probably not going to die in the next 24 hours from easily identifiable injuries.

Because then they can become liable.

You can be very unhealthy with multiple broken bones, cancer, be dying softly and still be "stable".

They will not do jack shit to straighten a broken bone. They make you sit in triage until you give up and leave or escort you out by security if you raise a stink.

Sat in triage for 38 hours before with a broken leg.

Yeah, though it's not confined to just the NHS given some of the recent rhetoric I've been seeing. Obviously the transphobia is bad but it's potentially marginally better than also being bankrupted by it. Not trying to step on the very real issue of the transphobia here though. Sucks that we don't really have any good parties to be voting for right now...

100%. I'll never ever step foot in that hospital again.

They denied me phone calls to my family for over 24hrs so they were worried and looking for me.

I'll never forget the slap in the face when I got out and they billed me 50$ for a grilled cheese sandwich and saltines.

Yes this is absolutely an American thing, if you can avoid it at the least don't take the ambulance unless you want a $5000 bill

Help. The insurance company is inside the house.

Oh, hello, yes you are probably a real human then! Nice to meet you!

I've upvoted you despite of the *fuck you * sentence. I must recognize you have a point, and understand the anger.

The USA are a total dystopia.

My brother in Christ, are you assuming the hospital (and the pharmacy) isn’t also owned by the insurance company?

In most places they aren't, and tbh its not always a bad thing when they are. The kaiser permanente model actually leads to better outcomes than in most hospital networks because it actually incentivizes preventative care.

Mine is not. UCLA exists for the benefit of UCLA, but fortunately that includes providing excellent medical care in order to keep their reputation as an outstanding teaching hospital.

It's not. UCLA exists for the benefit of UCLA, but fortunately that includes providing excellent medical care in order to keep their reputation as an outstanding teaching hospital.