this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
88 points (92.3% liked)
Asklemmy
43958 readers
1002 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Health Insurance that covers next to nothing but costs a fortune anyway.
βοΈ recently got a covid test that based on all my research beforehand, it should have been covered except for $10 I would pay.
Jokes on me, it actually cost me $200 they charged to my credit card two weeks later. I didn't even get to know the price at the time I needed medical care.
Sometimes other countries make fun of America for things they don't understand. Not on this one, America deserves every bit of mocking it gets for it's medical coverage atrocity.
You can get free rapid covid test kits from the US government with a valid mailing address.
https://special.usps.com/testkits
A lateral flow test or something using a lab?
Must be a lab test as lateral flow is like Β£2:
https://www.boots.com/flowflex-antigen-rapid-test-lateral-flow-self-testing-kit-1-test-10312288
Or $7 in Walmart: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Flowflex-Covid-19-Antigen-Home-Test-1-Test/837992467?classType=VARIANT&athbdg=L1200
Nose swab into a piece of lab equipment about the size of a bread toaster. They put the swab into the thing right in front of me but I didn't note any further details about the equipment.
I went in for strep testing (which is what it ended up being). They advised covid test too due to local outbreak, I predicted that they might so had done some prep research and thought I could expect a much lower bill.
Lesson learned, avoid getting tested for covid π
It's a developing country. You will catch up.
Also we guys in western Europe are happy we are not ruled by Russia or China, and that's because of the USA I think.
I kind of like the US culture, but it's ridiculous how they treat human beings when money and power is on the line.
It isn't and we won't. The US is a post-developed country backsliding.
It's a joke... :)
Yeah, gallows humor!
Americans stupidity is another one that they get correct but thereβs plenty of things to laugh about America as there is to laugh about 3rd world countries.
I'm in the middle of trying to get a fairly expensive surgery.
If I had insurance, I would need to pay about $15,000 (between premiums, copays, annual deductible, coinsurance, and out of pocket maximums) with the only insurance available to me through my workplace before anything would be covered. So it's not really worthwhile, right? Well, the surgery I need--around here--gets quotes of as much as $89,000. The most recent quote that I have is around $18,000. Keep in mind that the surgery takes about an hour, is a surgeon, one OR nurse assisting, and an anesthesiologist. The fee for the surgeon and nurse is about $5000, and the facility takes about $10,000. In the case of surgery in a hospital--rather than an ambulatory surgical center (ACS0---it's even worse. With the same surgeon and OR nurse at an ACS, I had a quote of $16,300; at a hospital the quote was $49,000. The surgeon and nurse get the same fee regardless, which means that the hospital charged >$30,000.
...And good fucking luck getting a lot of places to give you prices at all, even though DHHS has mandated pricing transparency. Even if you know exactly what CPT billing codes are going to be used, it can be days of back and forth before you can get a price. If you need shit fixed NOW, you're just going to be stuck with whatever they charge.