seriously though, this is crappy no matter how you cut it.
www.seattletimes.com

apparently this is happening in a number of states.

Oops! Looks like the legislature forgot to prevent insurance companies from making dick moves.



*******s. Go DIAF

Maybe we should legislate at them more. Do it harder, I mean. SO hard.

Predictable.

Also, my rates went up. I get the things from the insurance company, and I see how much the doctor bills them, and I see how much the insurance actually pays them, and if I could get away with paying the doctor just what the insurance pays them + my copay, I could pay for all of it with just my monthly premium. But no. The doctor would charge ME four times as much. Obviously it doesn't cost them that much. They agreed on much less from the insurance company! Someone in this relationship is being scammed, and it's either me or the doctor. I'm thinking both.

I had to get minor stitches on my finger last year. It cost $945 just to check into the emergency room.. That's over twice what it cost to do the actual stitches, which was around $450.

There's crazyness all throughout the system. I've been doing a lot of work relating to reporting and tracking of pharmacy costs for a major healthcare company lately. The prices they pay for the drugs they buy from their suppliers is just mind blowing.

I sprained my ankle pretty badly a couple of years ago. I ended up having to go to the emergency room. It cost me a grand for them to tell me that I had a sprain and send me out on some cheap wooden crutches.

Meanwhile for that same visit, I would have paid my insurance company $60 that month, my employer payed them $300, I paid the hospital $25, the hospital billed the insurance $1600 and my insurance paid them $400.

This practice of over-bill and under-pay is the only way the hospitals get paid. They negotiate with the insurance companies over the price of services, and they have to accept what the big insurers will pay or they will lose patients. To make up the difference, the hospital has to charge the uninsured terrible rates. Maybe instead of forcing everyone to get insurance, we should fix the system so insurance isn't necessary to make these sorts of things affordable.

Yeah, it seems very much an artificial industry.

$450 for ****ING STICHES?!

How much does if cost if you break your ****ing leg?

I dunno but I broke my wrist and needed surgery. It cost over $12,000 just for the surgery, let alone other treatment.

Remind me to never get injured in your country.

40$ per hour for the nurse who will be doing the stitching (doctors generally dont waste their time on this).
www.choosenursing.com

10$ for the sutures AND needle.

http://safetycentral.com/medicalsutures.html

dont know how much the anesthetic costs...
so far though this is not adding up.

At the time I was tackling with my student insurance in order to get it covered, so I removed the stitches myself. That probably would have been another 80 dollars.

Aetna's student insurance is a joke. They try very hard to rob you of any and all services. It took me many months to clear up the mess with the cut on my finger. I was out over $1300 for about four months. They won't pay for prescriptions like antibiotics up front... you have to pay out of pocket and file a claim form to get your money back. So what if I needed any reasonably expensive medication, i.e. something that costs several hundred dollars just for one refill? I'd have to pay out of pocket, which as a student is sometimes not possible.

Anesthetic is not cheap, malpractice insurance isn't cheap, sterile tools aren't cheap (even bandages), etc. And then of course you have profit.

I've been fortunate - I was on my parent's insurance until I was 21, then I got free healthcare (for minor things) from the school medical center (state school), then, immediately upon graduation, I got a job with great benefits. I've only been to see the doctor twice in all those years, though. Once for a cut on my hand, and once for ze schweine flu.

Suddenly I have a whole new respect for our communist health care.

Of course I mostly go to private doctors anyhow but even then I don't have to pay $450 for stitches. 40 € perhaps.

And 2000€ to fix my teeth but what the hey

Well when your school/job gives you a crummy health care it costs you more out of pocket, as Emon said. I have pretty good insurance now and I probably wouldn't have to pay jack for a half dozen stitches, my premium is cheap as hell not being married or having any kids. The difference is my employer picks up the bill not my taxes, that's the way it should be.

No, you still pick up the bill. Your employer doesn't give you health care for free. It's coming out of your salary.

Yes correct, actually all employees pitch in, company probably throws all the money into an account and makes interest on it. If I had a $1200 doctor visit it would take my premium alone almost 2 years to pay off by itself, but there is no obligation to that.

Even with decent health insurance I still had to pay ~1,000 dollars out of pocket for an emergency room visit due to 104 fever and full body rash after an allergic reaction to some antibiotics I was taking at the time.

I don't think that was decent insurance.

The full bill for the emergency room visit, blood work, 3-4 doctors visiting, etc was 5-6,000. The $1,000 was what I ended up paying after my insurance took care of their end. But yea I'm sure my plan isn't the greatest.

We pretty much pay the full price that our insurance company negotiates with the doctor, unless it's some ridiculous ungodly amount that we can't pay. I don't know what the rate is on it, but it's pretty low. We have a savings account for healthcare costs. This is good.

my health insurance is only partly coming out of my salary, the rest is picked up by my employer with money i would NOT have otherwise been paid.

How do you know they wouldn't pay you more if they didn't have to cover part of everyone's health insurance?

lol because our company only has 3 employees and they decided several months after i started working there that they were able to offer medical bennifits. because the company is really streaching to be able to offer us these benifits, and because i believe my boss who i have been friends with 5 years prior to being employed when he told me medical benifits were not going to be in lieu of actual pay.

Fair enough.

If I recall correctly, the US government provides subsidies for small business' health insurance. So it's still coming from your taxes.

Most businesses, internally, use the phrase "salary package" when discussing the expense of hiring and maintaining an employee. Salary proper is only a portion of the expense (although it is typically the largest). It also includes health benefits, retirement packages, worker's comp. insurance, payroll taxes, and a few other expense that are incurred when an employee is hired. So, even though an employee's gross salary may be $40,000, their "salary package" can exceed $60,000. Many companies give the option of declining health benefits (if a spouse gets better/less expensive benefits, for example) in exchange for an increase in take-home pay, though usually the employer comes out ahead a few thousand dollars every year.