A couple were told they faced a $200,000 (£146,500) medical bill when their baby was born prematurely in the US, despite them having travel insurance which covered her pregnancy.
A couple were told they faced a $200,000 (£146,500) medical bill when their baby was born prematurely in the US, despite them having travel insurance which covered her pregnancy.
Yes if you come here to Danmark from the US you will not be covered. But if you are from a country in the EU you will in most cases be covered and don’t have to pay anything for being hospitalized.
Even if you do have to pay something, the cost Ive seen people post in europe are in the hundreds/thousands, not hundreds of thousands like the US.
Maybe this couple woukd have gotten a $200/2000 bill in the EU for a birth? $200,000 is a purely US problem.
Yeah do people actually pay in that price range for health care in the US? If so then thats absolutely bonkers
It’s complicated, because it’s American healthcare.
The hospital charges $200k. The insurance agrees to pay a negotiated discounted rate of $100k. $75k goes to the various insurance plans of the doctors and hospital. $15k goes to the people providing care and materials costs (everything is itemized, so then $50 aspirin you see is because it includes the time of the pharmacy tech who got the order, entered it into the system and checked for interactions, the tech who filled the order, the pharmacist who had to sign off on it, and the nurse who carried it to the patient.). $10k goes to the hospital as profit.
The insurance then makes the patient pay their $5000 deductible, which is what you pay before the insurance you pay for pays for anything, then the patient pays their $2500 coinsurance, which is what you pay after the insurance you pay for starts to pay for things but they only pay for half. After that the insurance covers it. The “perk” is that having met your deductible and coinsurance costs you likely have to pay little or nothing for care for the rest of the calendar year, making January to most financially responsible time to have a medical emergency.
In terms of actual “cost”, I think the biggest difference is the itemization of everything. Universal healthcare is intrinsically more cost efficient, but it still has to pay doctors and nurses. When that cost is viewed as part of the cost of running a hospital as opposed to part of the service “charged” to the patient it can bring the “list price” down a lot. You end up with the price of a broken arm being the cost to treat a broken arm, not then cost to treat a broken arm and have everyone involved show up and your share of building the hospital room, and the cost of the janitor cleaning the room.
Extremely well said, and an extremely sad thing to say, the system that makes you plan your medical emergencies is perfectly balanced, indeed