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It was cheaper to buy tickets, fly to Dublin, get the procedure I needed done. Spend TWO WEEKS recovering, and fly home then to pay the 20% coinsurance I would have needed to here in the good ol USA... so yea...
EDIT :
Well this kind of blew up. The reason it was cheaper : it was considered elective. This is why OOP max did not kick in. It was a procedure that would have to be done, only as my condition got worse. Insurance denied it because "It was not necessary" despite my cardiologist saying it was. By the insurance formula I would have to wait until my condition worsened to make it medically necessary, but by then my chance of a poor outcome goes way up.
I finally argued them into covering some of it, but with a 20% coinsurance and a planned week hospital stay in recovery, my bill would have been close to 100k at least, and if I encountered any complications (which I would likely have due to other issues including an autoimmune disease) I started looking elsewhere. I am not an Irish citizen despite having family there, they helped me navigate the program and the cost. It was privately paid, and my surgeon spoke to their team with all my records transferred etc.
No, looks like his insurance would cover it but he would have had to pay 20% as his portion of coinsurance and it sounds like 20% of the huge US bill was more than the full cost to travel and get it done in Ireland.
Kind of obvious, but the trick is to mark the cost 5 times higher than it is... for a start.
After a while they started asking themselves what's stopping them from doubling that price. Apparently nothing so over the years whenever they felt like it, they just doubled the already enormously overpriced services and at this point there are no signs of it stopping either. There is going to be a post about how travelling to mars for a surgery is cheaper than in US.
The hospitals... despite being "in network" negotiate huge prices and gouge the insurance companies. The insurance companies just pass the costs off onto their customer. Short outpatient surgery now costs 5-8x more than it did maybe 7-10 years ago. It's ridiculous.
The outrageous total bill price is a placeholder to make sure they don't under bill the contracted allowed amount from the insurance provider. When the provider submits the claims the total billed amount is reduced to the contrac amount then processed through. Also most places will have self pay discounts or you can let the owed amount go to collections who will gladly take a portion of the owed amount and close the collection with a ding on your credit.
The outcome is still ridiculous in both situations, especially with big stuff like OPs situation. Our healthcare system is a total shit show.
No. They were going to 'cover' it but there was 20% co pay. In the US, they'll charge you thousands per month for insurance, but will still make you pay for part of your care.
It gets worse. My insurance has a $30 copay on all approved prescriptions. My wife had been getting her medicine for that with no issues for several months, until one day it was $500. I called to find out why, because it was clearly already an approved medication. After about an hour of getting bounced around and being on hold, they finally explained that it was due to us "not paying enough of our annual out of pocket maximum" (not minimum, mind you) for healthcare - which is $24,000. That blew my mind.
Health insurance in the US has your monthly premium payment, copays on your medication and Dr visits (including ER and hospital stays), a deductible which is the amount you have to pay for the year in healthcare to get better benefits (ours is $17,000), and then the out of pocket maximum is when they (usually) cover everything for the rest of the year as long as you keep paying your premium.
Where it gets extra fucked, is if you need a major surgery in late December, the deductible and OOPM won't carry over into the new year. So you could get shafted for double that maximum amount on the same hospital stay. And my insurance isn't even the lowest tier. We pay them $500 a month for this service. Our system is completely fucked, but most people don't seem to care.
As someone British with our often criticised free NHS, this blows my mind. And to think the argument against free healthcare by Americans is usually "well you'll pay more in tax".
I'm lucky enough to have never needed any real gp or hospital treatments, but i know its there if I do. My wife has major issues with eczema and was hospitalised last year due to complications, has many prescriptions, some of which are extremely expensive medication, and regular appointments with gp's, nurses and dermatologists. All we have to pay is for prescription medication, and we are able to pre pay for those at a rate of £10 per month total. Thats it. And our tax is no higher than any other average western nation.
Crazy. I hope your country comes to its sense sooner rather than later.
I dunno...sounds like (from various news sources) that the UK is thinking about cutting some of that healthcare in some way or other. You guys seem to be electing more & more conservatives that are crying about "entitlements." You are not immune to the right-wing crazy.
I too wish we could come to our senses:(, but have so little hope left in our electorate.
Bro, $500 a month is more than all my tax deductions from my salary! And I have "free" healthcare through the NHS (UK), you guys are paying more even without being sick
And sadly, my monthly premium is considered low. It is well over $1,000 a month premium for "good" insurance for two adults.
But at least I'm allowed to even buy health insurance now. Before the ACA (AKA: Obamacare) passed, if your job didn't offer it you were basically screwed. And even then, they could deny coverage for having any pre-existing conditions.
In the US, there is this bullshit they introduced called co-insurance.
I still remember when they “updated” our company health plans to include it.
The idea is that by introducing “shared responsibility” for health care costs, it will reduce “over-utilization” of health plan benefits.
In short. Even after your deductible is fulfilled, even if you are getting something done that is medically necessary, and covered by your insurance plan, they will only cover 80% of the charges and the rest is your responsibility as “co-insurance”. Money you are expected to have saved up to pay for medical expenses as a nice responsible consumer.
Recovering from heart surgery isn't a vacation, it's a near death experience where every waking moment is a struggle to breath and stay alive, though it slowly gets better over the course of a couple to several weeks (or even months), seen both my parents go through it.
But my 6y/o is terrified of dentists in Houston. Several attempts to get tooth filling always fails because the dentists gave up once he starts crying. The 3 attempts at different dentists probably cost a total of $1200. Because the last attempt they tried sleeping gas and insurance doesn’t think that anesthesia is required so I get to pay for it.
We flew to Indonesia for our visa renewal. Return ticket $1k each, Indonesian dentist who actually talked and communicated with my son and managed to calm him down for the procedure, $180
I called an imaging center and asked for a cash price for an MRI on my knee. It was $300. Going through my doctor for a referral and using insurance, the price would’ve been over $3000 and I was going to be out $1000 in copay and fees.
I usually ask for cash price on everything before I use insurance, half the time it’s cheaper and the other half the time it’s barely more for basic stuff like this. Also call around and shop pricing, you will find places that do things way cheaper than others.
Easy, start of the new year go to the hospital with a sudden “headache” and tell them your vision is blurry. You’ll hit your deductible immediately then negotiate it down with the hospital
It sure is. None of my friends have not opted out of not carrying no insurance cancellation. Even a couple friends who got co-pay thru work. Nope. Too expensive.
Even dental is too expensive. We just go to Mexico for everything (from Arizona).
In my country, healthcare is free for all the world . And mri with contrast and without contrast is free both ways. Surgery, free. Dental free. Spend a night in the hospital or a week free. Healthcare is free.
Edit: Country is Kosovo, and it's very cheap compared to other countries and US. You are more than welcome to visit.
Jesus fucking christ. Im losing my kidney right now, will do dialyis for 5 months, then a transplant and it cost me like 20 bucks copay for 2x a taxi from hospital to home and thats all ill ever pay. America seems to suck hard.
I was visiting NZ and had to go to the doctor because I twisted my ankle. Ended up fine, just here's some pain meds, ice, and rest situation.
The nurse came back with this serious sad look on her face. She said we'd have to pay for this because the cost wasn't 100% covered with our travel insurance & ACA(?). I was like, okay. I expected as much and braced myself because she looked so uncomfortable.
I had to pay $50. I laughed. If this happened back home, I'd probably get charged $50 just for the Tylenol after my insurance coverage. Same type of trip but back home would have easily would cost me $200+.
If you're poor and have multiple chronic health issues in America you're basically fucked. I've had to deal with multiple health issues stemming from mold exposure in addition to mental health issues like depression and anxiety, and also asthma and a tear in a muscle on the left side of my groin. All in all I've spent $5000 this year and still haven't even hit my out of pocket maximum.
Just a reminder for explanation, here in the US we have health "insurance" not "healthcare."
Health "insurance" does what auto insurance or homeowners insurance does - protects you from incurring a life-destroying financial debt when something UNEXPECTED occurs - think about five and six figure numbers of debt from open heart surgery.
But it's mostly useless for anything else. We have to meet and pay a deductible before the insurance kicks in. We also have to pay a copay in-person before receiving care, so if you're light this paycheck - no doctor. The deductible is usually somewhere between one and three months wages. So we basically pay for everything during a given year until we hit that deductible.
Part of the insurance company's job is also to negotiate the charges to make them remotely reasonable based on the private agreements they have with the different providers. Everything is overpriced because the providers know the insurance will discount what they're charging instead of paying it, so they have to overcharge to survive. That means you need insurance just to keep the charges remotely sensible, at which point they're still too expensive to regularly go to the doctor.
That hits doctors in their pocket too, because people are supposed to go to the doctor regularly, but they can't afford to, so family doctors have to charge EVEN MORE. See, the providers aren't evil - the system is screwing them too and preventing them from operating like a normal business.
One of the best parts of all this is that after we hit the deductible, which often takes until the end of the year anyway, the insurance still doesn't pay 100% of all charges above the deductible. They still do things like only covering 80% for specialists after the deductible, so if you are sick, you can still incur crushing debt. You still have to pay the copays.
But it isn't healthcare - imagine trying to get new tires with your auto insurance, or painting your house with an homeowners claim. It doesn't work - because insurance isn't for maintenance, it's for emergencies. The insurance business model does not work for health because healthcare isn't something you MIGHT need - it's something you DO need.
So, as you might expect of today's America, your health is directly dependent on how financially successful you have been. How long you live ultimately lines up with how much you've paid in taxes. The system is decisive about who it rewards as a worthy, successful human and does its best to keep care away from the lower classes.
The insurance will never even bother paying off or not even 1/4 of it… with your own money.
And yet, you’d be able to ironically pay off the bills without insurance, it would be cheaper, but then somehow the government will lose its shit because you don’t have insurance
The real problem is that the cost of healthcare in the US is like playing Russian Roulette. Will it cost 200? Will it cost 400? Nobody fucking knows until you see the bill come through the mail.
You see so many different numbers for the same kind of operation. Depending on the hospital, insurance policy, etc, it could range from 50 to 5000 dollars.
This. I've tried asking the price of a dozen stitches ahead of time, just as a proof. In fact they would/could not tell me.
To be a little bit fair, sure, there could be complications. But then, why not compile statistics about how common which complications are? And provide a chart of range of costs? Or have a kind of hospital insurance to cover unforeseen or unusual expenses, so that price/cost/resource usage can be more predictable?
Yes our system is incredibly, and clearly intentionally, stupid.
Right, but it really illustrates the point when you fly across the world than to go next door. China is a country people know that's "far away" as opposed to Mexico which is a <$200 flight away for most Americans.
That sounds like the BS amount hospital "charge". Insurance negotiates it down so they can act like theyre doing something. What hospitals charge is basically meaningless.
I was paying 1400 a month for my wife and I and they kept denying me Ozempic when my doctor prescribed it.
We were moving out of the country anyway so now we fly into Singapore (from Thailand), stay in nice hotels for a few nights, and pay out of pocket for public hospitals there for less than we would have paid for our insurance, copays, and deductibles in the US. And this is WITH Mounjaro, Eyelia injections every 3 months, doctor fees, annual full check ups with MRI, ultrasounds, hotels, taxis, flights, great food, etc.
Probably going by what they bill insurance. My insurance was billed over 4k for a ct scan and 28k for an angiogram. I dont even want to know what my super minor surgery will be. What would they charge for self pay? no clue.
I think the meme stands. I could have paid a doctor in Mexico a thousand bucks to take care of it in one visit instead of 6 doctors and multiple tests.
It’s routinely much more than that with insurance. That’s why the meme is popping up, Mark Cuban was just in the news calling out that insurance routinely pays over $1500 for an MRI that only costs $350 to perform. Hopefully he is building up to doing something similar to what he did with pharmaceuticals. Wild that a billionaire doing basic capitalism is the best thing for cost reduction in the US, it’s pathetic.
Not wild at all, if we had a truly free market in healthcare our costs would plummet. What we have isn't free market capitalism, it's crony capitalism where insurance companies and drug companies have bribed our politicians to make sure they're able to gouge us.
This thread really illustrates the problem with Insurance in the USA. I’m seeing a lot of my MRI was FREE, MY MRI was $20, My MRI Was 4K, mine was $500
This is exactly the problem with our system. We need real Health insurance coverage every American can afford with transparent pricing.
Right now we basically have people all over the place. Some with Amazing coverage and others with Geek Squad Protection coverage for Health Insurance.
Yep, and but only it's it virtually random, it's not transparent.
I had my daughter without insurance and tried to plan ahead for the costs. I called all the hospitals in the area who gave me ranges for their services based on different conditions.
Beyond that, each doctor charges separately at different rates, so the costs depended on who was in that day. For example, they had 2 anesthesiologists. Depending on which one we got they charged either $500 or $3k for their services.
In the end, I'm the case of a perfectly normal birth with no complications or extra services needed, the cost was going to be anywhere between $14k and $38k at the hospital we chose, depending on which mix of doctors would be in.
In the end i have no idea how much it cost because we kept getting bills for different doctors and hospital services over the next two years and I completely lost track eventually.
Why bother trying to plan or track when next month with just be another spin on the wheel of medical billing?
healthcare being unaffordable for many Americans is unfortunately a very real issue. No, traveling abroad for healthcare isn't going to be cheaper for every American. It is for way too many people though and that's insane for the richest country in the world. I don't think pointing that out is spinning a false narrative.
Edit: I'm replying to somebody who's entire post history is defending capitalism and the 7.25 dollar minimum wage idk why I give people the benefit of the doubt on this fuck ass site 😭
I'm an American living in Japan. I have employer-based insurance like in the U.S. If I were unemployed or had a part-time job, I could get government insurance, or in American-speak, the public option. Which America doesn't have thanks to Joe Fucking Lieberman, may he rest in piss.
But the real magic is that costs are reasonable. I had an MRI on my foot earlier this year. My cost with insurance? About 40 USD. Even without insurance, it wouldn't be cheap exactly, but say about 300-400 USD?
Same. Have had multiple MRIs - one hip, one foot, one brain.
Some I had no insurance, cost about $400-500 out of pocket (cash pay rates can be very heavily discounted).
With most recent insurance, it was roughly $250.
Don't get me wrong - health care costs can be absolutely absurd. BUT, people really shouldn't go around blindly believing internet memes and complaints.
Yep I literally just got one done. First real foray into the US healthcare system which I’ve avoided wherever possible since moving here. $560 out of pocket WITH insurance (my company switched to United…)
Depends on your insurance and deductible. My insurance will cost me $100 for MRI , while my Mom’s insurance will cost $2000. Both insurance are through employers.
I live here in China as a foreigner. Please understand that the medical system is absolute unwashed ass here, and you need a translator for everything even in the so-called English-speaking international hospitals, plus you must handle the logistics of the rest of life in China on such a trip. Do not do it. Go to South Korea for medical tourism instead. Everything is in English, everything is clean unlike here in China where everything everywhere is incurably filthy, and somehow medical tourism costs are lower in KR than CN. Hotel and food costs will be higher in KR, but so will quality and comfort.
I know that vaguely "the west" is on a pro-China story arc right now, but really, I would never ever recommend coming here for medical.
Not only that but the stats on the account activity as well. 8 year old account with less than 50 posts+comments in total. They're getting better at hiding that it's a botted account as well. Some poor sucker probably got their account hacked or this was an abandoned inactive account, that is being repurposed for this. The OF page too screams AI generated slop.
My wife just had two done. It was a few hundred each with insurance. This post is complete BS. Maybe if you add an entire year's worth of insurance premiums.
My work's insurance has 3 tiers and this would be believable for someone with the lowest tier. The only coworkers I have who chose that tier are under 30 and are statistically unlikely to need much medical attention. It's a 10k deductible plan, max oop is a little higher. Also this assumes in network providers, you could in theory end up paying more if you get sent to an ER out of network even if you met your deductible already.
It's a bs post. Most insurance has an annual deductible and once its met everything else is paid for if you're in network. I think my deductible is like 5k, but everything after is 100%. My wife's insurance has no deductible, everything is 100% covered.
To be fair it’s like $300 for an MRI if you pay cash around me. It’s just the outrageous insurance prices for MRI’s that skew this number. Overall I’d say this is basically false.
I just paid $25 for an MRI with cheap basic insurance in the US. Out of pocket, it would’ve been $555. This included the cost of the specialist making a diagnosis. I’d love to see the calculations for how it’s cheaper to fly to China.
Yep. I actually had an MRI a few months ago due to an optical nerve swelling and it costs me $0. Not even sure why there wasn’t a copay but this post is a complete lie.
I needed an MRI for a suspected stress fracture. Now I make good money, 130k/yr, paying $600 in health insurance a month for my wife and I. Crazy high still.
With insurance the MRI was 1200 lmao. There was a place meant for more out of pocket use cases. $300 without insurance. Fucking insane that’s the state of this shit in this country.
I'm in Australia so we have semi socialised medicine - I could get it for free if I go through the right hoops and wait, but if I'm impatient or want a specific location, or it's not strictly medically necessary, I pay full price. I paid full price for an mri to check the status of an old knee injury, and it was $300 - this is how much an mri actually costs, with an Australian (high) cost basis
That's nuts, I went to the doctor because of a migraine aura (first one I've ever had, so I was concerned) and my doctor put in an order for an MRI. $20 copay for the Dr and $40 copay for the MRI.
In the last 2 years i have needed 3 MRI's because of my back problems which turned out to be caused by 2 herniated discs and Scheuermanns Disease. I have payed exactly 0€ for them and thats one of the reasons that sometimes i am grateful to be a german citizen
I used to work in a pharmacy on the Canada/USA border. It was cheaper for Americans to fly to Detroit, cross the border, buy the drugs, and fly back than get the drugs at home.
If you're Canadian, it would be quicker to get a minimum wage job and work however many hours it takes to fund this trip than it would be to wait for an MRI in Canada.
Yeah brilliant system we have here, if you got the cash on hand it's done. If not we roll the dice, and regardless of what our doctor recommends a company decides whether it feels like paying. Why does it cost so much? Who set the prices so fucking high?
SAME COMPANIES.
Fucking. BRILLIANT.
Yeah, this is misleading as fuck. My MRI copay was $150 with insurance - this meme conveniently leaves out the fact that someone with insurance will likely pay much less than what the insurance company gets charged.
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