The Cellar / Surgery

**Posted by xoxoxoBruce** 12/01/2024 3:06 am

After 18 months of bullshit I won't bore you with I had surgery in September.
Outpatient surgery. Check in at 6 AM, discharged at about 2:30 PM, home for supper.
The bill was 295,000 one dollar bills, or 14,750 twenty dollar bills.
My insurance provider, who handles my medicare plus, said nope, we'll give you $95,000.
Everyone said OK.
My out of pocket was $400 to fix the hearing aid they broke.
What a country.

**Posted by griff** 12/01/2024 10:45 am

That is some insanity. Elon gonna fix that for sure.

**Posted by Diaphone Jim** 12/01/2024 12:15 pm

Get an itemized bill.
You will find dozens of WHAT's.
Then try asking about them.
BTW, the 295K is only for the uninsured.

**Posted by Anon** 12/01/2024 3:24 pm

xoxoxoBruce wrote:
After 18 months of bullshit I won't bore you with I had surgery in September….

I hope the surgery got all the bullshit out and that it won’t recur.

Diaphone Jim wrote:
…BTW, the 295K is only for the uninsured.

Maybe they gave him a discount because he didn’t come out any better looking than when he went in. They’re still entitled to charge him something though, it wasn’t their fault, modern medicine just can’t yet work that kind of miracle.

**Posted by Clodfobble** 12/01/2024 7:54 pm

Glad you made it out in one piece! I, too, had outpatient surgery recently, but mine was only billed at a measly $110,000-ish. What a bargain!

**Posted by griff** 12/02/2024 7:18 am

Always schedule surgery for January so you can blow through the deductible and live the rest of the year like an insured person.

**Posted by Diaphone Jim** 12/07/2024 11:46 am

That 295 seems really high even with the medical system as screwy as it is.
I had a hip replacement with two days inpatient that cost much less.
A clue as what you had done? I won't tell anyone.

**Posted by tw** 12/07/2024 1:14 pm

xoxoxoBruce wrote:
The bill was 295,000 one dollar bills, ... My insurance provider, ... said nope, we'll give you $95,000. Everyone said OK.

Now remember what right wing extremist said when they wanted everyone to not have Obamacare. And remember what the left wing extremists said when they tried to subvert Obamacare as blackmail for their agenda. Now the number of left and right wing extremists increases. Due to a shortage of moderates - people who learn facts before having an accusation.

**Posted by Clodfobble** 12/07/2024 1:23 pm

Fun fact I learned the other day: nearly all of the developed nations that have single-payer healthcare instituted those systems in the 1930s as a response to the Great Depression. The US government attempted to do it back then, too, and the key reason they couldn't get it through was that it would have created racially-integrated hospitals. Bigots were so determined to avoid sharing a building with a black person--or being a white doctor forced to treat black patients--that they killed a program they otherwise were widely in favor of.

**Posted by griff** 12/08/2024 10:03 am

Thank a bigot today!

**Posted by DanaC** 6/04/2025 1:54 pm

Clodfobble wrote:
Fun fact I learned the other day: nearly all of the developed nations that have single-payer healthcare instituted those systems in the 1930s as a response to the Great Depression. The US government attempted to do it back then, too, and the key reason they couldn't get it through was that it would have created racially-integrated hospitals. Bigots were so determined to avoid sharing a building with a black person--or being a white doctor forced to treat black patients--that they killed a program they otherwise were widely in favor of.

The power of hate

**Posted by Flint** 6/04/2025 2:17 pm

This is like how we had a fully functioning solar power farm that was more efficient than a coal power plant, that we dismantled after the start of WWI, over a hundred years ago.