Thursday, June 21, 2012

Do Not Pay Emergency Room Bills: Get fucked, St. Vincent's

Do Not Pay Emergency Room Bills, Poors. This Is How. | The Awl:

'via Blog this'

(I am thinking all the out of work nurses should start clinics and charge normal amounts of money. Urgi care costs a fortune and I don't think there are actual doctors there. I could be wrong, though. I KNOW there aren't always doctors in the emergency room but you will sure as shit get charged for seeing one. They will drop the charge if you call them on it. Oh whoops, how did that get on the bill!?)

Do Not Pay Emergency Room Bills, Poors. This Is How.

 | June 3rd, 2009
NOT YOUR MOMMA'S "ER"I frequently meet people, most of them young and poor, who are burdened by debts to emergency rooms, and I am always shocked that these people with no money are even considering paying. Here is how it is done, in a strangely servicey explanation from Vice.
As a person with next to no money, my approach to personal finance borrows very heavily from my understanding of The Great Depression and the film The Road Warrior. Therefore, I conduct myself at all times with a shameless, don't-care-how-embarrassing pragmatism. So whenever a problem with my health presents itself, I just head to the emergency room with no intention of paying anyone for anything… As long as I don't delude myself with dreams of one day financing a house or of answering my phone without getting yelled at by a stranger, emergency rooms are basically a Supermarket Sweep of free medical treatment.
Tags:
HOSPITALS, MEDICINE, POVERTY, THE RECESSION

16 Comments / Post A Comment

Tyler Coates (#451)
…and that is why they charge fifty bucks for gauze and medical tape.
Posted on June 3, 2009 at 12:24 pm
REPLY »  0
mathnet (#27)
just so people know if you need to go to the ER don't give them your real name say you have no I.D. or social security card and you don't know the number if it's an emergency they still have to treat you
Posted by: d | 03/06/2009 at 00:37
Posted on June 3, 2009 at 12:26 pm
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kitten_witawip (#99)
This is also true when you go to the free clinic for any std test. Otherwise if you test positive your real name ends up on some public health list.
Posted on June 3, 2009 at 3:57 pm
REPLY »  0
kitten_witawip (#99)
In LA the county hospital charges $75/$1,500 (may have gone up)for uninsured ER visits. It's $75 if you pay within 7 days, after that it goes up to $1,500. Though I wouldn't go there for anything other than a bullet extraction because for $75 they prefer to amputate rather than operate.
Posted on June 3, 2009 at 12:29 pm
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hman (#53)
Some hospitals will treat you in exchange for diapers, prime cuts of meat, and jugs of laundry detergent.
Posted on June 3, 2009 at 12:38 pm
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Minou (#258)
Where I live people mostly pay with lobsters.
Posted on June 3, 2009 at 3:31 pm
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Minou (#258)
Which is ironic now that I think about it because 9 times out of 10 it was lobsters that put 'em in the ER to begin with. Huh.
Posted on June 3, 2009 at 4:56 pm
REPLY »  0
Hez (#147)
Or, you know, move to Canada. Drastic, but effective!
On the plus side, you can gay marry anybody in the damn place and smoke wicked fat joints at your wedding!
Posted on June 3, 2009 at 1:29 pm
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nadie (#807)
A couple more things: hospitals have two sets of prices for services: estimates of their actual cost, and the prices they negotiate and actually get paid by insurers, which could be 30-50% lower. They also have two ways of categorizing the cost of care they don't get paid for: "bad debt," which is what happens when they bill you and you don't pay and they harass you in all the usual ways, and "charity care," which is services that they don't expect to get paid for and count as part of their contribution to the "community" to justify their tax-exempt status. The upshot of all this is that when you go to the ER as an uninsured person, they will try to charge you their full estimated cost of a service – so you should try to negotiate. If you were insured, they might only be charging your insurer half what they're asking you to pay (and this doesn't even include whatever copay cost-sharing structure you'd have if you were insured). Also, if you know that you can't afford to pay at all, right off the bat you should try to get yourself into the "charity care" column, rather than the "bad debt" one, by telling them that you have no ability to pay and do not anticipate being able to.
Posted on June 3, 2009 at 1:56 pm
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SeaBassTian (#281)
"I’m just too lazy to find a real job. Plus, I’m pretty sure I’m invincible." could be my new mantra for living without health insurance. Great to know I am not alone.
Posted on June 3, 2009 at 4:19 pm
REPLY »  0
My Number Is My Address (#237)
I wondered why I was charged 1100 clams for a band-aid when I lightly broke my nose a few years ago but then I realized they were charging 150 an hour for the wait. Get fucked, St. Vincent's (and GOP obstructionist terrorists).
Posted on June 3, 2009 at 5:29 pm
REPLY »  0
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