On Fri, 2013-10-18 at 13:06 -0400, Dave Cole wrote: > A few years ago my wife was in the ICU for 10 days and then a regular > room for about another 10 days, almost lost her. Since then she has > recovered nicely. :-) > > About a month later, we got a big envelope with from the hospital with > an itemized bill in it. The total cost was close to $300K. Fortunately > we had insurance that was "ok" but we still spent a lot of money, about > $15K on medical bills. We hit every out of pocket maximum that was > possible and we argued with the hospital and the insurance company for > the next 6+ months over the bills. > > There are literally millions of people in the US without any health > insurance. That hospital bill would have bankrupted us if we did not > have health insurance.. > > Dave > The hospital would have treated your wife anyway and written off at least part of it. Yes, there is a significant percentage of the US population that does not have and can't afford insurance. This is reflected in your hospital bill which helps pay for those that can't.
I've been rather pleased with Medicare. They paid for my colonoscopies and did a nice job of covering the removal of a 2.5 cm kidney tumor. The hospital bill would not have broken me but .... Not to start a flame war here but just my tuppence. Dave > > > On 10/18/2013 11:56 AM, andy pugh wrote: > > On 18 October 2013 16:14, Dave Cole <linuxcncro...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > >> Something had to be done to change the system... Time will tell if this > >> is a move forward or not. > > Not wanting to start a discussion of this subject (which seems > > incredibly emotive) on this inappropriate forum, but I do think I like > > the way things work here. > > My dad is 73. He got a new knee last year. He went to the doctor with > > knee trouble, the doctor said "you need a new knee", he got a new knee > > a few months later. That was it, no bills to pay, no having to argue a > > case with anyone. > > My (possibly erroneous) understanding is that we actually pay less for > > our health service, on average, than do folk in the US. > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > October Webinars: Code for Performance > Free Intel webinars can help you accelerate application performance. > Explore tips for MPI, OpenMP, advanced profiling, and more. Get the most from > the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and register > > http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=60135031&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ October Webinars: Code for Performance Free Intel webinars can help you accelerate application performance. Explore tips for MPI, OpenMP, advanced profiling, and more. Get the most from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and register > http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=60135991&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
