Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

Re:Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospit... by t0mas88 on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @08:54AM (#32749914)

The prices as charged in the US regularly make it onto Twitter and Reddit etc where us Europeans wonder how on earth it's possible that something in the US costs $ 800 which is charged at less than $ 100 over here (and then paid by insurance). Same for that $ 30k device being sold for $ 80k.

What we all forget is that nobody is actually paying the US healthcare invoices.

Roughly two options... 1. You have insurance and they negotiated a different (much lower) rate or 2. you don't have insurance and can't pay the amount on the invoice.

In option 2 you either declare bankruptcy and they get nothing or they sell the claim for something like 20% of the invoice to a collections agency.

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Re:Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospit... by spaetzleesser on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @09:10AM (#32750071)

Not correct. The insurance paid 80k for the device and 300k total for the surgery after one year of fighting almost daily.

Also: if you make a certain amount of money and they hit you with a 100k bill you can't just declare bankruptcy. The court won't allow you to do it because you make too much money.

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Re:Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospit... by e_i_pi_2 on Thursday September 08, 2022 @10:13AM (#32765785)

> you can't just declare bankruptcy. The court won't allow you to do it because you make too much money

Isn't this always the case? My understanding was that bankruptcy is for when you don't have enough income to pay bills, so if you have a bill for any amount but are able to pay it then you wouldn't be allowed to declare bankruptcy

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