Assuming nobody else is at fault
They’ll fix everyone at the ER.
But you get a ridiculous bill, then likely “settle” for a much lower amount of if you’re truly pennyless, you just never pay it and eventually the hospital gives up and uses it as a tax write off.
It’s a shit system
It’ll also wreck your credit, and if you’re unlucky they’ll sell your debt off to debt collectors to harass you and your family. Even if they’ve died. And then the truly desperate will sometimes commit heath insurance fraud making the system even more immensely fucked for everyone except for the hospitals and insurance companies
I feel like a lot of people ignore collection agencies when they advise others to “just not pay.” Yeah you could probably get away without paying, but you and your entire family will be harassed nonstop. There’s been few things more chilling to me than a stranger calling me out of the blue with my sister’s name and info telling me to get her to settle up (thankfully just a small amount).
Part of the reason it’s like this is because insurance companies try their very hardest to avoid paying, but that means you have to do the same if paying yourself.
ER patches you up, you get a large bill, you declare bankruptcy, life goes on.
The question you should ask is, what happens if you have no insurance and you develop a serious chronic illness.
How does “life go on” with a bankruptcy and health issues?
The point of a bankruptcy is to move on. You start off at zero again, but you can start building up assets again.
As far as the health issues go, because of the bankruptcy and the ACA you probably qualify for medical care under one of the programs.
Yeah, you get fucked over pretty good. Life goes on because you’re not dead. But everything you had, everything you worked for, is gone. You are left literally with life, not with your life.
For all its faults the ability for an individual to declare bankruptcy sounds like a rather good thing in the US and something we don’t have in Finland. Granted we don’t have that level of healthcare bills either but if you somehow get youself millions into debt here it sticks with you your whole life.
There has to be some form of bankruptcy, isn’t there?
When you declare bankruptcy, you’re basically going to the courts and saying, “Look. I don’t have the money or the income to cover all my debts. I need help.” If the court agrees, they’ll force all your creditors to come to the table to negotiate.
The court determines what assets you can keep and determines the best way to divvy up what’s left. Usually you keep your house, car, and basic necessities but that can vary. Some states don’t protect the house or car but even then the court will consider if it’s cheaper or better for you to keep either of those than to go rent a new house and take alternate transportation.
Then they look at your income and decide what you can afford to pay over time. If your income is too low, they may consider all your debts settled at that point. Otherwise, they may set up a payment plan for so many years and consider you even after that.
Medical debt is the number one reason for bankruptcy. To twist the knife a bit, people who have large medical bills are often in a physical condition that makes it hard to work. About 2/3 of all bankruptcies, or 530,000 families annually, cite their medical bills when filing. After that is mortgage debt (45%), living beyond their means (44.5%), providing help to friends and family (28.5%), student loans (25.5%), and divorce (24.5%).
My parents went bankrupt like 4 times and it never seemed to make any difference to them. They’d just move on with life and have new credit debt racked up within a few months.
For some, it can be an unbearable long and leasurely spin around the drains perimeter.
Holy shit what the actual fuck is your health care system America. This thread is nightmare fuel.
It’s like reading dystopian sci-fi
We’re a cruel people, and the majority think you’re not entitled to anything you can’t pay cash for.
It’s certainly not the majority.
welcome to our personal hell
This is what voting right wing does to a country, but hey let’s all stick our heads in the sand and blindly hate immigrants.
When I was younger and made next to nothing, I ended up in the emergency room with a bill I couldn’t possibly afford to pay. I called up the billing dept and told them about my financial situation and they told me to contact Health Quest so I qualify for a discount. It was relatively easy and not only did it erase my previous debt but it gave me a 0% liability for any hospital fees for the next 6mos. The funny thing was that the hospital ended up selling my my debt to collections by that point so every time they called id fax them a copy of a letter and id never hear from them again and after a few times of them selling this debt to other collectors it just got dropped. This was in upstate NY in like 2010 so YMMV.
It can vary heavily like you’re saying. By law, all hospitals must treat all patients who arrive at the ER.
Most hospitals have programs so they can provide care for those who can’t afford it, though. Usually around 20-25% of their revenue is used to cover those patients.
If you qualify for Medicaid, they can backdate your enrollment so you’d be covered even before you arrived at the hospital. Coverage can vary, but this usually should cover all medical bills at no cost.
The big issue usually isn’t people who have no insurance or are too poor. It’s from hospitals treating you while your insurance refuses to pay. Normally this is because the bill was miscoded, but it can also be due to an uncovered treatment, high deductibles and OOP limits, or the insurance just being greedy.
Sometimes the hospital or doctors can work things out to minimize your bills, other times they can’t.
A lot of the protections above came about because of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Before then, there were common horror stories of people who had hundreds of thousands in medical debt because they reached their lifetime maximum coverage - something that’s illegal now. Insurance could (and often would) just tell people they’re on their own from now on because it’s too expensive to keep them alive. Your coverage could be changed whenever the insurance company felt like it. And up until last year, they could make you pay for treatment if an out-of-network doctor decided to pop on by while you’re at an in-network facility.
Emergenty rooms in hospitals are legaly required to help all patieints, so you would recieve care. Usually until you are able to leave the hospital. You would not receive followup care without going to the emergecy room, or paying cash. You would be billed for all services, usually at a higher rate than insured patients
You tell the hospital to pound sand when they send a five or six figure bill. Very few in the US have $20,000 or so just lying around. The hospital knows that, the court knows that, even the latest version of FICO knows that.
You can ask for an itemized bill, amd usually a bunch of stupid charges go away. You can try and arrange a payment plan.
But really, after a certain point, it doesn’t matter if the bill is $10,000 or $1,000,000, there’s just no money, and there will not ever be that money, and they can cry wage garnishment until their ears bleed but it almost never happens - because there’s no money.
But what happens if someone has a savings and happens to have say $50k in there and then they’re hit with a health issue that incurs a $25k hospital bill? Can they then come after you for payment if you have the money in savings?
In that case, yes they could. But things are different for a person who has 50k in savings, I wasn’t talking about them.
Yes, you’re punished for saving while those spend all they earned are rewarded. It’s a messed up system.
If someone calls an ambulance and you’re unconscious they will take you the hospital for treatment. You will be responsible for the bill. Including the thousands of dollars for the ambulance ride.
And no, even though you were unconscious and not able to consent to treatment willingly you will still be responsible for the bill. There are ways of dealing with it, but one accident is all it takes for a ruined credit score for some people. It is as fucked up as it sounds.
There are ways of waiving bills, getting financial assistance etc but it’s a total nightmare dealing with hospital billing departments
If I’m unconscious indoors in a safe place then leave me alone I’ll wake up eventually
And if you don’t, then the problem has still resolved itself!
Insurance companies hate this one simple trick!
Unless you are out for a very brief period of time, being unconscious is a seriously bad sign. Like brain hemorrhaging which left untreated will kill you.
You hope.
With the looming medical debt, I’d actually hope not.
Don’t forget the possibility of refusing to identify yourself. Without an identity there is no way to bill you. So you just leave and the hospital has no way to contact you. This is the path taken by many, especially the poor.
Hmm…
You get care, and then bills and then bankrupt.
So that’s why you guys don’t save?
In short? Medical debt. Emergency rooms will treat you, and in some cases might offer discounted rates for patients without insurance, but at the end of the day you are still responsible for the bill, however large it may be.
Worth noting that those discounted rates are still significantly higher than what insured patients pay, and astronomically higher than what people in actually sane countries pay.
You go to the hospital and get a bill that puts you into debt for the rest of your life. Maybe you do a crowdfunding campaign to cover part of it
The hospital will keep sending you bills. Every month, and if you don’t pay that or set up a payment plan with them… they absolutely send it to a collection agency. That law agency will hound you all day every day, phone calls… text messages… Mailing threats and lawyer fees on top of the OG bill.
Eventually, I know from personal experience… they will take you to debtor’s court. Where you sit in a room full of strangers till your name is called. Then you have to prove how poor you are and they can pause the collection efforts for a period of time… or if the judge believes you can afford something… then your court ordered to pay… or else.
The bells of freedom!
Eagle screech
Go into enough debt that you wish you just died
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Emergency rooms are legally required to provide treatment, and will do so even for non-life-threatening conditions.
If you don’t have insurance coverage but can pay, you will get a bill. If you can’t pay, in most cases the hospital will write off the debt.
They absolutely will not write off the debt in most cases. They’ll get you on a payment plan.
Also quite often charities step in to help with the bill.
Most hospitals are setup as non-profit entities and use medical debt write-offs to exhibit their charity. In all truth, they intentionally drive their own expenses sky high to increase revenue to astronomical levels so to give executives running these organizations excessively high compensation. These write-offs are just part of the gig.
