<story><title>What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills</title><url>https://www.vox.com/health-care/2018/12/18/18134825/emergency-room-bills-health-care-costs-america</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>y-c-o-m-b</author><text>I was a victim of the surprise out of network bill in the Portland, OR area. I did all my research before hand: hospital in network, surgeon in network, etc. but ONE person in that operating room was not in network and SURPRISE i&amp;#x27;m out thousands of dollars. The worst part about this is my state passed a bill to stop this prior to my surgery, but the bill&amp;#x27;s effective date was roughly 3 months later. Talk about bad timing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ddebernardy</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m at a loss as to why the US is still dead set to have no meaningful health coverage.&lt;p&gt;I got burned by this in California a decade ago. A dentist charged me $4,500 to fix a broken tooth (panic!) and fill in a cavity on a Sunday.&lt;p&gt;Had I known then what it might have cost I&amp;#x27;d have simply flown back to Europe in the next flight ($600-800 at the time) and get the same thing done for under $100-200 with a full refund from my local social security.&lt;p&gt;Adding insult to injury I had a very expensive international health insurance policy owing to my traveling around the world back then. And they didn&amp;#x27;t cover dental with my plan. I knew they wouldn&amp;#x27;t. But it was still mind boggling to me in that I never expected a casual procedure that would have cost me €150 at most anywhere in Europe - most of which would have gotten refunded at that - to cost me a whopping $4,500 in the US.</text></comment>
<story><title>What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills</title><url>https://www.vox.com/health-care/2018/12/18/18134825/emergency-room-bills-health-care-costs-america</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>y-c-o-m-b</author><text>I was a victim of the surprise out of network bill in the Portland, OR area. I did all my research before hand: hospital in network, surgeon in network, etc. but ONE person in that operating room was not in network and SURPRISE i&amp;#x27;m out thousands of dollars. The worst part about this is my state passed a bill to stop this prior to my surgery, but the bill&amp;#x27;s effective date was roughly 3 months later. Talk about bad timing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fitzroy</author><text>With Medicaid (in New York, at least) a provider isn&amp;#x27;t allowed to bill a beneficiary for treatment. It is such a huge stress reliever. I can&amp;#x27;t figure out how so many people continually fall for the propaganda against single payer &amp;#x2F; Medicaid&amp;#x2F;care-for-all.&lt;p&gt;Source:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nyacep.org&amp;#x2F;practice-resources-2&amp;#x2F;resources&amp;#x2F;practice-management-resources&amp;#x2F;medicaid&amp;#x2F;222-medicaid-beneficiaries-cannot-be-billed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nyacep.org&amp;#x2F;practice-resources-2&amp;#x2F;resources&amp;#x2F;practi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>