Question about US health care I'm sitting and watching a Baby Story (love that show) and was wondering... is ANYTHING free in health care? like if you walk into a hospital and have a baby.... natural.. no epidural no c-section.. will you still get a bill? Or are the basics covered but like if you want an epidural.. you have to pay for that. Also what if your baby is born and needs intensive care and you can't afford that? I have a hard time wrapping my head around how it works. |
If you don't have private insurance here, there are government funded programs that sometimes people (usually low income) qualify for. In an emergency hospitals legally are not supposed to turn away anyone....but I know they don't get the best of care, like a privately insured person might. |
Nothing is free in the US healthcare system. Certainly not having a baby, which is fairly expensive due to the liability issues. BUT hospitals are required to provide care to anyone who walks in. Since many people are too poor to pay, the hospital "writes it off". But they make it up by overcharging everyone else. Our healthcare system is broken here. I have health insurance that is paid for by my employer. But I am seeing the cost go up while benefits are being reduced. I think eventually we are going to go to a system like Canada, but we are going to have to fight the insurance lobby. I have friends in Canada, several of whom are physicians, and they love the Canadian system. |
If you have private insurance (which is usually offered if you hold a full-time job through your employer), you will most likely be paying a certain amount every month for it. Then when you go to the doctor or hospital you may have a copay or deductible to meet and then the insurance pays. Sometimes they don't cover everything and you get a bill for what the insurance company doesn't pay. This is totally different from government funded programs if you can't afford it. They pay everything but it could be a challenge qualifying for these. Most, if not all, hospitals have a certain amount of money that they give away per year for those that can't afford services. You you don't have insurance and you have an emergency you can go to the hospital and the bill will be sent to you. You can try applying for this program then (after you generate a bill in some or all hospitals). It doesn't mean you'll get accepted though. If you go to the doctor with no insurance you pay the bill. It's hard to say whether this is the same across the US though. I hope I explained that right.:) |
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I think our system here needs to change....but I don't want a system where I have to wait for appointments/procedures or have my doctors be any more restricted than they are currently by HMO's. |
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Many of our Doctors are going to the U.S.A. in order to make more money. In Ontario, there is a set amount of what they are paid, for procedures. Yes, there is an extensive wait to see a specialist. However, it is still paid for. When you consider, even with some coverage, you can face financial ruin, or be told what Doctors you are allowed to see, I think I still like our system. I lived in the U.S. for six years recently, with no coverage and was faced with paying for procedures. It was NOT cheap. |
I have a friend who moved to Texas to get married a couple years ago and she just had a baby. She told me she will be paying off her childbirth for a long time. I've been wanting to move to the states for a year so I can live in a warm climate for once, but the heathcare is definitely my biggest concern! I have talked to my friend about it and she said I should try to get private healthcare, but it will probably be very hard because I have kidney problems and need to see specialists and have testing done on a regular basis. |
My husband is self employed, which means we don't have any health insurance. It's very expensive when someone gets sick($500 for removing stuff my husband got in his eye while working). In two days I take the kids for a cleaning and xrays at the dentist, $300. Not poor enough for medicaid, not rich enough to afford our own. Really sucks :thumbdown |
does each individual hosptial/dentist have their own prices or is an x ray the same price no matter where you go? Is there somewhere you can look up what each hospital will charge so you can "shop around"? |
The US healthcare system needs a serious update. Many businesses are dropping healthcare coverage to save money. More and more people are going without and hoping nothing goes wrong. If you are self employed, it really sucks. You can't get any coverage from the government and it costs a fortune to get private insurance. The deductible is high and the coverage sucks. We've been self employed for over 20 years and deal with this problem. My husband has a family history of high blood pressure and heart problems, so his Dr. put him on medication for cholesterol and high blood pressure, for precautionary purposes, now we have a terrible time getting any coverage for him. Our premiums right now are over $850.00 a month with a $1500. deductible for each of us per incident, so we basically don't have any coverage. I've thought of going out and getting a "real" job, (as people call it) but I can't afford to let our other business fail because I'm not there to work. Jobs are not like they used to be around here either. Most jobs don't pay much and don't offer any benefits, so it is a vicious cycle. We are pretty much stuck where we are. We work harder than most people who work a regular job, and we are penalized for it. With gas prices, food costs, utilities, just about everything is going up and with all the flooding, it is going to get much worse, we don't know what is going to happen to us. When it comes to, do we pay our insurance or buy food and heat, I guess the insurance will have to go and we'll just have to pray that nothing serious happens. We have property up in Canada, and have been thinking we would retire and live up there so we'd have some healthcare, but nothing is perfect and every county has it problems. |
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My Husband is self employed and our Insurance was too high to keep up with and it covered very little. There is a new state run insurance program for people without Health coverage and we applied for it so I hope we get it. |
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