US Hospital Bill Goes Viral: This Is What Childbirth Costs Without A National Health Service

[ctebah]

 

In March this year, twitter user @YumiYoko became a mum following a caesarean section.  Medical staff at Philadelphia?s Abington Memorial Hospital handed her a child, while administrators handed her a bill for over $42,000.  Such is life under the US profit-making private healthcare system.

British actor Stephen McGann (who plays a doctor in popular British TV Drama ?Call the Midwife?, set at the dawn of Britain?s National Health Service) sent the bill viral in June when he tweeted it to fans, and it has been reaching millions across the world ever since.

 

The US remains the only nation in the developed world that fails to provide universal healthcare for its citizens. Even a handful of Developing countries have prioritized their resources to ensure universal access to health care, including oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Oman, Costa Rica, Kyrgyzstan, and Cuba, among others.

 

Yet lawmakers in the richest nation on earth, the US, continue to argue that public healthcare is unaffordable.

Not only is public healthcare the moral thing to do, but it costs less.

 

Britain?s NHS saves more lives per pound ($1.62) spent on it than any healthcare system on earth except Ireland, and yet the Brits spend half the equivalent GDP the US spends on healthcare.  Yet, as research by respected think tank The Commonwealth Fund revealed this year, the US has been ranked as having the most expensive and least effective healthcare system of all the industrialized nations?again.

America needs more than Obamacare, it needs to join the rest of the civilized world and provide universal, effective and efficient public healthcare for its citizens. And those nations who were successful in creating such systems, need to fight for them like their lives depended on it?because they do.

 

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/09/10/us-hospital-bill-goes-viral-this-is-what-childbirth-costs-without-a-national-healthcare-service/

 

No wonder some Americans try go to Canada for their medical needs.  Whenever I travel anywhere but the US I never get travel insurance but if I'm going to US I always do. 

[DocM]

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/09/10/us-hospital-bill-goes-viral-this-is-what-childbirth-costs-without-a-national-healthcare-service/

No wonder some Americans try go to Canada for their medical needs. Whenever I travel anywhere but the US I never get travel insurance but if I'm going to US I always do.

Most US border state major hospitals have special clinics to handle Canadian medical refugees, which greatly outnumber the flow going the other way. Much of it is for services Canada doesn't have; special procedures, expensive imaging methods, overflows from long waiting lists etc. while offering discounted rates. In doing this the US subsidizes the Canadian system.

Our childbirth bills were picked up by employer based insurance. The only things we paid were the TV rental, magazine cart and phone calls.

[compl3x]

 

 

The US remains the only nation in the developed world that fails to provide universal healthcare for its citizens.

 

 

That's because we're all filthy socialists.  :rofl:  :rofl:  :rofl:

[spenser.d]

Most US border state major hospitals have special clinics to handle Canadian medical rwfugees.

Our childbirth bills were picked up by employer based insurance. The only things we paid were the TV rental, magazine cart and phone calls.

 

Yes, but employer based insurance is still paying a large chunk of that full price, and most people don't know it until they don't have it. Hell, the reason it costs so much is because of the way private insurance operates, basically being a negotiating war to come to a lower price (which causes healthcare orgs to inflate those prices to an insane degree). The better option is single payer universal care because it only pays what it actually costs to cover care, not the inordinate excess that makes it's way into hospital chargemasters in the US.

[+devHead Subscriber²]

This is partly thanks to the conditioning of Americans for decades that socialized medicine is tantamount to communist government rule.  Over here in the States, it's a big business and all about money grubbing doctors and pharmaceutical companies wanting to make billions at the expense of sick people.  

[wakjak]

Most US border state major hospitals have special clinics to handle Canadian medical refugees, which greatly outnumber the flow going the other way. 

 

Got hard numbers for that? I remember a link somewhere that says over 6 million american's go abroad for medical care each year.. trying to find it. I find it hard to believe that more than 4 million canadians are going to america each year for health care.

 

http://news.health.com/2009/04/08/traveling-treatment/

 

If it's such a great system, that many people wouldn't have to leave.

[macoman]

The healthcare system in the US is just a business. People are just a number and clients. Doctors are entrepreneurs. The Medicine career is like studying for your Phd in Business. It is not about care, is about making the most money possible for each client you got.

[DarkyDan]

Why pay for universal healthcare when you can send troops to die needlessly over and over again?

 

Dumbest nation on this earth,  at least politically (so says my stereotyping).

[notchinese]

Why pay for universal healthcare when you can send troops to die needlessly over and over again?

 

Dumbest nation on this earth,  at least politically (so says my stereotyping).

 

:rolleyes:

[compl3x]

This is partly thanks to the conditioning of Americans for decades that socialized medicine is tantamount to communist government rule.  

 

It seems to be the same with welfare. Of course having lots of people on welfare isn't ideal. Keeping unemployment low is an important goal, and there are some who try to game the system, but if you have no safety net things are going to get very bad, very quickly.

[simplezz]

Wasn't there an article on here recently where it cost a guy 10k just for an Elastoplast/Band-aid on a finger. The US health care system is out of control. Obama tried to improve things so everyone gets coverage, but that still works in the confines of a for-profit system. It's saddening that in the supposedly richest country in the world, basic health care is hard to come by for most citizens.

[+Red King Subscriber²]

Well, you get what you vote for.

[Draconian Guppy]

crazy!

[SierraSonic]

Well, you get what you vote for.

You only get half of what you vote for in the USA. Unless you magically win the presidential seat, and both the house and senate, AND don't try to be bi-partisan during the only chance you had.

[Draconian Guppy]

You only get half of what you vote for in the USA. Unless you magically win the presidential seat, and both the house and senate, AND don't try to be bi-partisan during the only chance you had.

Never really understood the house/senate thing :wacko: 

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

We just had a son, standard birth rather then C Section and it cost us $63K However, even with my cheap insurance it only cost us $10 (which was for a meal I ate that they offered me)

[Order_66]

Well, you get what you vote for.

 

 

I didn't vote for a Muslim dictator but I got one anyways.

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

we dont get to vote on healthcare in the USA for some reason we let a group of people that work an average of 12 days a year vote for us.

[Stoffel]

I didn't vote for a Muslim dictator but I got one anyways.

 

Really?!?

We are still spewing this rhetoric after 6 years?

:rolleyes:

[Order_66]

Really?!?

We are still spewing this rhetoric after 6 years?

:rolleyes:

 

 

Really??

We are still defending a white house failure after 6 years?

:rolleyes:

[+LogicalApex MVC]

Why would you expect it to be cheap?

 

Child birth is a very intensive affair from what I understand (never had kids, never will so can't speak directly). As such, it will cost a ton of money to be done in a hospital.

 

The biggest problem with US healthcare is the obscurity of the costs of care. Posting a medical bill really is meaningless as it doesn't convey any actual information. The hospital charges very different rates for those with insurance and without, contracted insurance and non-contracted insurance, low income and normal income, etc. We need some transparency more than anything right now.

[Stoffel]

Really??

We are still defending a white house failure after 6 years?

:rolleyes:

 

You might not agree with everything this administration does, but it's ridiculous to call him 1 a Muslim and 2 a dictator

He's neither one of them

[HellboundIRL]

The US also ranks among the lowest of all industrialised nations when it comes to maternal mortality rates, something is very wrong.

[spenser.d]

Why would you expect it to be cheap?

 

Child birth is a very intensive affair from what I understand (never had kids, never will so can't speak directly). As such, it will cost a ton of money to be done in a hospital.

 

The biggest problem with US healthcare is the obscurity of the costs of care. Posting a medical bill really is meaningless as it doesn't convey any actual information. The hospital charges very different rates for those with insurance and without, contracted insurance and non-contracted insurance, low income and normal income, etc. We need some transparency more than anything right now.

No they don't. The hospital "charges" the same amount to everyone (they actually do price everything out in what's called a chargemaster). You get to pay less if you can properly negotiate with them, like insurance companies do. That's precisely why chargemaster rates are so high, so that when they're negotiated lower, they still come out making a few hundred percent more than what it actually costs to them. They'll negotiate with low income people because a little bit of money is better than no money as well, but generally speaking, they have prices set for everything and those prices far exceed the actual cost of care.

[Astra.Xtreme]

Good luck providing free healthcare for a nation of 314 million people with 12% unemployment and an immigration problem....

 

The NUMBER ONE PROBLEM is how stupidly out of control the healthcare prices are.  Until somebody directly addresses that, there is absolutely no way in hell the entire population can have free healthcare.  This is a capitalist nation, which is now divided by hostile politics, so it's really not going to get any better anytime soon.

 

What us citizens can do as a nation is get a job and stop blaming all our damn problems on other people.  Hard work and personal responsibility is becoming extinct.