17x. Jesus.

Is the list of such places public? Sounds like very important information for people who need medical care. (Which is... everyone?)

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blackjack_ 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I was charged $6000 for literally walking into the ER of a hospital in 2022 when I had covid and was having trouble breathing. This did not include the 20 mins of tests they ran for me before telling me I was fine and booting me out within the hour, those were billed seperately. Literally just the cost of using the ER was $6000 (this was the adjusted price after insurance), in addition to anything else. As you can tell from this comment, I'm still mad about it.

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mancerayder a day ago | parent | next [-]

Which state is this? I've gotten lucky with my insurance, expecting big bills. But I think some state laws are stricter than others when it comes to Surprise Billing. Was your hospital in network?

	▲	blackjack_ a day ago \| parent [-]
		This was in California (greater Bay Area), and the hospital was in network, but some of the ER physicians ended up not being (not the source of this part of the bill). I had a high deductible plan (10k IIRC?) so that I could stock away cash in an HSA every month. I've since switched to a much lower deductible plan in case I needed to go to the ER again, but then I also to another county and have gotten much more reasonable bills at the hospital near me.

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mgkimsal 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

similar. i guess i got a bargain cause I got 2.5 hours in ER with a couple tests for only $4k! Adjusted down to .. $2300 after 'insurance' (which I was paying $500/month for, with a $7k deductible).

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saalweachter 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

One of the most important provisions of the ACA was the caps on the "medical loss ratio", the percent of insurance premiums paid out for medical care. The act required insurance plans to maintain a MLR no lower than (IIRC) 70-80%. Before then, plans (eg, targeting college kids) had MLRs as low as 10%.

(For comparison, Medicare/Medicaid has something like a 95% MLR, because it has low administrative overhead and isn't returning a profit to shareholders.)

17x upcharges, if they were extracted at the insurance level instead of the hospital level, would be the equivalent of a MLR of around 6%.

	▲	BobaFloutist 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		This of course has the unfortunate side affect of rewarding insurance companies for overpaying for medical care by allowing them to raise premiums and thus generate a higher profit.

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robotnikman 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This. I want to know which places to avoid at all costs.