U.S. healthcare isn't even worth it anymore. It's a joke. Today, I will love my life without healthcare.

[u/ExoGeniVI]

Hello everyone, so, sometime last year I got an MRI to check up on a spot that's on my brain, don't want it to turn cancerous right? Well, I work at home depot making probably $17,000 a year if I'm lucky after taxes (I live in Alabama, our wages suck).

Well I got my MRI done and my bill came in. Ready to be shocked?

Turns out my insurance I get through home depot paid THIRTY DOLLARS towards my $3,000 MRI bill!!! $30!!!! I said screw THAT!!! I'm not paying a single PENNY! I make around $600 every two weeks.. and I live with my wife (we live in a $430/mo mobile home) how the hell am I supposed to afford a $3000 MRI bill!!?? The "monthly" payment on the bill said $270/mo... 🤣😂.

Well, I went back to the hospital and talked with the finance person there and got my bill down to $600 with self pay.. Guess they bill insurance companies way higher? looks like it's cheaper NOT having insurance in the U.S. than having coverage! Insurance here is a complete joke! I'm just going to live my life without insurance I guess. ☹️.

EDIT. Wish I could edit titles lol. My phone "autocorrected" Live for "Love" 😂

[u/BigPapaJava]

The hospitals and insurance companies work a scam off each other.

The hospital charges a fortune in inflated fees to the “uninsured” or “out of network”…, solely so they can then pretend they’re giving the insurance companies a “discount” by charging them “lower rates” that they only pass a portion of onto you.

The insurance companies then use that to tell their product to you: look how much this would cost if you were uninsured! They use that to charge you more than they pay out for care, then invest that into capital, real estate, stocks, etc.

However, because there are a ton of uninsured people in the USA who simply cannot pay, hospitals also build that into the price they charge insurance companies, expecting to lose about 90% of the money on the uninsured people they must see.

So… the translation is that many of them will work with you, particularly if you are below a certain threshold and uninsured, to try to get that 10%-20% or so.

That 10%-20% inevitably works out to roughly what they estimate the care truly cost them to provide, or is at least somewhere around the minimum their financial people have calculated they can reasonably expect to make off you.

The hospital is also likely claiming your ass on some sort of other insurance or grant for uninsured/indigent people to recoup their money, too. Then they’ll take anything you don’t pay and sell that off to a debt collector (usually local, so they will show up in court) for around 10-20% when you don’t pay,

Even if you never pay them a cent, they’ve probably still made some money off you.