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Strategies & Market Trends : Dividend investing for retirement -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Koligman who wrote (29973)	11/3/2018 10:33:26 PM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34328

$3,000 for the doctors and $17,000 for the hospital How can three hours of hospital time cost $17,000? That's unbelievable. But I get your point, if there is any emergency medical situation we may get screwed. But if I were the person in your example but was insured, I would have paid ~$20,000 for sure for the family insurance policy, and then the deductible I think was $6,000? So I would be out of pocket $20,000 if I had no heart related false alarm (like the person in the example), and out of pocket $26,000 if I had the same false alarm. It would be more economical to be uninsured, even with the unexpected $20,000 false alarm. When you start annual health care costs with a definite $20,000 payment even if you never go to the hospital in the entire year, it's really hard to make the case for health insurance. In ten years we have never had a medical emergency that required that anyone use an ambulance, knock on wood. If I live in the US and I knew someone in our family was going to need $35,000 of health care service, we would probably relocate back to Manila and do the same thing for $5,000. So....it's only the emergency situation which causes the problems. Anyway, really depressing thing to think about. Almost worse than really getting sick! Well, not really, but depressing nonetheless.

To: John Koligman who wrote (29973)	11/4/2018 12:45:47 PM
From: maverick61	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34328

This whole "chargemaster" thing is not fully accurate Yes, every hospital / physician has a list of standard charges - just like any other business. It is what they charge. Insurance companies negotiate discounts off the list. But self-pay patients can get discounts off the list as well. You need to be upfront about it and inquire about self-pay / self-insured rates. Many physicians will offer them as will hospitals. But you need to ask - and preferably before any services are incurred. If someone doesn't want to but insurance or is able to just buy a catastrophic plan off the exchange, they simply need to find a physician who offers self pay discounted rates