Originally Posted by jerry crump
No I'm not kidding you can easily negotiate that $10,000 bill down to $5,000 and as long as that doesn't happen several times a year you'll have the money in retirement accounts to pull out and pay it or you can work out low payment plans.
Anyone who is facing a choice between health insurance and retirement savings needs to put pencil to it. For some insurance is better but it isn't an automatic no brainer as some have stated.
I have always had health insurance mostly paid for by me individually but if my circumstances were different I would drop it.
Yes negotiating is a needed skill in this country for health care and not everybody knows it can be done. The poor certainly do not. And while the ER might not let an uninsured person die they will certainly not get the same level of care. My wife would not have gotten the MRI which saved her life.
Even tho I have insurance through my employer which runs about 12,000 a year for family coverage some of it pretax (we are a small company) it has cost me another 14,000 in addition this year. This is for deductibles, medication that the insurance company would rather I not have (co-pay is 20, 30 or 50 depending on if it is generic, regular or formulary which is a way to say the insurance company does not get a kick back (I'm sorry rebate)from the drug company ), doctors who are not in the network (hard to know in the ER) over reasonable or customary etc or other reasons they decided they will not pay.
My wifes recent hospitalization was over 175,000 which included surgeons and other care. Much of it was negotiated down by the insurance company so they paid out a little over 100,000. One doctor was not in the network and his bill was 6,000. The insurance company paid him 1,500 and we were expected to pick up the rest. We were able to get him to knock off 50% more.
And all this is with insurance. I make a tidy living. All of this would have wiped out a low income person. Being without health insurance is not a good financial option for you or your fellow citizens.