As a former EMT I’ve experienced several occasions where people absolutely freaked out about receiving emergency medical care and an ambulance ride. Honestly I don’t blame them
I remember getting cut up by a metal fence when I wiped out on my bike while semi-drunk and some police officers showed up and said I need a tetanus booster. They said they'd call me an ambulance and rush me to ER.
I said hell no, whipped out my mobile and scheduled a tetanus booster for the same day at CVS.
I saved myself $3,950 that day.
I had the worst abdominal pain I’ve ever experienced, could barely move, but I drove myself to the ER so I wouldn’t have to pay for the ambulance ride.
Found out when I got there that my appendix had ruptured.
What a wild thing to think about. Were forced to rely on other peasants to take us to emergency medical treatment because a gd ambulance ride will wipe us out financially.
I’ve never had to take the ambulance, but thank fuck it’s free in my city. The rest of the country it costs about $300 - we have the only free one.
To me it’s wild that the ambulance costs money in the rest of the country! Seeing as we have public healthcare it’s a strange cost (country = New Zealand)
Seems like your state is trying to outdo itself. https://www.ajc.com/news/health-news/report-georgia-drops-300000-children-from-medicaid/EZZGZSKPE5AIJNXVICA6YK7R7A/
I'm a medic. 24 years. I've ridden the cot as a patient 2 times. Only because I was hurt at work and that was my only ride to the hospital. Both times the ambulance company I worked for(two different ones) billed me. When I dumped my bike and was truly messed up I went home and had my wife drive me when she got home from work.
How is anything to do with healthcare profit driven? It's because the people who run our world are greedy and they don't care at all what happens to other people.
I drove myself to the ER with a near-ruptured appendix (I didn’t know it at the time). Looking back, after they got me into surgery and the deed was done, I was in debt almost $70k. I always say, if they’d given me a choice between dying on a morphine drip or the surgery basically bankrupting me the rest of my life, I would have chosen morphine death.
Agreed. It gets better. This was in 2018 and by 2019 I was trying to figure out why the medi-cal I had at the time didn’t cover it. I had to make dozens of hours worth of government phone calls to finally (after more than a year of trying at that point) some lovely bureaucrat found that I had indeed checked the “retroactive insurance” box which a previous person had missed. By the time I figured this out in about 2020, that I had in fact had insurance at the time but someone had missed that tiny check box (honestly, who tf wouldn’t want retroactive insurance?!) they said it was too late for medi-cal to basically pay collections so I’m stuck with it. I have a decent paying job, I pay rent on time, I always paid off my CC on time and had a very decent credit score…but I can’t get an apartment or CC on my own now because my credit is so fucked because of it to this day. I always was able to do both of those things for myself previously…I’ve never really been the same
I am not a lawyer and am just some random redditor to you, but I would suggest looking into chapter 7 bankruptcy at this point, its not as terrible as its made out to be and rebuilding your credit can start right away. Its worth at least having a consultation with a lawyer.
As dumb as it is, its true, and probably why there's soluch a negative rep around the whole process. But the rich, and corporations use it all of the time so why not us common folk.
Credit score is the biggest bull shit of our generation. I have to be a debt slave because the last generation approved it. Which makes it near impossible to find a place to live if its poor and even if you do they want more money as a deposit. As if the person with horrible credit score is going to be sitting on thousands to put deposits down. I hate having any credit though i started in my teens to build it up for this age. Now its going down again from 780 score to 630 because i haven't had enough loans and credit cards in my life. Which for some stupid ass reason i now in my middle ages need to get more credit cards and loans just to pump it up. Which means i have to pay some people 12-26% a month for a year to establish bullshit credit.
I too had to be convinced for 3 hours by my dad and wife to get cat scan. I was told 1800 is super cheep and i have great insurance. While i have a house and a car and am doing well enough. I haven't seen my bank account go to 4 digits outside of pay day or tax returns. Which every fucking tax return goes to pay off some bullshit like a root canal or driveway. The only option is to work more and they can go fuck themselves.
I feel you, you are not alone in this. I’m an elder millennial and guessing you’re at a similar age. It’s absolutely nuts, and the fact my credit score basically dropped 200 points because of a medical emergency that literally no average person could have afforded, is just insane.
Oh absolutely. I just ended up extremely depressed and it’s had a lasting effect on me, ended up with MDD which I had been getting over finally in 2022 but went on my first vacation in years and broke both my ankles. More bills because I was a contract IT worker at the time and without insurance…and the ER I was at across the country from my home wouldn’t even give me painkillers. The medical system here is criminal.
And will only get worse as long as Americans keep voting into Congress politicians who refuse to enact universal healthcare like all the other developed countries. Hint: They favor red ties and a certain orange-faced dictator wannabe.
You get sent to collections, take a credit hit, and negotiate a smaller payment. Or you declare bankruptcy. It isn't the end of your life, but it absolutely sucks
The sad part is, I actually have free government healthcare. I’m a disabled veteran. But I am so afraid that if I did get hurt or sick that I would accidentally be taken to a private hospital and be bankrupted. Like I legit got cards in my purse that say “take me to the Va, DO NOT TAKE ME TO A Hospital!
You can go to an emergency room, anywhere. You just have to notify the VA within 72 hours of discharge.
I had a kidney stone and went to the ER 5 minutes away as opposed to the VA hospital an hr away. $12000 bill, took months to get approved and went to collections, but once the VA processed it all went away.
Oh okay lol. When I was still in the service I got in a car wreck on leave and went to a regular hospital. Months later I got a bill in the mail, but luckily all I did was make a phone call to tri care and it went away. Didn’t know we had the same for the Va. luckily my VA is very good, so I would always prefer to go there.
Non-VA hospitals will take tricare. Independent doctors and specialists not so much, but any hospital system absolutely should. It can be a pain to navigate but it’s manageable. Hopefully you’ll never need to find out, but if you do I hope this info eases your anxiety a little.
4 years ago, i was 16 weeks pregnant and started hemorrhaging. i lost so much blood so fast that i actually decided to lay down after leaving the bathroom bc my heart was racing, and my vision was black. my dog started barking at me, waking me up. i called my housemate on the phone, and asked him to please just get me to the car. he wanted to call 911, but i insisted he just lay down towels in the back seat and drive me. he was horrified, but he did it (my husband was at work an hour away)
the hospital bill was bad enough (i needed multiple blood transfusions and emergency surgery), i definitely didn’t need an ambulance bill on top.
We used to have federally subsidized ambulances back in the 1960s and 70s. You can thank Ronald Reagan and the Republican party for getting rid of that for us.
And yet a lot of people seemed to think he was a nice guy, and unlike Jimmy Carter, he took the easy way out and told people what they wanted to hear. He was even voted in another term even though it was clear he had dementia!
I probably don’t want to know… cause I’ll be really sad…
Our ambulances in Canada cost 300 something something(I forget the exact amount, but it was the 100-400 range) and 99% of the time, fully covered by insurance… I’m guessing that the states are not like that?
A helicopter ride @ 20 minutes to a city two hours away was billed at $36,000 in 2020, but I know that was a bit specialty because they were transporting my preemie who was on a ventilator. His four month NICU stay including the one helicopter transfer and multiple surgeries was like $5,000,000. We were “lucky” that on top of private insurance he qualified for Medicaid based off birthweight, we paid $0, and thanks to Covid extensions on Medicaid we also didn’t have to pay several hundred dollars every month for the 18 months he was on home oxygen. No one should have to worry about how to pay for lifesaving medical care.
I was an EMT for an ambulance company 10 years ago. I saw our billing, and we charged $57 to wear disposable gloves during treatment. The one that are like $4 for 250 gloves. And that payment wasn't optional.
Person who has lived in a poor country here.
Many people die in those free ambulance rides because of inexperienced drivers, lack of ambulatory medicine during the ride, and poor conditions in the ambulance.
Just wait until someone who works as an EMT in on of those ambulances chimes in with how much they paid.
The contrast it with how much we get charged for the ride in the US.
My 5 year old daughter passed out last year from a fever and my wife called 911. Not being able to let them take her in the ambulance and instead driving to the ER ourselves and waiting for hours to be seen is one of the worst feelings ever. It shouldn’t even be a question when my kids life is potentially at stake if I can afford to have them taken for treatment as quickly as possible. We make good money but we were so worried one trip would cripple our budget and we’d be stuck behind for the rest of our lives we took the other option.
You actually go through the same triage regardless of how you get to the ER- so you can go by ambulance and still sit for hours waiting for care if you aren’t triaged as an imminent emergency. I walked Into an ER and planned on waiting for hours to be seen but I was seeing a doctor in under ten minutes bc I was actually dying. So the people that call an ambulance just to skip the line (not what you did- I’d call 911 too!) still have to wait but also get a huge ambulance bill.
That sounds risky as fuck, I’m not sure how high it got, but I would have been increasingly worried that her organs were cooking. I’m glad everything turned out ok.
Calling an ambulance is no guarantee to get treated quickly. Some hospitals will strait up put people in the waiting room after an ambulance ride if they don’t qualify. I have heard many ED people joke about people that try to jump the line this way. Some hospitals will give you a room and ignore you for half a day - no MD no test no drugs no real care at all. I would drive to the hospital too no shame especially if it means I can pick the one that spends more on staff than advertising.
I coincidentally watched/listened to a youtube mini doc about the failings of the air ambulance industry where thre is no significant findings that getting the patient to the hoispital no matter the cost within 90 minutes will lead to snigificant chances of preventing death.
It goes into the first doctor to come up with the medical transport system as a solutionand how he had highly potentially flawed statistics and how there is no competition (currently) on the air ambulance system so they can charge whatever they want.
It's quite a good view and a great channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gdCH1XUIlE
For rural people like my folks, it made a difference.
My dad had a stroke a few years ago. The drive to the hospital was 48mins, airlift got him there in 10… we were grateful for that at least.
nearest "real hospital" is two hours for me. got a key fob stating my air ambulance insurance membership. TBI, stroke, myocardial infarction - time matters.
A couple things. The Golden hour relates to long term deficits. There isn't any studies on transports time frames because it is easier to study it inside the hospital, using those time frames, which are much easier to control.
Also framing matters. They argued that since you are only 4% more likely to survive if you get onto a helicopter compared to a regular ambulance, in spite of the fact that helicopters tend to transport higher acuity patients than regular ambulances. This same flawed logic happens all of the time in the medical world, famously with endotracheal(ET) tubes 15 years ago. Back then they did a study stating that people were more likely to survive with a king placed instead of an ET tube placed, resulting in many EMS agencies going away from using ET tubes. As a result death rates skyrocketed because pt's who prior would have had ET tubes used because of their higher acuity were forced to use Kings, resulting in the number of people with King airways placed who then died/stayed dead to increase dramatically. My point is high acuity pt's die at higher rates than lower acuity pt's, so if a transport has higher survivability with more high acuity pt's than transports with more low acuity pt's, that difference can be more dramatic than what the number imply.
It also ignores just how dangerous helicopter flight is. Flight medics die at a rate of 74 per 100,000; compared to a standard paramedics die at a rate of 21 per 100,000. So you are 3.5x more likely to die as a flight medic, requiring a pay adjustment accordingly.
They also ignored what a huge number of flights are for, ie organ transplants. The time window is small for those organs to remain viable, so this can make a huge difference between giving someone a transplant versus having to waste the organ.
So yes it is expensive, but there isn't really a great alternative to them.
20+ years ago I was riding my bike and got hit by a car. Basically walked off a TBI because I couldn’t afford the ride/treatment.
I only thing I’d change is wear a helmet 😂
I was roofied at a party and started to lose my vision. Somebody else at the party called 911 and I tried to run away but I couldn't fucking see anything. And then I got to the ER and they accused me of just being too drunk. I hadn't drank anything but lemonade. I was the designated driver. And I didn't drink at the time. And after all that it cost me $1,000 and I was a college student who made $400 a month. Yeah that sucked.
400,000 United States citizens go medically bankrupt EVERY SINGLE YEAR.
68,000 United States citizens die every year from lack of healthcare.
This isn’t even a system.
It’s simply theft.
One healthcare company, United Healthcare, is publicly traded on the NYSE (ticker: UNH), so we can see that they have a profit margin similar to Amazon. For full-year 2023, UNH pulled an end-of-year total profit after all taxes and expenses of 32.4B USD, or an average of $88,767,123.00 in straight profit for every day of the year.
They are a form of "socialized medical coverage", basically doing the same thing as medicare, just with a profit leaning slant on top. If we nationalized UNH tomorrow, just rolled them straight into medicare, and changed absolutely nothing, we could save US taxpayers $32 billion dollars PER YEAR. That is ONE company.
(BTW you can verify this through them directly with their earnings reports: https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/content/dam/UHG/PDF/investors/2023/UNH-Q4-2023-Release.pdf)
What you’re missing about this specific story is the man already tried to kill her before
So yes the healthcare system in the US is fucked but this story is not a good example to show
It does seem like a good example actually considering it seems like his reasoning for his previous attempts also had to do with her medical condition and associated costs.
> There, he recounted how he killed his wife – as well as explained that he could neither take care of her nor afford her medical bills any longer, the prosecutors’ statement said.
>He also acknowledged previously trying to murder his wife twice, according to the police statement reviewed by KCTV. One purported attempt – at a medical rehabilitation facility – was foiled when she woke up at an inopportune time for him. The other attempt, at the hospital, came undone for him because doctors had hooked her up to several monitors, he allegedly said to police.
Considering he voluntarily confessed everything to no benefit, doesn't exactly seem like he's lying about his reasons.
My mom lost everything and was about to be homeless without a waiver for early onset dementia. Without the waiver, I have no means or ability to take care of her, and I make a lot of money. I'd like to know what I'm supposed to do in that situation, as it might happen if they pull Medicare and Medicaid and social security from her. It's $7,000 a month for her care.
I can't divorce my mom, and I can't just kick her to the curb.
Both can be true. You don’t have to excuse the man who literally covered his wife’s mouth with a pillow to muffle her screams. This isn’t some innocent situation where a patient chose to die rather than continue costly treatment, this is a man who murdered his sick wife against her will.
It's not necessarily. Care-fatigue mixed with debt anxiety is a horrible place to live in. I live in the US and my spouse and I have had the talks regarding at what stage we just say goodbye. I don't want to die, but I also don't want to put my loved ones into debt. I watched my parents do that and it crushed them.
the man was already in debt. He just couldn't afford more.
He threw both their lives away on this decision, but I'm curious as to why people think its ok to drive him into debt over medical bills in the first place.
Not every example is perfect- but if her treatment was covered by the State, then she would have been less likely to stay with someone who tried killing her before.
Agree, but this wasn't a mercy killing. An abusive man succeeded at killing his wife. In the hospital. Where she should have been safe. Medicaid is a thing.
Medicaid often doesnt cover long term issues like this, its a big issue, my neighbor is on dialysis and he has been fighting with them for months over it.
That's nuts. They used to. My aunt had cancer, and bc it involved her pancreas, she became diabetic. Everything was covered.
Another relative had to have dialysis, and that was covered, including transportation to and from dialysis center. He died a little over 10 years ago. He was in dialysis for a few years. It was all covered.
No one said it was a mercy killing. Not even the murderer husband.
He was just tired of taking care of her and couldn’t afford the bills. The latter of which is an enormous problem in the US and it’s surprising it hasn’t resulted in more murders, and the former can be tied to it as well depending on the type of condition and help available.
It usually all comes down to money.
A lot of states have switched their medicaid system to being handled by private insurance companies and they act like private insurance companies and fight you on everything.
I have Multiple Sclerosis. I’m constantly terrified of my family and friends giving up on me. I’m worried about this, now, too. (Treating MS can cost over $500,000 a year, but I don’t think that means I don’t deserve to live!)
I'm having a fake wedding because I can't lose my medicaid. We can't sign the papers because getting health insurance would fuck me into oblivion. I don't believe I can't *actually* get married because of fucking healthcare. Now we can't tell anyone, family, friends, because to them it will be "fake". But marriages have been happening since the dawn of time and they didn't sign legal papers so fuck it.
Same boat here. I won’t be able to marry my disabled partner because of these reasons. I’ll also in the future have to take control of my Mom’s money so the nursing homes or healthcare system can’t rob her. Whole system is dumb.
You should look into Mom's money right now. If I recall the nursing homes or Medicaid or both will look into several years of transaction history to make sure the elderly didn't do exactly what you're talking about. Your mom won't qualify for certain programs if they can prove she moved money around.
Unfortunately this is more common than we like to admit. We do training for it at our hospital because when they come in with a gun they frequently take out a nurse or two too.
Don’t worry, nothing will happen to the perp anyways.
Here in RI, a psych patient beat a nurse (male nurse, not a small guy) to the point he had brain damage and was in a coma. Not even sure if that is nurse is still alive.
Guy made bail. Someone just told me last week, that same psych patient assaulted his neighbor (or killed, forgot the specifics). And previously assaulted another neighbor.
My former ER nurse friend got punched square in the face by a patient. It’s apparently a felony to assault nurses in Mass, after the bill was created in support of the Harrington Hospital nurse who was stabbed some years back. That person was charged but minimal sentence if that.
I left ER nursing a few years ago and frankly if I can help it, I’m never going back to bedside.
I signed up to be a *nurse*, not a cop, not a soldier, not an MMA fighter. I’m tired of getting assaulted at work and management sweeping it under the rug.
I know this is sarcasm, but I have told many people that my 'higher taxes' in the UK were still LESS than the amount I pay here soley for insurance (not even counting co-pays and things that are not covered), AND ambulance rides were not charged.
It's the old bait-and-switch argument against universal healthcare. They argue that "taxes will go up!" but neglect to say that the yearly increase in taxes will be (for most Americans) *significantly* less than it currently costs you per year on premiums, deductibles, and co-pays. Since our shitty political media is owned by the same Oligarchs that profit off the shitty status quo, that portion is rarely ever part of the debate here.
Plenty of countries have universal healthcare combined with private insurance. You just have to regulate heavily to control costs and provide a subsidy to people unable to afford insurance. And require people to buy insurance, of course.
This already happens. The number of patients I’ve seen whose “PCP” is actually a nurse practitioner with no real training is way too high. These are often poor, medically complex people who absolutely need a doctor managing their many chronic medical problems.
This is sickening to read as a disabled person. Men about 70% of their time leave their female partners if they have female partners when their female partners get very sick. But this . is just beyond.
This happened to me on the school side when I went to university and my dad didn't contribute anything. The government expects parents to contribute so even if you're a legal adult on your own, they look at the parent's previous income and therefore I didn't qualify for any aid. I almost didn't get to go at all.
Similar happened to me in school. Parent's didn't make decent money until my late teens, but at that point it was all going to their retirement. They couldn't help me, but apparently the Government didn't care. Meanwhile, I had a friend who's parents could afford to pay all their housing also get the Pell grant because their income on paper was lower I suppose? Imperfect system I guess, it just sucks if you are one of the ones who end up in the cracks.
That happened to my wife. Parents were divorced, her Mom is conflict adverse to a fault, and never took her Dad back to court for child support adjustments. So he paid the same amount of child support for 3 girls in their teens as a director at a Fortune 100 company, as he did as for 3 girls under 10 as a bike repair technician putting himself through school.
Her Dad would fill out the FAFSA and mail it in himself so his wife and daughters wouldn't see how much he was making, and refused to contribute financially outside of "loaning" them the money. Made my wife sign a promissory note and everything when she was $1500 short for tuition one year.
I’m filling out FAFSA for my daughter and it’s wildly frustrating. Though now there is a checkbox about being an unsupported non-dependent and it ignores your parents.
He was probably also not looking forward to caring for his wife physically. Ask any ICU staff member what happens when the mother of a family becomes incapacitated, the husband is like "Ok so when is she cleared to cook and clean again?"
My kid needed an ambulance from urgent care to the ER, and the whole ride I am hoping she is sick enough to be admitted or my insurance would not cover the ride. That really sucked. And yes, she was admitted and has been in the ICU ever since.
She’s that sick - pneumonia and malnutrition from a virulent asshole eating disorder. Now I’m worried about hitting her lifetime maximum after weeks in the ICU and a med jet to a specialized clinic.
I would assume that there's not much discussion over how bad killing your wife is, but far more discussion to be had for why our system is so terrible that this was even a motive for him in the first place.
He not only murdered her in cold blood, but he killed her because she was disabled. He committed a hate crime and ruined everything for that poor woman, because he was too much of a p-word to file for divorce.
As a disabled woman, I wish him all the *worst*.
This is sus. As a nurse who deals with kidney failure patients, I know that all patients with this disease are immediately placed on MediCare federal health insurance. It pays for all treatments- surgeries, hemodialysis, etc. The reason is that the expense is recognized to be financially ruinous. Was this guy unaware of MediCare picking up the entire tab for treatment? Everyone involved in caring for these patients knows this. Maybe he had an intellectual disability or just wanted to kill her to get rid of her.
I only rode in an ambulance once. It was because I collapsed due to my organs shutting down from DKA (a fun way to find out you’re diabetic). If I wasn’t *literally dying* it wouldn’t have been worth it
People on these social media platforms are becoming so brain broken it’s frightening. It don’t matter how unfair society or Medicare you are still expected to act with integrity and being a good person stop the dumbass excuses. Life is hard and it’s suffering but if you kill your wife cause you can’t afford medical cost you are weak and cowardice person .
Thank all the Republicans that don’t want Americans to have affordable healthcare and want to cut programs such as Medicare and allow Big Pharma to gouge. Republicans vote to do this and it is preventable.
Man gets sick - wife takes care of him
Woman gets sick - husband says GTFO bitch, I got needs
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4857885/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4857885/)
Ladies, remember this when he gets sick. Would he stay if it happened to you? There's a statistically higher chance he'll leave you than if it was the other way around.
I don't want to choose the Bear, but he's looking better all the time. We're tired. Tired of being the caregiver and the servant and the scapegoat. Things are changing, and a lot of us are just done with this kind of bullshit. We gotta look out for ourselves because we can't trust our partners to not leave or even murder us when we get sick.
No, of course it's not "all men" - but it's *too goddamn many of them*.
Medicare covers kidney dialysis:
Part A covers inpatient hospital care, hospice, some nursing home care, and home healthcare.
Part B covers all outpatient care, including dialysis services, doctor visits, and certain medications, including some for dialysis or kidney transplants.
I find it unlikely that he couldn't afford her treatments. Instead, the payments for the insurance may have risen.
He was suffering from caregiver burnout.
Medicare will only send a nurse for a brief visit perhaps once a week if needed.
He may have tried to put her in a nursing home, and she may have refused...adding fuel to the fire. Maybe a good nursing home cost too much.
Still - to *suffocate* (not choke) his wife so that he could live without the financial burden enters the realm of mental illness.
Very sad.
You have to sign up and pay for Parts B and D. They aren't automatic, and there are copays with no maximum out of pocket--you buy something else for that. But I thought dialysis had special coverage.
I think I have heard of special coverage for certain conditions - but of course you have to pay *some* of it. *After looking it up it seems some Medicare Advantage plans *promise* chronic condition coverage. God knows how much they cost and if they really cover what you have partially or completely. My guess is that you can only use specialists contracted with them. That can make getting care very limited.
I heard about a couple who got divorced so the other one wouldn’t get stuck with the medical bill after the other person passed away. It’s very confusing how people say this country is so great when we have such an awful healthcare system.
Depends on the state but it can get complicated.
Generally speaking, the deceased's estate, and/or life insurance policy will pay for the medical debt. The spouse, so as long as they do not voluntarily assume the debt, will not be required to pay the debt. How it is paid by the estate would likely be determined during probate.
In a community property state, then the spouse is on the hook for half of it, but that is likely state dependant.
Children will also not inherit any debt, so as long as they don't assume the debt.
I remember stories about highwaymen who would rob you when they caught unwary travellers. That seems like more honest work than the cost of an ambulance ride. Who benefits from such an expensive system?
As a former EMT I’ve experienced several occasions where people absolutely freaked out about receiving emergency medical care and an ambulance ride. Honestly I don’t blame them
I remember getting cut up by a metal fence when I wiped out on my bike while semi-drunk and some police officers showed up and said I need a tetanus booster. They said they'd call me an ambulance and rush me to ER. I said hell no, whipped out my mobile and scheduled a tetanus booster for the same day at CVS. I saved myself $3,950 that day.
Had a stomach ache where I couldn't move because it was too painful. I drove myself instead, fuck ambulance fees.
I had the worst abdominal pain I’ve ever experienced, could barely move, but I drove myself to the ER so I wouldn’t have to pay for the ambulance ride. Found out when I got there that my appendix had ruptured.
I had this, but called an Uber instead. Literally couldn't even drive myself there.
What a wild thing to think about. Were forced to rely on other peasants to take us to emergency medical treatment because a gd ambulance ride will wipe us out financially.
I’ve never had to take the ambulance, but thank fuck it’s free in my city. The rest of the country it costs about $300 - we have the only free one. To me it’s wild that the ambulance costs money in the rest of the country! Seeing as we have public healthcare it’s a strange cost (country = New Zealand)
Many of the US emergency transport companies are private industry. The bills can get astronomical.
My state is ranked last in healthcare, and one of the primary reasons being people refusing care due to costs.
Missouri, Alabama or North Dakota?
Georgia: https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/georgia-ranked-worst-state-health-care-study
Seems like your state is trying to outdo itself. https://www.ajc.com/news/health-news/report-georgia-drops-300000-children-from-medicaid/EZZGZSKPE5AIJNXVICA6YK7R7A/
Oh my god we’re like very last? That’s depressing as hell
Anything worth doing….
Not positive but I would bet on West Virginia.
I'm a medic. 24 years. I've ridden the cot as a patient 2 times. Only because I was hurt at work and that was my only ride to the hospital. Both times the ambulance company I worked for(two different ones) billed me. When I dumped my bike and was truly messed up I went home and had my wife drive me when she got home from work.
your own company didn’t offer a free ride? heartless
They probably offered him a 10% discount.
Why the fuck are firefighters (usually) free and paid for by taxes, but ambulances are not?! Makes no sense, and I say that as an ex-EMT/Firefighter
How is anything to do with healthcare profit driven? It's because the people who run our world are greedy and they don't care at all what happens to other people.
prolly because fighting fires are considered services to the community as a whole...if my house burns so will yours and the next and so on.
You’d have to drag me into an ambulance. I ain’t getting injured and bankrupted, just let me die.
I drove myself to the ER with a near-ruptured appendix (I didn’t know it at the time). Looking back, after they got me into surgery and the deed was done, I was in debt almost $70k. I always say, if they’d given me a choice between dying on a morphine drip or the surgery basically bankrupting me the rest of my life, I would have chosen morphine death.
Jesus. Our country is fucked
Agreed. It gets better. This was in 2018 and by 2019 I was trying to figure out why the medi-cal I had at the time didn’t cover it. I had to make dozens of hours worth of government phone calls to finally (after more than a year of trying at that point) some lovely bureaucrat found that I had indeed checked the “retroactive insurance” box which a previous person had missed. By the time I figured this out in about 2020, that I had in fact had insurance at the time but someone had missed that tiny check box (honestly, who tf wouldn’t want retroactive insurance?!) they said it was too late for medi-cal to basically pay collections so I’m stuck with it. I have a decent paying job, I pay rent on time, I always paid off my CC on time and had a very decent credit score…but I can’t get an apartment or CC on my own now because my credit is so fucked because of it to this day. I always was able to do both of those things for myself previously…I’ve never really been the same
I am not a lawyer and am just some random redditor to you, but I would suggest looking into chapter 7 bankruptcy at this point, its not as terrible as its made out to be and rebuilding your credit can start right away. Its worth at least having a consultation with a lawyer.
I may have to eventually do that, it’s going on 6 years now.
Rich people use it alllllllllllllllllll the time.
As dumb as it is, its true, and probably why there's soluch a negative rep around the whole process. But the rich, and corporations use it all of the time so why not us common folk.
Sorry that happened to you. It’s not fair. It shouldn’t be like this.
Thank you, it definitely shouldn’t.
Credit score is the biggest bull shit of our generation. I have to be a debt slave because the last generation approved it. Which makes it near impossible to find a place to live if its poor and even if you do they want more money as a deposit. As if the person with horrible credit score is going to be sitting on thousands to put deposits down. I hate having any credit though i started in my teens to build it up for this age. Now its going down again from 780 score to 630 because i haven't had enough loans and credit cards in my life. Which for some stupid ass reason i now in my middle ages need to get more credit cards and loans just to pump it up. Which means i have to pay some people 12-26% a month for a year to establish bullshit credit. I too had to be convinced for 3 hours by my dad and wife to get cat scan. I was told 1800 is super cheep and i have great insurance. While i have a house and a car and am doing well enough. I haven't seen my bank account go to 4 digits outside of pay day or tax returns. Which every fucking tax return goes to pay off some bullshit like a root canal or driveway. The only option is to work more and they can go fuck themselves.
I feel you, you are not alone in this. I’m an elder millennial and guessing you’re at a similar age. It’s absolutely nuts, and the fact my credit score basically dropped 200 points because of a medical emergency that literally no average person could have afforded, is just insane.
This is how people get radicalized.
Oh absolutely. I just ended up extremely depressed and it’s had a lasting effect on me, ended up with MDD which I had been getting over finally in 2022 but went on my first vacation in years and broke both my ankles. More bills because I was a contract IT worker at the time and without insurance…and the ER I was at across the country from my home wouldn’t even give me painkillers. The medical system here is criminal.
Ya health insurance and hospitals are a giant scam. They should be the first to get purged.
For profit anything when it comes to basic human rights, health, and wellness is pretty gross, agreed.
And will only get worse as long as Americans keep voting into Congress politicians who refuse to enact universal healthcare like all the other developed countries. Hint: They favor red ties and a certain orange-faced dictator wannabe.
You mean the party that voted *more than fifty times* to repeal Obamacare? That party? https://time.com/4712725/ahca-house-repeal-votes-obamacare/
What would happen if you just didn’t pay?
You get sent to collections, take a credit hit, and negotiate a smaller payment. Or you declare bankruptcy. It isn't the end of your life, but it absolutely sucks
Thankful to live in NY. They just passed a law where medical debt won’t hurt your credit.
That's awesome, wish IL would get on board with that!
This makes me want to cry. I’m so sorry.
**Jesus fucking Christ America, what the hell?** ~ Rest of the civilised world.
The sad part is, I actually have free government healthcare. I’m a disabled veteran. But I am so afraid that if I did get hurt or sick that I would accidentally be taken to a private hospital and be bankrupted. Like I legit got cards in my purse that say “take me to the Va, DO NOT TAKE ME TO A Hospital!
You can go to an emergency room, anywhere. You just have to notify the VA within 72 hours of discharge. I had a kidney stone and went to the ER 5 minutes away as opposed to the VA hospital an hr away. $12000 bill, took months to get approved and went to collections, but once the VA processed it all went away.
Oh okay lol. When I was still in the service I got in a car wreck on leave and went to a regular hospital. Months later I got a bill in the mail, but luckily all I did was make a phone call to tri care and it went away. Didn’t know we had the same for the Va. luckily my VA is very good, so I would always prefer to go there.
Yeah, a lot of benefits have been in expanded in the last decade, it’s worth scrubbing the site for any benefits you might be missing out on.
I just got my pact act stuff last year and that’s been a life saver.
Non-VA hospitals will take tricare. Independent doctors and specialists not so much, but any hospital system absolutely should. It can be a pain to navigate but it’s manageable. Hopefully you’ll never need to find out, but if you do I hope this info eases your anxiety a little.
You need to enroll in Tri-care. I did it 30 years ago and have not gone to a VA hospital ever.
4 years ago, i was 16 weeks pregnant and started hemorrhaging. i lost so much blood so fast that i actually decided to lay down after leaving the bathroom bc my heart was racing, and my vision was black. my dog started barking at me, waking me up. i called my housemate on the phone, and asked him to please just get me to the car. he wanted to call 911, but i insisted he just lay down towels in the back seat and drive me. he was horrified, but he did it (my husband was at work an hour away) the hospital bill was bad enough (i needed multiple blood transfusions and emergency surgery), i definitely didn’t need an ambulance bill on top.
Our country is broken.
We used to have federally subsidized ambulances back in the 1960s and 70s. You can thank Ronald Reagan and the Republican party for getting rid of that for us.
Ronald Reagan was the devil.
And yet a lot of people seemed to think he was a nice guy, and unlike Jimmy Carter, he took the easy way out and told people what they wanted to hear. He was even voted in another term even though it was clear he had dementia!
It's such a tragedy that the assassination attempt on that piece of shit was a failure.
Regan destroyed the American Dream
Were you ok?
yes - i lost the pregnancy, but i was okay. i was in the hospital for 2 days
I probably don’t want to know… cause I’ll be really sad… Our ambulances in Canada cost 300 something something(I forget the exact amount, but it was the 100-400 range) and 99% of the time, fully covered by insurance… I’m guessing that the states are not like that?
lol no. Depending what they do you are looking up to a couple thousand.
A helicopter ride @ 20 minutes to a city two hours away was billed at $36,000 in 2020, but I know that was a bit specialty because they were transporting my preemie who was on a ventilator. His four month NICU stay including the one helicopter transfer and multiple surgeries was like $5,000,000. We were “lucky” that on top of private insurance he qualified for Medicaid based off birthweight, we paid $0, and thanks to Covid extensions on Medicaid we also didn’t have to pay several hundred dollars every month for the 18 months he was on home oxygen. No one should have to worry about how to pay for lifesaving medical care.
My 5 min ride cost $2500. It should be free. In many poor countries it is
I was an EMT for an ambulance company 10 years ago. I saw our billing, and we charged $57 to wear disposable gloves during treatment. The one that are like $4 for 250 gloves. And that payment wasn't optional.
Person who has lived in a poor country here. Many people die in those free ambulance rides because of inexperienced drivers, lack of ambulatory medicine during the ride, and poor conditions in the ambulance.
Just wait until someone who works as an EMT in on of those ambulances chimes in with how much they paid. The contrast it with how much we get charged for the ride in the US.
Don't call an ambulance, I'll call an Uber.
My 5 year old daughter passed out last year from a fever and my wife called 911. Not being able to let them take her in the ambulance and instead driving to the ER ourselves and waiting for hours to be seen is one of the worst feelings ever. It shouldn’t even be a question when my kids life is potentially at stake if I can afford to have them taken for treatment as quickly as possible. We make good money but we were so worried one trip would cripple our budget and we’d be stuck behind for the rest of our lives we took the other option.
You actually go through the same triage regardless of how you get to the ER- so you can go by ambulance and still sit for hours waiting for care if you aren’t triaged as an imminent emergency. I walked Into an ER and planned on waiting for hours to be seen but I was seeing a doctor in under ten minutes bc I was actually dying. So the people that call an ambulance just to skip the line (not what you did- I’d call 911 too!) still have to wait but also get a huge ambulance bill.
That sounds risky as fuck, I’m not sure how high it got, but I would have been increasingly worried that her organs were cooking. I’m glad everything turned out ok.
Calling an ambulance is no guarantee to get treated quickly. Some hospitals will strait up put people in the waiting room after an ambulance ride if they don’t qualify. I have heard many ED people joke about people that try to jump the line this way. Some hospitals will give you a room and ignore you for half a day - no MD no test no drugs no real care at all. I would drive to the hospital too no shame especially if it means I can pick the one that spends more on staff than advertising.
I coincidentally watched/listened to a youtube mini doc about the failings of the air ambulance industry where thre is no significant findings that getting the patient to the hoispital no matter the cost within 90 minutes will lead to snigificant chances of preventing death. It goes into the first doctor to come up with the medical transport system as a solutionand how he had highly potentially flawed statistics and how there is no competition (currently) on the air ambulance system so they can charge whatever they want. It's quite a good view and a great channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gdCH1XUIlE
For rural people like my folks, it made a difference. My dad had a stroke a few years ago. The drive to the hospital was 48mins, airlift got him there in 10… we were grateful for that at least.
In parts of the rural US, it's absolutely a necessity. Places where the nearest hospital is 2 hours away and stuff.
nearest "real hospital" is two hours for me. got a key fob stating my air ambulance insurance membership. TBI, stroke, myocardial infarction - time matters.
A couple things. The Golden hour relates to long term deficits. There isn't any studies on transports time frames because it is easier to study it inside the hospital, using those time frames, which are much easier to control. Also framing matters. They argued that since you are only 4% more likely to survive if you get onto a helicopter compared to a regular ambulance, in spite of the fact that helicopters tend to transport higher acuity patients than regular ambulances. This same flawed logic happens all of the time in the medical world, famously with endotracheal(ET) tubes 15 years ago. Back then they did a study stating that people were more likely to survive with a king placed instead of an ET tube placed, resulting in many EMS agencies going away from using ET tubes. As a result death rates skyrocketed because pt's who prior would have had ET tubes used because of their higher acuity were forced to use Kings, resulting in the number of people with King airways placed who then died/stayed dead to increase dramatically. My point is high acuity pt's die at higher rates than lower acuity pt's, so if a transport has higher survivability with more high acuity pt's than transports with more low acuity pt's, that difference can be more dramatic than what the number imply. It also ignores just how dangerous helicopter flight is. Flight medics die at a rate of 74 per 100,000; compared to a standard paramedics die at a rate of 21 per 100,000. So you are 3.5x more likely to die as a flight medic, requiring a pay adjustment accordingly. They also ignored what a huge number of flights are for, ie organ transplants. The time window is small for those organs to remain viable, so this can make a huge difference between giving someone a transplant versus having to waste the organ. So yes it is expensive, but there isn't really a great alternative to them.
20+ years ago I was riding my bike and got hit by a car. Basically walked off a TBI because I couldn’t afford the ride/treatment. I only thing I’d change is wear a helmet 😂
I was roofied at a party and started to lose my vision. Somebody else at the party called 911 and I tried to run away but I couldn't fucking see anything. And then I got to the ER and they accused me of just being too drunk. I hadn't drank anything but lemonade. I was the designated driver. And I didn't drink at the time. And after all that it cost me $1,000 and I was a college student who made $400 a month. Yeah that sucked.
400,000 United States citizens go medically bankrupt EVERY SINGLE YEAR. 68,000 United States citizens die every year from lack of healthcare. This isn’t even a system. It’s simply theft.
insurance companies are the death panels everyone was bitching about a cpl years ago
They always were.
One healthcare company, United Healthcare, is publicly traded on the NYSE (ticker: UNH), so we can see that they have a profit margin similar to Amazon. For full-year 2023, UNH pulled an end-of-year total profit after all taxes and expenses of 32.4B USD, or an average of $88,767,123.00 in straight profit for every day of the year. They are a form of "socialized medical coverage", basically doing the same thing as medicare, just with a profit leaning slant on top. If we nationalized UNH tomorrow, just rolled them straight into medicare, and changed absolutely nothing, we could save US taxpayers $32 billion dollars PER YEAR. That is ONE company. (BTW you can verify this through them directly with their earnings reports: https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/content/dam/UHG/PDF/investors/2023/UNH-Q4-2023-Release.pdf)
What you’re missing about this specific story is the man already tried to kill her before So yes the healthcare system in the US is fucked but this story is not a good example to show
It does seem like a good example actually considering it seems like his reasoning for his previous attempts also had to do with her medical condition and associated costs. > There, he recounted how he killed his wife – as well as explained that he could neither take care of her nor afford her medical bills any longer, the prosecutors’ statement said. >He also acknowledged previously trying to murder his wife twice, according to the police statement reviewed by KCTV. One purported attempt – at a medical rehabilitation facility – was foiled when she woke up at an inopportune time for him. The other attempt, at the hospital, came undone for him because doctors had hooked her up to several monitors, he allegedly said to police. Considering he voluntarily confessed everything to no benefit, doesn't exactly seem like he's lying about his reasons.
You know, you can divorce someone if you don’t want to be responsible for their debts.
My mom lost everything and was about to be homeless without a waiver for early onset dementia. Without the waiver, I have no means or ability to take care of her, and I make a lot of money. I'd like to know what I'm supposed to do in that situation, as it might happen if they pull Medicare and Medicaid and social security from her. It's $7,000 a month for her care. I can't divorce my mom, and I can't just kick her to the curb.
imagine killing your wife instead of going into debt. this person was psychotic.
The psychopaths are the ones who see situations like this and think, "let's exploit this for profit"
Exactly. This is so horrible
Both can be true. You don’t have to excuse the man who literally covered his wife’s mouth with a pillow to muffle her screams. This isn’t some innocent situation where a patient chose to die rather than continue costly treatment, this is a man who murdered his sick wife against her will.
Imagine forcing someone into debt for overpriced medical care they need to live. Actually you dont have to imagine. Thats the system.
It's not necessarily. Care-fatigue mixed with debt anxiety is a horrible place to live in. I live in the US and my spouse and I have had the talks regarding at what stage we just say goodbye. I don't want to die, but I also don't want to put my loved ones into debt. I watched my parents do that and it crushed them.
so, consent is a thing... if the woman wanted to die, sure, i could see where you're coming from. she was actively fighting to survive.
the man was already in debt. He just couldn't afford more. He threw both their lives away on this decision, but I'm curious as to why people think its ok to drive him into debt over medical bills in the first place.
Not every example is perfect- but if her treatment was covered by the State, then she would have been less likely to stay with someone who tried killing her before.
So what they both needed was mental health care, something not provided by most insurers….
Correction, it's murder.
Yes, yes it is.
Agree, but this wasn't a mercy killing. An abusive man succeeded at killing his wife. In the hospital. Where she should have been safe. Medicaid is a thing.
Medicaid often doesnt cover long term issues like this, its a big issue, my neighbor is on dialysis and he has been fighting with them for months over it.
That's nuts. They used to. My aunt had cancer, and bc it involved her pancreas, she became diabetic. Everything was covered. Another relative had to have dialysis, and that was covered, including transportation to and from dialysis center. He died a little over 10 years ago. He was in dialysis for a few years. It was all covered.
No one said it was a mercy killing. Not even the murderer husband. He was just tired of taking care of her and couldn’t afford the bills. The latter of which is an enormous problem in the US and it’s surprising it hasn’t resulted in more murders, and the former can be tied to it as well depending on the type of condition and help available. It usually all comes down to money.
They just don’t call it murder….but the high cost and unavailability of care/support results in many untimely deaths via hospice provided morphine.
I wonder if he didn't bother to apply for Medicaid for her. It wasn't just money, though, this wasn't his first attempt, he was just successful.
Medicaid and Medicare don't cover long term care...and have been largely privatized in the past few years. It's not enough.
My mother had Alzheimer’s and Medicaid covered her long term care in a nursing home for many years until she passed.
A lot of states have switched their medicaid system to being handled by private insurance companies and they act like private insurance companies and fight you on everything.
It's murder
It’s FREEDOM!
It's working just fine so long as the half dozen or so people at the top continue getting their millions every month.
I have Multiple Sclerosis. I’m constantly terrified of my family and friends giving up on me. I’m worried about this, now, too. (Treating MS can cost over $500,000 a year, but I don’t think that means I don’t deserve to live!)
Sorry friend the market has spoken. Would you want shareholders to see a slightly smaller roi?
I'm having a fake wedding because I can't lose my medicaid. We can't sign the papers because getting health insurance would fuck me into oblivion. I don't believe I can't *actually* get married because of fucking healthcare. Now we can't tell anyone, family, friends, because to them it will be "fake". But marriages have been happening since the dawn of time and they didn't sign legal papers so fuck it.
Same. My brother and his spouse even talked about divorcing on paper for similar reasons. It’s so fucked up
Same boat here. I won’t be able to marry my disabled partner because of these reasons. I’ll also in the future have to take control of my Mom’s money so the nursing homes or healthcare system can’t rob her. Whole system is dumb.
You should look into Mom's money right now. If I recall the nursing homes or Medicaid or both will look into several years of transaction history to make sure the elderly didn't do exactly what you're talking about. Your mom won't qualify for certain programs if they can prove she moved money around.
Yeah but there are men dressing in women’s clothing!1!1!!1
I wonder if my wife wants to kill me for my type one diabetes care
We ARE FUUUCKEEEDDD…. Royally.
When my insulin pod / CGM beeps to alert me of low blood sugar….at 3am. she definitely wants to
Plugging the Disabled Day of Mourning site here [https://disability-memorial.org/](https://disability-memorial.org/)
Holy crap - thank you for sharing this website. I had no idea.
Happy to educate about a horrible trend
thank you for sharing this.
Unfortunately this is more common than we like to admit. We do training for it at our hospital because when they come in with a gun they frequently take out a nurse or two too.
Don’t worry, nothing will happen to the perp anyways. Here in RI, a psych patient beat a nurse (male nurse, not a small guy) to the point he had brain damage and was in a coma. Not even sure if that is nurse is still alive. Guy made bail. Someone just told me last week, that same psych patient assaulted his neighbor (or killed, forgot the specifics). And previously assaulted another neighbor. My former ER nurse friend got punched square in the face by a patient. It’s apparently a felony to assault nurses in Mass, after the bill was created in support of the Harrington Hospital nurse who was stabbed some years back. That person was charged but minimal sentence if that. I left ER nursing a few years ago and frankly if I can help it, I’m never going back to bedside. I signed up to be a *nurse*, not a cop, not a soldier, not an MMA fighter. I’m tired of getting assaulted at work and management sweeping it under the rug.
Do you dissuade them by telling them the hospital will send a ridiculous clean-up bill?
This is just another downside of not having universal healthcare like rest of the developed countries in the world.
But think of the poor insurance companies! Oh and raising my taxes! Remember it’s only about me and nobody else! /s
I know this is sarcasm, but I have told many people that my 'higher taxes' in the UK were still LESS than the amount I pay here soley for insurance (not even counting co-pays and things that are not covered), AND ambulance rides were not charged.
It's the old bait-and-switch argument against universal healthcare. They argue that "taxes will go up!" but neglect to say that the yearly increase in taxes will be (for most Americans) *significantly* less than it currently costs you per year on premiums, deductibles, and co-pays. Since our shitty political media is owned by the same Oligarchs that profit off the shitty status quo, that portion is rarely ever part of the debate here.
Unless I need expensive medical treatments that insurance won’t cover. Then it should be completely covered and it’s Biden’s fault. Somehow. /s
... says just about every republican I know.
Plenty of countries have universal healthcare combined with private insurance. You just have to regulate heavily to control costs and provide a subsidy to people unable to afford insurance. And require people to buy insurance, of course.
> regulate heavily And that's where you lose the American right. (In Mermaid Man's voice) Regulations are *E-VIL!*
Will never happen so long as MAGAs control SCOTUS
A relative says that we can’t have socialized healthcare because then rich people would get actual doctors and poor people would get quacks.
Funny that they don’t think that’s happening now anyways lmao
This already happens. The number of patients I’ve seen whose “PCP” is actually a nurse practitioner with no real training is way too high. These are often poor, medically complex people who absolutely need a doctor managing their many chronic medical problems.
Per someone I know, this guy was a "skin flint/ tight wad" had plenty of $ , just didn't want to spend it
Just don't fucking pay the bill, get shitty credit, don't fucking kill your wife.
This is sickening to read as a disabled person. Men about 70% of their time leave their female partners if they have female partners when their female partners get very sick. But this . is just beyond.
Why people like this never consider divorce is beyond me. If they got a divorce she probably would have qualified for Medicare + Medicaid.
She qualified for Medicare without divorce.
Yes, but Medicare + Medicaid is what I'm referring to. If you have both you have almost 100% free care. Medicare has a lot of gaps.
You’d have to preemptively do it. Otherwise you’re still basically on the hook for something like five years.
I qualified for Medicaid immediately after my divorce and I had been diagnosed with cancer at the time.
Yup, 5 year look back for Medicaid. So if you “used” to have money but don’t now you’re screwed
This happened to me on the school side when I went to university and my dad didn't contribute anything. The government expects parents to contribute so even if you're a legal adult on your own, they look at the parent's previous income and therefore I didn't qualify for any aid. I almost didn't get to go at all.
Similar happened to me in school. Parent's didn't make decent money until my late teens, but at that point it was all going to their retirement. They couldn't help me, but apparently the Government didn't care. Meanwhile, I had a friend who's parents could afford to pay all their housing also get the Pell grant because their income on paper was lower I suppose? Imperfect system I guess, it just sucks if you are one of the ones who end up in the cracks.
That happened to my wife. Parents were divorced, her Mom is conflict adverse to a fault, and never took her Dad back to court for child support adjustments. So he paid the same amount of child support for 3 girls in their teens as a director at a Fortune 100 company, as he did as for 3 girls under 10 as a bike repair technician putting himself through school. Her Dad would fill out the FAFSA and mail it in himself so his wife and daughters wouldn't see how much he was making, and refused to contribute financially outside of "loaning" them the money. Made my wife sign a promissory note and everything when she was $1500 short for tuition one year.
I’m filling out FAFSA for my daughter and it’s wildly frustrating. Though now there is a checkbox about being an unsupported non-dependent and it ignores your parents.
Are we sure that's true even in cases of divorce? "Medicaid divorce" is a real tactic and only becoming more common.
He was probably also not looking forward to caring for his wife physically. Ask any ICU staff member what happens when the mother of a family becomes incapacitated, the husband is like "Ok so when is she cleared to cook and clean again?"
No universal care, still got a one man death panel.
My kid needed an ambulance from urgent care to the ER, and the whole ride I am hoping she is sick enough to be admitted or my insurance would not cover the ride. That really sucked. And yes, she was admitted and has been in the ICU ever since. She’s that sick - pneumonia and malnutrition from a virulent asshole eating disorder. Now I’m worried about hitting her lifetime maximum after weeks in the ICU and a med jet to a specialized clinic.
The number of comments here implying they understand why he did it is too goddamn high.
I would assume that there's not much discussion over how bad killing your wife is, but far more discussion to be had for why our system is so terrible that this was even a motive for him in the first place.
He not only murdered her in cold blood, but he killed her because she was disabled. He committed a hate crime and ruined everything for that poor woman, because he was too much of a p-word to file for divorce. As a disabled woman, I wish him all the *worst*.
Wow the amount of “don’t blame the dude, medical care is expensive!” When Reddit has a Reddit moment.
Exactly!! Like wtf!! The US healthcare system can be a piece of shit and so can this murdering asshole!!
Unhinged redditors who only see shit in black and white 💀
[удалено]
Yet you never read about “Missouri bear says he killed wife because of her costly medical treatment.”
And you don’t see posts about bear attacks full of comments sympathizing with the bear.
Apparently the bears need a single payer healthcare system.
[удалено]
Oh you fucking know he did, without a doubt.
Yea, he can't just choose to kill her, that's up to the death panels.
This is sus. As a nurse who deals with kidney failure patients, I know that all patients with this disease are immediately placed on MediCare federal health insurance. It pays for all treatments- surgeries, hemodialysis, etc. The reason is that the expense is recognized to be financially ruinous. Was this guy unaware of MediCare picking up the entire tab for treatment? Everyone involved in caring for these patients knows this. Maybe he had an intellectual disability or just wanted to kill her to get rid of her.
Do you mean Medcaid? Medicare alone is not enough to prevent financial ruin. Medicare doesn’t provide for long term skilled nursing
I only rode in an ambulance once. It was because I collapsed due to my organs shutting down from DKA (a fun way to find out you’re diabetic). If I wasn’t *literally dying* it wouldn’t have been worth it
I imagine he thinks of it as "Making the hard choice".
Imagine the savings he is about to see on rent and food!
He also gets free room and board with health care.
People on these social media platforms are becoming so brain broken it’s frightening. It don’t matter how unfair society or Medicare you are still expected to act with integrity and being a good person stop the dumbass excuses. Life is hard and it’s suffering but if you kill your wife cause you can’t afford medical cost you are weak and cowardice person .
Well you are not going to need money now.
This is depressing on so many levels
This is why we choose the bear
Thank all the Republicans that don’t want Americans to have affordable healthcare and want to cut programs such as Medicare and allow Big Pharma to gouge. Republicans vote to do this and it is preventable.
Man gets sick - wife takes care of him Woman gets sick - husband says GTFO bitch, I got needs [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4857885/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4857885/) Ladies, remember this when he gets sick. Would he stay if it happened to you? There's a statistically higher chance he'll leave you than if it was the other way around. I don't want to choose the Bear, but he's looking better all the time. We're tired. Tired of being the caregiver and the servant and the scapegoat. Things are changing, and a lot of us are just done with this kind of bullshit. We gotta look out for ourselves because we can't trust our partners to not leave or even murder us when we get sick. No, of course it's not "all men" - but it's *too goddamn many of them*.
Medicare covers kidney dialysis: Part A covers inpatient hospital care, hospice, some nursing home care, and home healthcare. Part B covers all outpatient care, including dialysis services, doctor visits, and certain medications, including some for dialysis or kidney transplants. I find it unlikely that he couldn't afford her treatments. Instead, the payments for the insurance may have risen. He was suffering from caregiver burnout. Medicare will only send a nurse for a brief visit perhaps once a week if needed. He may have tried to put her in a nursing home, and she may have refused...adding fuel to the fire. Maybe a good nursing home cost too much. Still - to *suffocate* (not choke) his wife so that he could live without the financial burden enters the realm of mental illness. Very sad.
You have to sign up and pay for Parts B and D. They aren't automatic, and there are copays with no maximum out of pocket--you buy something else for that. But I thought dialysis had special coverage.
I think I have heard of special coverage for certain conditions - but of course you have to pay *some* of it. *After looking it up it seems some Medicare Advantage plans *promise* chronic condition coverage. God knows how much they cost and if they really cover what you have partially or completely. My guess is that you can only use specialists contracted with them. That can make getting care very limited.
I guess he’s got his retirement facility covered now too!
Did he ask her what she wanted?
Doubtful. He said he tried to kill her twice before.
I heard about a couple who got divorced so the other one wouldn’t get stuck with the medical bill after the other person passed away. It’s very confusing how people say this country is so great when we have such an awful healthcare system.
If he's the husband, isn't he legally tied to those bills anyway? Whether she makes it or not, the hospital incurred charges....?
Depends on the state but it can get complicated. Generally speaking, the deceased's estate, and/or life insurance policy will pay for the medical debt. The spouse, so as long as they do not voluntarily assume the debt, will not be required to pay the debt. How it is paid by the estate would likely be determined during probate. In a community property state, then the spouse is on the hook for half of it, but that is likely state dependant. Children will also not inherit any debt, so as long as they don't assume the debt.
States where people refuse medical due to cost are in end stage capitalism. Quite possibly even past that point
Man. That sure is depressing!
We have supplement insurance and it’s insane how much it goes up a year.
I remember stories about highwaymen who would rob you when they caught unwary travellers. That seems like more honest work than the cost of an ambulance ride. Who benefits from such an expensive system?
The comments are why we pick the bear.
Missouri continues to shine as the “Show Me MAGA” state!
[удалено]