the US has no excuse
some great examples of us hospitals setting pretty exorbitant prices for health care:
- The infamous $629 bandaid
- Woman charged $40 for holding her baby after a c-section
- Two South Korean tourists took their baby to the ER where he was only given some formula and took a nap before being discharged but were given a $18,836 bill
- Canadian man gets heart surgery in Florida and is billed over 600k USD
- Some more pictures of people’s hospital bills
- A public hospital’s ER is out-of-network with all private insurances, resulting in many patients being stuck with unreasonable bills and eventually resulting in a class action lawsuit over their billing practices
- Annual healthcare spending in the US is estimated at 3.5 trillion, and billing prices are pretty much unfair and inconsistent, even for insured patients with legal loopholes and hospital discretion in setting prices
- Billing announcements, and million dollar hospital bills on the rise
- Top 35 Most Expensive Health Conditions in the US
- Just… facility fees
- Hospitals are more likely to tell you how much parking costs than how much a basic ECG test costs (meaning they probably inflate prices arbitrarily for patients… possibly on an individual basis)
- Hospitals are magically able to “discount” hospital bills to less than a thousand dollars for patients that receive national attention in media (x, x)
- People in the US are less likely to seek medical care because of high prices, even though 42% of doctors believe their patients are receiving too much health care (falsely)