Ask Lemmy

If you spent 4 months in a U.S. hospital and didn't die, you would spend the rest of your life wishing you did.

All the screwed. And now as of this month medical debt will be part of your credit reports, so good luck on getting a home loan or job

More likely you just would not have been kept in hospital four months here. Somehow we have the combination of highest cost and also cost-cutting schemes.

To answer your question - $18,000 I guess, if I got lucky and the insurance worked correctly. That's the alleged max out of pocket for the insurance I pay for at work.

Depends.

My dad went in the hospital for like probably 3 months, and afiak, their small bussiness is still running. They have insurance.

For everyone else who don't have insurance and don't have any assets, just refuse to pay the bills, like what are they gonna do? Confiscate your organs? (Inb4 they pass the "USA Repossess Organs Act")

According to https://nchstats.com/average-cost-of-hospital-stays-in-us/#google_vignette the average is $3.025 per night. 4 months = 120 days = $363,000 = €313.307,21

I'm not from the US, but I've heard someone from there explain the system.

When you go to hospital, and get a bill of $250.000 your insurance company will cover let say $50.000. You will get a bill for $1.200 and the rest will be declared by the hospital to their insurance company as damages.

It's super weird, I still don't get it but apparently this is how it works in most cases, or as I'm told.

Great thing about medical debt is you don't have to pay it.

You would have lost your job and likely be on medicaid and disability and it would be very unclear if you have or lost your house and possessions but keeping hold of them moving forward would be almost impossible unless you could find a new job which is also highly unlikely.

Your first stop would be a bankruptcy lawyer.

This is too hard to answer because of the number of variables at play like, do you have insurance, does your condition/issue qualify you for Medicare, does your job offer disability leave, are you FMLA eligible, do you meet requirements for SSA disability etc.

Anecdotally, in 2017 I spent two non-consecutive months in the hospital. The first visit I came in through the ER, ended up in the ICU intubated and worked my way through each section as I got better.

My second stay I skipped the ICU but had a transplant halfway through. I also was on dialysis for the ~6 months in between.

Dialysis was billed at $7k a visit, roughly $500k in total. The transplant surgery alone was ~$750k. The hospital stays came to about $5k a day on average for roughly $300k in total.

So straight billed amount I was somewhere in the $1.5-$1.7 million range.

The average cost of a hospital stay in a U.S. hospital is about $3,000 per day, but it varies significantly by location. So long stays like yours might cost between $250,000 and $500,000.

If your insurance covers it (and about 92% of Americans have health insurance), you'd be looking at your annual out of pocket max, which the law caps at $18,000 for family plans or $9,000 for individual plans, but which most people on employer sponsored plans (around 60% of Americans) have out of pocket maxes around $4,000 to $5,000. Source

So for most Americans, your hospital stay would've probably cost the individual patient about $5,000. Insurance would've paid another $350,000.

But for some Americans, they'd be looking at a $360,000 bill and then would just file bankruptcy, start over with close to a net worth of zero, at least for non-exempt assets (people generally get to keep their homes, cars, and retirement accounts in bankruptcy so it won't actually be starting from zero if you're well into a middle age in the middle class).

Or worse, the hospital would realize they're not getting paid, and then would find a reason to kick you out as soon as you're stabilized. They have to keep you alive even when you can't pay, but don't have to treat you beyond that for free.

That depends.

Are you wealthy? If yes, you're fine. If no, you're fucked.

Are you a veteran? Same answers.

Are you poor? You probably died in the waiting room.

Haven’t seen anyone mention maximums. Sometimes insurance plans will straight up stop covering you after a certain price. Like, for the rest of your life. Imagine running up a cancer treatment bill in your teenage years and being cut off until you either die or somehow live long enough to get a job with different insurance.

Honestly, it would depend on what kind of insurance you have in the US. Each employer has a different set of plans.

No insurance? Absolutely screwed. With insurance?

End of 2018 I had a heart attack and open heart surgery with really good insurance.

Emergency Room - $150
8 days in the hospital + open heart surgery from the head of the cardiac department - $100
Drugs and all the oxygen I could carry - $100

Roll forward to January 2019... my company has been bought by a giant company. Health insurance changes. I lose my existing hospital and all my doctors and have to start over in a new system.

7 days in the hospital draining fluid from congestive heart failure - $6,500 - the annual out of pocket maximum for that insurance.

Good news though, hitting the out of pocket maximum on Jan 15 meant all my other medical care the rest of the year was covered at 100%.

That is bankruptcy, pure and simple. There's no way you'd financially recover from a four month stint in the hospital.

People have literally unalived themselves here over hospital bills like that.

Thank God you weren't in a shit hole country, like the US.

How marketable would you say your illness was?

Your options would be: begging strangers on the internet for money and going viral, being rich enough to pay out the ass for really good insurance when you were healthy, declaring bankruptcy, and playing Luigi's Mansion.

I spent six weeks in the hospital in the US, and my bill (before insurance) was over $400k.

my insurance paid $100k for 5 days in critical and 3 in regular room in 2014, 4 months should be 12 times that, plus add inflation

Unless you got a couple of million bucks in your bank account…. Super fucked

Also don't know the answer, but another anecdote.

I was admitted to the ICU where I stayed for about a month, not on any ventilator or any other machines except an IV drip (the medication was very dangerous and needed that level of surveillance). However, I was taking up space, so I was transferred to the next level down, where I spent another month on nothing but just that one IV medication. In total I had two non invasive heart surgeries during my time there.

For basically just room, board, babysitters, and the medication, I was billed over $650,000. I was 26 at the time, in college, no job, living off savings I'd accrued in the military....

Yeahhhh.