The Briefing Room
General Category => Health/Education => Topic started by: Rapunzel on January 04, 2014, 03:37:02 am
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/3/obamacare-patients-socked-huge-cash-bills-flee-hos/#.UseANSnDlLI.twitter
Obamacare patients socked with huge cash bills flee hospitals
By Cheryl K. Chumley
The Washington Times
Friday, January 3, 2014
Staffers with at least one hospital in Northern Virginia turned away several patients this week due to confusion about Obamacare: Were the patients covered by insurance or not?
Some patients walked away when they learned that the hospital would be charging them hundreds of dollars for treatment because they couldn’t prove their enrollment in the federal health care system.
“They had no idea if my insurance was active or not,” one woman, Maria Galvez, said to The Daily Mail, outside the Inova Healthplex facility in Springfield, Va. So instead of paying the $500 or more for her needed chest x-ray, she left – untreated, the paper reported.
“The people in there told me that since I didn’t have an insurance card, I would be billed for the whole cost of the x-ray,” she said. “It’s not fair. You know, I signed up last week like I was supposed to.”
Ms. Galvez said she had enrolled in Carefirst Blue Cross three days before Christmas, for $450 per month.
At the same time, she said, in The Daily Mail, “no one has sent me a bill.”
Ms. Galvez’s experience was shared by others.
A woman who asked to be published only by the name Mary said she couldn’t receive emergency services at the Inova Alexandria Hospital down the road, in Alexandria, Va., for the same reason.
“I had chest pains last night,” she said to The Daily Mail, on Thursday. “They took me in the emergency room. They told me they were going to admit me, but when I told them I hadn’t heard from my insurance company since I signed up, they changed their tune.”
She said that a nurse told her that her hospital bill would be at least $3,000 a day if she stayed, due to her inability to prove insurance coverage. Rather than stay and pay, she left.
“Should I be in the hospital? Probably,” she said, The Daily Mail reported. “Maybe it’s one of those borderline cases. I have to think that if I were really in danger, they wouldn’t give me the choice. But what if I think I’m covered and I’m really not? The emergency room bill is going to bad enough.”
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and as predicted medicaid patients are flocking to hospitals for care - because it is nigh on impossible to find doctors who will treat a medicaid patient since the rate they pay is based on 1968 fees... doctors cannot afford to treat medicaid patients... the hospitals are going to be overloaded.
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and as predicted medicaid patients are flocking to hospitals for care - because it is nigh on impossible to find doctors who will treat a medicaid patient since the rate they pay is based on 1968 fees... doctors cannot afford to treat medicaid patients... the hospitals are going to be overloaded.
yep...a study out here in Oregon shows that people who previously did not have insurance and just went to the ER when they were sick, go to the ER even more often now that they have insurance.
Huge fiasco building....
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A woman who asked to be published only by the name Mary said she couldn’t receive emergency services at the Inova Alexandria Hospital down the road, in Alexandria, Va., for the same reason.
“I had chest pains last night,” she said to The Daily Mail, on Thursday. “They took me in the emergency room. They told me they were going to admit me, but when I told them I hadn’t heard from my insurance company since I signed up, they changed their tune.”
She said that a nurse told her that her hospital bill would be at least $3,000 a day if she stayed, due to her inability to prove insurance coverage. Rather than stay and pay, she left.
This is funny as hell!!
When Mary found out she was going to have to fork over some cash to be admitted, she forgot all about her chest pains.
WHen somebody else is paying for my beer, I'm gonna drink beer all day long!!!
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Welcome to the land of Obamacare!! Time for Americans to learn the hard way just how very, very stupid they've been of late.