A couple were told they faced a $200,000 (£146,500) medical bill when their baby was born prematurely in the US, despite them having travel insurance which covered her pregnancy.
Sylvester explained: “Essentially what they said is that we would have been covered had the baby not survived. But the fact was that the baby survived.”
“We weren’t going to be covered for that, because we didn’t put his name on the insurance policy.”
JFC
Travel insurance is a scam. I used to pay Allianz for cancellation insurance every trip but the one time I needed to claim it they denied it.
It’s not safe to travel to the US while pregnant or sick, they will take everything from you.
Traveling in 3rd trimester is already medically dangerous.
Everyone knows blood attracts sharks, now we have sharks on planes.
Thanks obama.
It’s just not safe to travel there ever
I’m certainly not going back until at least 2029. Let MAGA eat itself over the Epstein files and the next president reform the gun laws (as both sides are now talking about it) and then I’ll think about it.
It’s not safe to travel to the US while pregnant or sick, they will take everything from you.
Until Trump they also claimed the baby as US citizen which is dangerous because they demand taxes from their citizens whereever they are on this world.
It sounds fake but its real. If they got a car and ran a baby over they’d have paid 1% of this. Our system is so deeply fucked up.
Lol, even better. Usa credit cant hurt them abroad. They can just never pay it.
Usa: dear tourists, the old have a baby in usa trick will also be tarrrifed and taxed.
UK tourists: how u gonna do that?
Usa: evil grin
$200k? did the hospital make the baby?
Sadly that’s low for some cases of births. I’ve heard of people being charged >$1M before insurance (so that number might be BS insurance negotiations, but still)
Oh wow and people wonder why people aren’t having kids…
Just out of interest: Would U.S.-Americans be allowed to found a non-profit health insurance organization?
Allowed to, sure. But it would quickly be crushed by the companies that have way more resources to draw on…
Yeah the better option is for a multi state compact for a public option. I know Washington has a bit of a public option. That said, you get no subsidies if your employer offers minimum contributions to the health insurance of their choosing.
Edit to finish the thought: we need universal single payer, but barring that we need public options and real choice, including choice over where to apply our employer’s contributions. It wouldn’t fix everything that universal single payer would, but it would enable you to have the freedom to not need to change doctors every time you get a new job.
Allowed? Technically yes, in the same way people are allowed to start local broadband co-ops or like grocery stores or whatever else.
The problem comes when you have to actually make people aware you exist and have a service or product for sale, and “compete” with the national/multi-national corporation who have infinitely more resources than you do.Just look at how Walmart and now Amazon have put just about every mom and pop shop out of business. They can move in, drop prices so low locally long enough to put you out of business because they have other areas locked down already and covering the losses. Then once they have the market locked up they can charge whatever they want because you have no other options.
Almost certainly there already exists a non-profit health insurance organization, they just don’t have the resources to advertise on all the major channels and across the interwebs like all the predatory ones do.
If you paid protection money to another gangster but then they didn’t protect you what would likely happen?
The gangster apologizes and deeply regrets the situation but does not return your money.
Insurance company trying to evade one job it is supposed to do
You pay them to keep their lawyers on retainer
You get hired to help out a business in a emergency situation. You do nothing and get paid month after month. A couple years go by and finally the phone rings.
Hey man, we really need you right now! Come on in!
“Claim denied, I will see you in court.”
insurance
Some of them probably don’t even have the means to help, they just get lawyers to avoid accountability and write ridiculous terms for their policies, and in the EXTREME case they actually need to fix something they probably outsource it lol
“But what about helping our people Bob!?”
We need a real life Mr Incredible to do that to every insurance CEO. Throw through 6 concrete walls.
After a nine month legal battle, Zurich has reversed its decision and told the BBC it was sorry for the stress caused.
Yeah, very sorry I’m sure. Oopsie, we accidentally fought a nine month legal battle to avoid paying out the exact thing the insurance is for
Arguing the care wasn’t covered because the baby wasn’t named in the insurance despite explicitly covering pregnancy-related care is ghoulish behavior. I can’t fathom how you can argue that seriously and not feel like a piece of shit.
“We’ve now strengthened and clarified our wording and guidance so other families travelling abroad at this stage of a pregnancy do not have to go through this experience.”
TLDR: the next couple is fucked
No, what this means is that they have increased premiums for anyone at 33 weeks of pregnancy and added something about premature births that will cost more if you’re traveling to America. Either that or put in specific language excluding coverage for premature births. Either way, insurance companies are a scam.
Like ‘hey, your baby is not covered, it’s 43 minutes under due’
Not trying to victim blame but do not go to America.
Also dont have kids
They’re Brits
I don’t see how the advice doesn’t apply. Do not go to U.S.A
Evwn Canadians should recons8der a US visit
Maybe your scummy government should’ve reconsidered their complicity with the US regime a long time ago.
Their virtue signalling because the big bully you were always friends with and help in their scumbaggery is now temporary bothering you.
hypocritesWhich government is my government? I don’t live in North America.
Ech, on re-read I see the problem … my apologies. I was typing too fast for my own good.
I meant that any Canadians considering a US visit shouldreconsider
It means Brits are the closest to the US with Canadians.
They love the banana republic.
Despite the temporary spat they will be back aiding them in their imperialist looting and mass murder
ah ok yeah I agree. Their elites seem to be quite “chummy” as brits would put it.
From what I’ve heard from Americans working in hospitals is that this bill is what the hospital writes but they only charge a small amount and declare the rest at their own insurance as a loss. So the couple would end up with a bill of a few hundred dollars, nothing more. This is common practice, is what those people told me. I don’t know if this is the case in every state though. But it sure is one weird fucked up system.
Is that a legitimate business strategy?
I just send my customer a bill for a ridiculous amount, then my customer negotiates for something significantly less, and I can write off the difference?
There must be more to this. It’s too good to be true.
It is for the people who are getting paid, which is the insurance companies.
If it wasn’t, it wouldnt be the awful dystopian norm for the past 40 years here this stupid country.
Insurance companies make deals with hospitals along the lines of “We’ll pay 1k for this procedure which should cost 300 bucks, or 40% of your standard rates, whichever is lower.” So the standard rate becomes $2500.
Then the insurance company will require a 40% “copay” based on the standard rates, and the patient ends up paying the $1000 and the insurance company doesn’t pay shit despite collecting hundreds a month in premiums.
If you tell them you don’t have insurance they’ll frequently discount the fee to the $300 it should cost.
And this is embraced because profit is capped to a percentage of payouts
I’ve also read stories from people who have negotiated how much of their bill they paid. Fucked up indeed.
Our first baby was born 5 weeks early and had to spend about 3 weeks in the NICU before we could take him home. Nothing major, just monitoring and a careful feeding regimen to make sure he would make it, as sensitive as they are when born that early.
My wife had to pay $30 for the 3 days she rented a bed in the maternity ward ($10/day). That was our total bill.
Second child we paid nothing.
Nothing negotiated, just how it works in my country. ✌️
And we have people in Canada that want to go to the American system.
Is made me realize there are a lot of people who will vote against their own interests as long as their neighbors can’t possibly get undue benefit.
And we have people in Canada that want to go to the American system.
Well, they can fuck right off to Florida, please.
Insane 😢
US health insurance pulled the same shitty tactic on me with my first born.
Both our kids were charged 6,000 to be born . . . Fun trick, where they charge the baby, since the mother has probably hit their out of pocket max, and that lets them jack it to the family max.
More Luigis please.
I feel like you should be able to tell them to go fuck themselves, since children can’t sign contracts.
Oh, that’s the fun part of it - it’s your debt, but on the children’s insurance. They’re moving the care from one patient to another (to max out family out of pocket charges), but the parents are on the contract and can be sued.
Can’t you declare bankruptcy for the kids then? Though that would probably fuck with the credit score? But I have no clue how that works.
Ah yes, the United States – Don’t get sick or you will have to fight tooth and nail to get your insurance company to pay for necessary medical care. This is a story heard over and over again stateside. If the U.S. was truly the best place in the world to live, this would simply not happen. As a person who has worked in healthcare in the U.S. for over 15 years, I feel this in my bones. I am glad you could get legal help and have the right outcome based on what you paid for. I would love nothing more than to see everyone who comes to the U.S. receive medical care appropriately – Nobody asks to get sick :(
i’m glad the medical side tries to stay focused on patient care. i’ve a friend in Mexico where they check ability to pay before any treatment begins. she was bleeding out and they waited until after her card was verified before doing anything. lower costs, maybe. One thing that being married to an RN has taught me, the billing department sends insanely inflated bills which are step 1 in their insurance negotiation. I got a bill for over $600,000, I laughed while still in the hospital bed. bill got negotiated down to $150,000. Even if there is a ginormous bill, you can postpone threatened collections by sending them anything, like $10/month. it will reset their billing escalation cycle. debts more than 7 years old will get written off. if all else fails, bankruptcy isn’t all that bad. shuffle assets to trusted family. the amount of money they waste on greedy negotiations far eclipses any actual cost for treatment. don’t stress over the bills. stress kills. let some fat lawyer worry about not getting a new car this year.
I dunno - my ex burned all the skin off his hand once, the first question at the emergency room was “how are you paying?” and we waited there 5 hours before they saw him, during which time it got so much worse he ended up needing more treatment & therapy. No we didn’t have insurance or money back then. They eventually arranged temporary Medicaid for him as he couldn’t work with the hand so burned. Which left us without his income (I had just given birth too) so without much food.
Anyway - this was in the 1990s but I am absolutely sure we had to wait because we could not pay, even though it was an obvious emergency.
some are worse than others. I’ve noticed going to a prompt care is much faster than going to ‘emergency room’. depends a lot on location and how busy they are that day. i haven’t been seen w/o insurance since 70s when i broke my hand in a fight. doubt they ever got paid for that cast.
Not germane. Zurich Insurance Group is not a USian medical insurance company.
Just a stark reminder that all insurance, no matter where you get it from and what country it originates in, is 100% a scam.
That’s just blatantly false. I’m all for hating companies that gouge people to make money, but insurance isn’t inherently a scam. Insurance, when implemented properly, is paying a low regular premium to offset a risk you can’t afford should it hit. I’ve insured my house against burning down, because I can afford to pay a small amount once a month while a fire (while unlikely) would bankrupt me. Most likely, I’ll lose money in the long run by paying for that insurance, but that’s not the point. The point is that I can afford to lose money over a 30-50 year period, but I cannot afford to lose my house at any single point during the next 30-50 years.
It’s a nice ideal. Insurance can in theory help smooth out whatever life throws at you. But in the modern world, their incentives are to not
The US health care industry is a scam
Yeah give me that line again after your house actually has burned down and you have to fight tooth and nail to get any money from the insurance company that you’ve been paying to for the last X number of years.
You are aware that the whole basis for my original comment (and follow-up) was that insurance isn’t inherently a scam, right? Any transaction can be turned into a scam if you refuse to hold up your end of the deal, but that doesn’t make the concept of transactions a scam in itself.
My impression is that US insurance companies are particularly bad about not paying up, and thereby scamming people. Luckily, I don’t live in the US, and don’t have any historical precedent that gives me reason to doubt my insurance company would pay up. The problem with insurance (and a lot of other things) in the US is a system that heavily incentivises squeezing consumers at every turn. The problem is not that insurance is an inherently a scam.
i’ll bet you and all your neighbors 100/mo, your house won’t burn down this month. send payments on time or else. Meanwhile, i lend you your money to pay for your mortgage with interest. have some more Kool-Aid.
Why would I take that when I already have a running bet with my insurance company where I only pay ≈ 20 USD / month?
The whole point here is that I can afford 20 USD/month indefinitely. However, having my house burn down at any point would be absolutely detrimental to my personal economy, to the point of bankrupting me and likely preventing me from being able to afford a new house in the foreseeable future. I’m well aware that in purely economic terms I’m taking a losing bet. The point is that the consequences should the bet strike home are so large that I can’t afford not to take it.
Of course, you could argue that I would be better off saving that money and being “my own insurance”. You would be right, except for the fact that the house burning down is just as likely tomorrow as in 20 years. If I had enough cash to insure myself, I obviously wouldn’t need to take this losing bet, but I don’t.
big insurers have millions of your neighbors paying 20/month. all i know is, ‘the house always wins’. they are swimming in cash. my dad used to sell car insurance. when cards became mandatory, he had an influx of ‘card buyers’. pay one month and get a card. stop paying. because they bet the odds of getting fined for no card were a lot better than odds of getting in a wreck. house wins, sells you ‘uninsured motorist’ coverage. people gamble on many things. insurance is good when you win. they lose when you win so deny, depose … I don’t know the answer. just try to hedge bets and look for ways to break even for all us non-greedy shmoes. i don’t like most insurance co.'s greed. have insurance as required and savings also. i’d never pay for extended warranty on something under $10k. that’s some easy bets for them.
Yes, it’s a for profit business that makes it’s profit off of trying to have the most accurate odds they can. They charge you slightly more than they expect to lose on you (the house edge) and then they’re betting on every roll of the dice. That’s exactly how casinos earn money (though casinos try to compete on experience and payout, while insurance competes on price and payout).
The difference is that the casino is attempting to take advantage of your greed and wants you to stay there and bet everything you have. Meanwhile the insurer is selling relief from fear of financial ruin and is asking you to make scheduled bets that you want to lose every month. American health insurance has massive issues and should be replaced with something akin to the NHS before it was defunded, but nobody is losing their shirt buying homeowners insurance unless the area they live in is now being pummeled by the climate crisis like southern California or the gulf of Mexico.
Would government run insurance be better? Yeah probably. But in the era before modern insurance a major part of the draw of fraternal organizations was that they served that role.
I agree that the house is winning here (as always) and I also hate companies that squeeze us regular people for cash at every opportunity as much as the next person.
My point is that I don’t really see buying e.g. house insurance as a gamble as much as I see it as paying a monthly fee for the peace of mind it gives me to know that I won’t be financially ruined by a house fire or a burglary. It’s not about making money in the long term for me, it’s about mitigating the consequences of highly unlikely but absolutely devastating events.
I am well aware of that. This couple’s experience was in parallel to what occurs all the time with people who have insurance in the U.S.
I don’t think anyone was sick here.
So, your perspective is that pregnant people who have life-threatening medical conditions arising from their pregnancy through no fault of their own should have to pay out-of-pocket? Additionally, in it sounds like you feel that premature births due to life-threatening medical issues that the mother is suffering from and subsequent aftercare for the mother and premature infant should also be paid for out of pocket?
Use condoms.
Do not travel to the US
why would you go there??? this couple was asking for it
Did you see how they were dressed my god
If i take a boat and sail to a known cannibal island, where people like me have gone and been eaten before, and I then get eaten, there’s no one to blame but me. The US is simply not a good place to travel to at this time. It would have been even more hell for them if they had to over stay their visa.
It would have been even more hell for them if they had to over stay their visa.
I mean, they may have got a free
beatingplane ticket home.The baby though, that’s a natural born US citizen. That’s staying here.
The problem in this story wasn’t actually the US this time, it was the Swiss insurance company.
I would say the problem also was a very high medical bill of $ 200k.
Yes. You’re right. Our healthcare system is absolutely bonkers bananas insane, and that’s before you calculate in the cruelty. And as US citizen, I strongly advise everyone who isn’t to avoid this country like the plague.
However, if I travel to Switzerland or Canada or Italy or wherever, as a tourist, I am not covered if I go in the hospital. I still need to carry travel insurance, and if I don’t, or if it doesn’t cover something, then those countries with their modern, sensible healthcare systems will charge me out of pocket, just like an American hospital. The difference is that in America, even the citizens aren’t covered by default, and the amounts are astronomical compared to other countries.
It’s a shitty system all around, and frankly, I genuinely believe that if it weren’t for America’s weird fetish for as much money as you can possibly choke on, we would probably have started building an actual universal healthcare system for the global community, so that you’re covered by default even when traveling. But like with most things, the right wing nonsense has held us so far back that that is so unlikely as to seem utterly impossible
Yes if you come here to Danmark from the US you will not be covered. But if you are from a country in the EU you will in most cases be covered and don’t have to pay anything for being hospitalized.
Even if you do have to pay something, the cost Ive seen people post in europe are in the hundreds/thousands, not hundreds of thousands like the US.
Maybe this couple woukd have gotten a $200/2000 bill in the EU for a birth? $200,000 is a purely US problem.
Yeah do people actually pay in that price range for health care in the US? If so then thats absolutely bonkers
It’s complicated, because it’s American healthcare.
The hospital charges $200k. The insurance agrees to pay a negotiated discounted rate of $100k. $75k goes to the various insurance plans of the doctors and hospital. $15k goes to the people providing care and materials costs (everything is itemized, so then $50 aspirin you see is because it includes the time of the pharmacy tech who got the order, entered it into the system and checked for interactions, the tech who filled the order, the pharmacist who had to sign off on it, and the nurse who carried it to the patient.). $10k goes to the hospital as profit.
The insurance then makes the patient pay their $5000 deductible, which is what you pay before the insurance you pay for pays for anything, then the patient pays their $2500 coinsurance, which is what you pay after the insurance you pay for starts to pay for things but they only pay for half. After that the insurance covers it. The “perk” is that having met your deductible and coinsurance costs you likely have to pay little or nothing for care for the rest of the calendar year, making January to most financially responsible time to have a medical emergency.In terms of actual “cost”, I think the biggest difference is the itemization of everything. Universal healthcare is intrinsically more cost efficient, but it still has to pay doctors and nurses. When that cost is viewed as part of the cost of running a hospital as opposed to part of the service “charged” to the patient it can bring the “list price” down a lot. You end up with the price of a broken arm being the cost to treat a broken arm, not then cost to treat a broken arm and have everyone involved show up and your share of building the hospital room, and the cost of the janitor cleaning the room.
If I’m going to be paying $200,000 for medical procedures then they better be replacing my liver or something. How could a pregnancy possibly cost that much money?
They probably asked 6 grand just for pulling out a splinter.
NICUs are capital and professional labor intensive. I got to meet the team of doctors and nurses who kept my son alive and thriving for the three months between birth and due date. Idk what the magic number to care for him should have been, but I don’t think six figures is an unfair estimate in any socio-economic system.
The question after that is “Who paid for it?” And, in my case, it was Medicaid, which was a huge relief. These poor bastards clearly didn’t have the option.
Why it’s so capital intensive is another issue, but the matter of six figures being reasonable is to compare that to costs of similar treatments in other countries (usually it’s an order of magnitude more expensive).
Healthcare just can’t be free market bcs the demand side cannot be free by definition.
A big part of that is that other countries view to medical staff as a fixed cost. They’re not reflected in the “bill”, much like how you don’t get billed by the fire department. They’re simply paid to be there, and costs for treatment are more reflective of the cost of the treatment.
Was likely 2 hours a day actual attended care, 1000 a day, 90k for 3 months, plus rent, food, materials, another 500 a day. That’s $135-155k even with conservative care in nicu. In a real nicu that would be 10x
My nephew was also in the nicu for three months, and he cost a million dollars. Also picked up by Medicaid. As much as I hate the US Healthcare system, I will be forever grateful to the united states of America for providing life to my nephew when in any other time or situation he would have just died immediately. He is and continues to be a miracle, a very special, bright boy who just scored a goal for his soccer team this weekend for the first time.
They were performing there, it’s work .
I don’t see how this is the US’ fault. Their insurance, who initially denied them, is with a Zurich company. Do they expect any country they visit to cover them medically?
Maybe I’ll pop over to Berlin if I ever get cancer. Surely they’ll pay for all my treatments even though I’m just a tourist. They aren’t barbarians like the US.
I’m fairly sure in Berlin they won’t charge you two hundred thousand fucking dollars for an emergency procedure, but sure, go on strawmanning. What the hell.
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Sorry to burst your bubble of USA-hatred but nope. Germany will not decline to treat you but they will bill you. Oh wait… that’s exactly what happened in the US! This was not just an emergency procedure but 3 weeks in the ICU.
This couple’s insurance ultimately decided to pay. So this is a total non story. It would have happened the same in a million places. Tourists do not get major services for free. If they did, people from around the world be showing up with conditions and just reporting straight to the ER and then hop skipping home.
This story was drummed up to tap into people hating on the US for its poor healthcare system. Which is usually valid. But if we judge by whether tourists get free major services, the US isn’t any worse off.
The costs are not comparable, otherwise or healthcare systems would all be bankrupt. And here we don’t have the same incentives to inflate costs.
Yes the costs would be different. Perhaps 100,000€ instead of $200,000. The fact remains tourists don’t get free healthcare anywhere.
This is a complete nothingburger of a story. The couple got treatment. Their insurance was billed, exactly as it would have been if they’d been in Canada or Portugal.
Their insurance momentarily denied to cover them. Why aren’t we mad at them? Because this clickbait story was created to stoke a pre-existing “America sucks” narrative and get outrage clicks.
And they seem to have played everyone here perfectly.
Maybe they denied to cover them because of the ridiculously high bill, have you ever thought about that?
Edit: It seems the cost of a normal birth in Germany is at most €7500 for a tourist with no insurance.
Helllllo the baby was 7 weeks premature and in intensive care for 3 weeks. The cost of a normal birth is totally irrelevant. You didn’t read the article, obviously.
I paid literally zero for either of my kids births right here in California.
