Am from Orange County, and during times finding myself uninsured, took myself and family to doctor visits and paid at or slightly above the usual co pay.
My daughter fell from a play slide and broke her wrist. Hospital going rate was far below (80% ??) insured rates. 1987?
I remember for years Limbaugh pounding this point home regularly. And since I personally experienced it, made me realize how totally and completely corrupt our system is.
I was a contractor in Germany, and it was a known fact that German doctors liked having us as patients because we’d just flash the credit card and they got immediate cash that day. The German patient with German health care? Well...it’d be six to eight weeks down the road before he got that cash, and there could always be a disagreement about what was allowed. So a guy with the credit card got an immediate discount via their system (figure 30 percent minimum).
I personally think we have three problems with our current system.
First, there’s the lawsuit issue....where if you elected to sue someone and lose....you ought to pay all court and legal cost for the other party, and this would eliminate fifty percent of the medical legal cases we currently have.
Second, both Wal-Mart and Walgreens should offer a simple out-patient policy for $100 a month for a family, and $30 a visit. I think that would carve off half the stupid health insurance companies in America within two years who offer bloated policies that cost twice what they should.
Third, visits to the emergency room ought to immediately require a credit card...or cash....or no entry. These guys who walk in and have no credit and no cash....are forcing the rest of us to cover their lousy health care situations at the emergency room.
These three simple changes could be written up in eight pages and could have been passed by congress in two weeks. We didn’t need two thousand pages.