When I last visited Canada a group of old men were talking at the Canadian Tire about how long it takes to see a doctor. Were saying they need to start making people pay like they do in the States.
Don’t fall for that propaganda. We have both long waits and pay a ton of money. It can be both. I’ve had bills up to $118,000 and it can take me a year to see a specialist. I can’t find a primary care doctor and it takes several months to get in with a temporary nurse practitioner instead.
Most likely the insurance covered a huge chunk of that.
It’s a long story, but the TL;DR; of American healthcare is:
Healthcare providers over-inflate their costs and over-charge by orders of magnitude to insurance agencies. Why? It’s because insurance agencies have whole teams and teams and teams and teams and teams (80% of insurance companies cost is administrative groups that just do this) of people that negotiate/argue that down to a reasonable amount. This means they pay a fraction of that initial bill, but they don’t show that in the printout, instead they negotiate only “their part” of the bill, and send the rest they didn’t negotiate down to the enrollee to cover up to their yearly maximum.
This is why you see bills for $100K+ and your amount owed is roughly $2-3K with insurance “paying” the rest.
When I last visited Canada a group of old men were talking at the Canadian Tire about how long it takes to see a doctor. Were saying they need to start making people pay like they do in the States.
Don’t fall for that propaganda. We have both long waits and pay a ton of money. It can be both. I’ve had bills up to $118,000 and it can take me a year to see a specialist. I can’t find a primary care doctor and it takes several months to get in with a temporary nurse practitioner instead.
How did you have 118000 to pay?
Most likely the insurance covered a huge chunk of that.
It’s a long story, but the TL;DR; of American healthcare is:
Healthcare providers over-inflate their costs and over-charge by orders of magnitude to insurance agencies. Why? It’s because insurance agencies have whole teams and teams and teams and teams and teams (80% of insurance companies cost is administrative groups that just do this) of people that negotiate/argue that down to a reasonable amount. This means they pay a fraction of that initial bill, but they don’t show that in the printout, instead they negotiate only “their part” of the bill, and send the rest they didn’t negotiate down to the enrollee to cover up to their yearly maximum.
This is why you see bills for $100K+ and your amount owed is roughly $2-3K with insurance “paying” the rest.