This Is Why So Many Americans Are Deathly Afraid Of Going To The Hospital… by Michael Snyder for End of the American Dream
What you are about to read in this article is likely to make you very angry. Once upon a time, the primary mission of our hospitals was to help people, but today they have become vicious financial predators. Many Americans try very hard to avoid visiting the hospital because of what it might cost, but if an emergency happens there is no choice. They often get us when we are at our most vulnerable, and they never explain to us in advance how much their services will actually cost. And then eventually when the bills start arriving we discover that they have charged us 30 dollars for a single aspirin or “$2,000 for a $20 feeding tube”. It is a giant scam, but they have been getting away with it for decades, and so they just keep on doing it. And many hospitals go after those that are not able to pay their ridiculous bills extremely aggressively. Just consider the following example which comes to us from USA Today…
Heather Waldron and John Hawley are losing their four-bedroom house in the hills above Blacksburg, Virginia. A teenage daughter, one of their five children, sold her clothes for spending money. They worried about paying the electric bill. Financial disaster, they said, contributed to their divorce, finalized in April.
Their money problems began when the University of Virginia Health System pursued the couple with a lawsuit and a lien on their home to recoup $164,000 in charges for Waldron’s emergency surgery in 2017.
I can’t imagine any surgery that should ever cost $164,000. You can buy an entire house for that amount of money. It is highway robbery, and those that are engaged in this sort of predatory pricing are literally crooks.
Sadly, Heather Waldron and John Hawley have a lot of company. Over the past six years, the University of Virginia Health System has sued 36,000 patients…
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The family has lots of company: Over six years ending in June 2018, the health system and its doctors filed 36,000 lawsuits against patients, seeking a total of more than $106 million, seizing wages and bank accounts, putting liens on property and homes and forcing families into bankruptcy, a Kaiser Health News analysis found.
Yes, the University of Virginia Health System saves lives every single day, but the way that they are running their operation is bringing great shame to the entire state of Virginia.
Of course there are many other hospitals all across the country that are behaving in a similar manner. This next example comes from CNN…
When Donna Hernandez had the flu last year, she went to her local emergency room in New Mexico, where she received two IV bags of saline, a dose of antiviral medication and a drug to help with her nausea.
She says after about two and a half hours, she was on her way.
Hernandez recovered from the flu, but still hasn’t recovered from the shock of the bill she received afterward. It was for more than $6,000.
Are you kidding me?
Hernandez didn’t stay overnight and she didn’t have any surgery.
