It was a lot of tests, to be fair, and the funny thing is that it wasn’t all of it. There was another $130 charge for some other tests that they did end up covering - but not without appealing. It wasn’t a standard full panel blood test that I had to get at my age (48) due to family history. But regardless, my Dr ordered it and it’s goddamned covered.

The USA is a dozen people standing in a fully stocked supermarket with one guy saying, “I guess there’s nothing left- we’ll have to kill and eat each other,” while the other 11 quietly grumble about it but don’t dare do anything that might appear threatening. Someone will be along to save them, surely.

I went to the urgent care (and was unfortunately referred to emergency care in the same building) for some chest pain a few weeks ago. Here's some of my bill (luckily most should be covered by insurance, we'll see if they give me trouble)

• Blood draw/lab test: $446.63
• Plasma test: $158.07
• Chest x-ray: $664.66
• "Emergency services" or in other words, the bill for getting transfered from urgent care to emergency: $3,987.00
• ECG: $1,024.94

All of that, just for them to tell me that I was fine and to just rest. $6,295.29 for an hour long visit. If I didn't have insurance, I wouldn't be able to afford that and would have just preferred whatever was going to happen to me.

Meanwhile the fucking shitty human beings in Congress get free universal healthcare.

True Cost of US Healthcare Shocks the British Public:

https://youtu.be/Kll-yYQwmuM

It is a scam pulled by insurance companies.

Let say there is a doctor that charges $100 for a visit. They come too then and say "we have large network, we can provide many patients for you, but we will pay 20% of your price".

The doctor still needs to get $100, because also needs to pay the staff and other expenses, so s/he raises their price to $500.

Now someone without insurance comes. The doctor doesn't need $500, and is ok charging just $100. But if s/he does the insurance might sure them that the doctor lied to them and they only supposed to pay $20. So they are forced to charge $500.

In summary, that $500 is never paid by anyone unless they don't have insurance.

You can check how much discount insurance pays by looking for "adjustment" column on your bill.

They purposefully use that name and posting the difference instead of price to obfuscate this.

What insurance is paying is the billed amount minus adjustment minus your copay and deductible.

There are other things contributing to high prices, but this is the biggest one IMO. If we didn't have insurance meddling with the prices, the prices would be much lower. Still high, but at least something someone could be able to pay.

The markups on labs are even more ridiculous, unless it is some highly specialized test they are actually cheap to the point that some insurances don't even require copays.

Yeah, I have labs I've been putting off for like 6 months because I know it's going to end up being like a $400-600 bill. They're just standard labs, CMP, CBC, lft

We're gonna all form a circle and piss at the same time... a circle piss if you will.