[nostrebored]

I've lived in countries where medical pricing was extremely upfront. You could go in, pay for your services, and walk out without any uncertainty. Even for ER visits, the maximum that you'd pay was clearly denoted, for everything short of a hospital stay.

After moving back to the US, I had a huge amount of culture clash after an ER visit. I was leaving the hospital and asked the front desk where I could pay, and they looked at me like I was a lunatic.

I'd be really curious if you have plans to tackle these types of visits if you get enough bargaining power.

[kchiu20]

Yes, we do! There is a procedure code and corresponding rate for each type of medical procedure/service that can be done, and that includes ER visits. For example, when I went to the ER for an ankle issue, I was billed for https://www.aapc.com/codes/cpt-codes/99284 which had a corresponding rate of $1072.50 for my insurance.

So we can predict what the cost of the visit is. However, emergency care is much more difficult to predict the total cost of in terms of what gets done during the visit. For my visit, I also had x-ray imaging done, but it can be more difficult to predict the full scope of services that could be done during an ER visit.

So it is something we plan to address later. But it should be a tractable problem that we plan to solve.

[avn2109]

Out of curiosity, what countries are those?

[lowercased]

Can't say for certain, but I had a US citizen relative living in Belgium. He was vacationing in Scotland. Got kidney stone attack... was taken immediately to local hospital in Scotland, then airlifted to larger hospital. Was there for ... several days, then went back to Belgium. No cost from him at any point in Scotland. Had another attack while getting back to Belgium, and ended up in a Belgian hospital for several more days.

Went to leave hospital after days of being there (and tests, and whatnot), and was told "well... you'll have to submit this to your insurance - we can't deal with it. It's going to be expensive(!)". They were sort of visibly ... agitated (possibly just because they don't deal with many overseas US people?). His total they were making him pay was around $200 USD.

[remyp]

I went a private hospital ER in Portugal and it worked exactly this way since I didn't have (Portuguese) health insurance. I was there a couple hours, they gave me an IV, ran a blood panel, and wrote me a prescription. I then paid the cashier €250 and that was the end of it.

Additionally, the visit actually solved the problem, which is something that rarely happens when I go to the doctor in the US.

[MandieD]

Emergency rooms in cities like Frankfurt often have a table of basic fees for visitors without German/EU health insurance.

[codegeek]

Most countries except USA.