Baumblog EST 1968 - A blog for the Baumbachs who originated in Syracuse, NY

So a few weeks ago our receptionist who is 8 months pregnant had a doctor visit. They noticed an elevated heartbeat for the baby so they wanted to admit her to the hospital. She drove to Rochester General Hospital where they decided she needed to go to Strong Memorial Hospital to see a pediatric cardiologist. Ok, all well and good. Strong sends an ambulance over to pick her up. She's there for a week admited in the hospital. Her and the baby are doing fine.

She gets a bill this past weekend for $880 for the 7 mile ambulance ride. $880!?!?!? They literally did nothing for her in the ambulance, she walked up, got into the ambulance and sat down. They strapped her in and drove her to the hospital. The ride took less than 15 minutes. $880?!?!?

I paid less for my flatbed tow from Rochester to Syracuse which involved loading, unloading my car, cleaning up oil, and 3 and half hours of driving, plus the time to load/unload. I paid around $300 I think. Can't remember, but I know it was far less than the ambulance bill. I'm sorry but there is no excuse for that kind of bill. They may have had a total of 30 minutes invested in that trip. You can't tell me 2 paramedics are billing at $1760/hr. She should have gotten a helicopter ride for that much.

Then they go on to say this was a non-emergency ambulance so she has to foot the bill. Um, what? The hospital called it in, not her...and she was admitted to the hospital for 7 DAYS. I'm sorry, but if that isn't considered an emergency, then the hospital can foot the bill for making the mistake of ordering an unneccessary ambulance ride.

And what really gets me...are the frequent ambulance trips I see to the halfway house across from work. I can tell you those bums aren't paying for anything. What a system we have here. Screw the worker AND make them pay to ship the low-lifes who get drunk in the middle of the day and collapse on the sidewalk. Gotta love it.

Marc said about 1 hour later

After seeing some of the bills Laura got for her sinus surgery, I can totally believe that $880 bill. For us, we ended up having to pay about $2,000 for her surgery and our insurance covered 80%. This was a supposedly simple 20 min surgery. Why was the final bill upwards of $20k? This was an outpatient surgery too! But hey weird, if we didn't have insurance, they told us the bill would be significantly less. We'd have to pay like $5k in full, but that would be the total bill.

When Laura was off insurance for a short period of time we went to an urgent care with similar results. We paid a higher bill than a normal co-pay, but it was the full bill. We went in again for the same exact problem when she was on insurance and suddenly the bill skyrocketed, but our co-pay was small, so it had less effect on us.

I'm sure the lowered total bill to uninsured people is not the hospitals being nice, it's more the insurance companies getting blasted by huge bills because they have the money to pay it. Obviously this comes back to us in many ways so we still have to pay large bills like the one you mentioned.

I know there's lots of problems with the way insurance is handled and I feel like there should be some regulation on the price of medical care, but I know things like research and coverage for life threatening diseases are why we pay some of these huge bills.
GJ said about 7 hours later

Darcy was admitted to a hospital about four months pregnant BEFORE we had insurance. The bill was just north of $20k.

If that was the discounted non-insurance price, I would be shocked. Often times, the uninsured pay MORE. The money goes to far more than just coverage for research--and as far a coverage for life-threatening diseases, that's the insurance companies' thing to worry about. What hospitals are on the hook for is the emergency room. They end up picking up the tab for uninsured folks who show up there--or at least, up until recently they did. Many hospitals starting turning those folks away when money became real scarce.
Geoff said about 11 hours later

I concur GJ, the uninsured do pay more, for prescriptions anyway. We looked into dropping prescription coverage entirely and just reimburse employees (since we are all young and prescription coverage is expensive). Found out they charge uninsured folks far more for prescriptions vs insured.

Still, with all the equipment and research costs, $880 for a 7 mile ambulance ride with ZERO medical attention is robbery. Like I said, maybe for a helicopter ride or if they had to perform actual life-saving medical attention. I guarantee firefighters don't get that kind of cash for their short trips...and they have to run into a blazing building!

And to boot, these clerical insurance folks are some of the most incompetent people I've ever had to deal with. You'd think switching insurance companies for a small business (aka 5 employees) wouldn't be too difficult. We've switched twice since I started at Bush and they have completely screwed up both times (both Excellus Blue and MVP). Lost forms (which we faxed), wrong plan enrollment, etc...this is what these people do for a living right? I don't have this problem with car insurance companies, and I've gone through more changes with those folks without any issue.

The greed and incompetence needs to stop.
GJ said about 23 hours later

Easy was to stop it. Force competitive pricing. However, when people see what happens to care once we turn it over to capitalism, they'll freak. Death panels all over again--except in this case, it could definitely occur. Not that I think that's necessarily a bad thing, either. (evil grin)
Geoff said 1 day later

me either :P