South west couple left with $200k bill after baby born in US
www.bbc.co.uk
Family face a nine month battle with insurance giant Zurich which has now apologised.

A couple were told they faced a $200,000 (£146,500) medical bill when their baby was born prematurely in the US, despite them having travel insurance which covered her pregnancy.

  • AlexanderTheDead@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 hours ago

    …right, you still seem confused about what is being said, since the first half of your reply is just… stating that the practitioner themselves usually don’t directly send the bill, the billing department does.

    I guess I could see how you could misconstrue that from what I said, but it doesn’t really address the crux of who was at fault here: the insurance company.

    The system failed these people? Uh… sure… the American health care system is hot dog ass and insurance is bullshit. I agree, the system sucks.

    My only point here is that your comment directly makes it out to be the US/hospitals fault.

    But! That being said! I see where the confusion is, now.

    I realise that, my connecting thought was that the hospital looking at their insurance policy should have been able to understand the pregnancy was covered.

    You presumably meant to say “the pregnancy wasn’t covered”. Because of this typo, it made me think you were saying that it WAS covered and that the hospital made a mistake when reading.

    Also:

    You aren’t the only one whose work has involved medical insurance

    To be fair, when you say “I wouldn’t choose to live or travel through the US”, it makes it pretty fair to assume you aren’t already there. If you are out of the states, I have no idea how your experiences with a different healthcare system could be relevant? But hey, maybe you should lead with relevant information about why your input has more weight behind it than the average commenter.

    That being said… it still doesn’t. You spent half your comment acting like I was being misleading because I said “the billing doctor/hospital sent it to the insurance company”, when any reasonable person would extrapolate that obviously the staff is responsible for that? I said billing doctor because the hospital sends the bill in the doctor’s name. They might not be literally penning the bill, but they are the biller, they are doing the billing.

    Edit: also, insurance companies are mostly all closed on weekends and you can’t just “call to confirm the policy” in every situation.

    • JoshuaFalken@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      I don’t make it a habit to preface a general comment by preemptively stating why I may be qualified to weigh in on a topic. This is the internet after all, not really a formal setting. My qualifications are just as irrelevant as yours here. While we may have insight that others lack, we aren’t doing anything but commenting on an article.

      Without going point for point as you have done, it should suffice to say that even now after I have reread this thread and what I wrote previously, the underpinning of my initial comment stands - these people were failed, and it shouldn’t have happened.