The article has been automatically translated into English by Google Translate from Russian and has not been edited.

Urgent case without insurance: how much did immigrants pay for hospital treatment in the USA

'19.01.2021'

Source: Kuzminatravel on Yandex Zen

Author of the channel Kuzminatravel on Yandex.ZenOlga, who has lived in the United States for 3 years, talks about the bills for medical services after her husband was treated in the hospital. Next is a first-person story.

Photo: Shutterstock

Many people think that medicine in America is very good, and this is globally true.

But there are caveats:

  • in order not to go broke on visits to the doctor, you need to have insurance;
  • with a temperature of 38 and a common cold, they will not treat you especially, a more serious reason is needed. And no one really addresses in such cases;
  • any medicines, including more or less normal pain relievers, can be bought in American pharmacies only after going to the doctor, and strictly in the prescribed amount. Pills are not sold in packs, as we do, but the amount required by the prescription is poured into a bottle and sold.

Most often, the employer pays for health insurance for its employees (in whole or in part). Since we had our own small business, we had no one to pay for insurance, and we still could not pay $ 600-800 monthly out of our pocket for each person (although this was a violation of the law).

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It was possible to submit an application and obtain state medical insurance (as for the poor), but for certain reasons we did not want to do this, hoping for the Russian "maybe". It seems young and healthy, we will pay for insurance when the business grows up a little more ...

One weekend we went fishing with friends.

Everything was fine, but when we returned home, my husband had a fever of 39, and an hour later he lost consciousness. I panicked a lot and had to call 911. The ambulance arrived about 5 minutes later, probably. I didn't notice, but very quickly.

It turned out - heatstroke.

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My husband spent about 4 hours in the hospital, he was given an IV and offered to stay in the ward for a day, but friends immediately said that without insurance we would not pay off later. A friend took us back by car.

In the United States, hospital bills are not paid immediately, the bill arrives in the mail later.

As a result, we were sent 2 invoices: one for an ambulance, and the other from the hospital. For the ambulance, we paid $ 1100 and another $ 1850 for 4 hours of my husband's stay in the hospital.

Original column published on the blog. Kuzminatravel on Yandex.Zen

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