Medical Bills/Bankruptcy/etc.

I'm not in your shoes, so I don't know how it really was. If I was at the hospital and they asked about any plans I had I probably wouldn't have told them I would turn into oncoming traffic and stuff. Maybe it seems foolish to you, but just as a lay person that would probably set off some red flags in my head.

Also I meant no offense by my post. I just think in their shoes red flags may have been going off.

Moonarchia_sl said:

Depriving someone of life or liberty against their will is criminal if they haven't broken a law. Forcing them to pay for it afterwards on top of that is disgusting.

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Moonarchia, we've established that he was 5150'd because he said he could potentially have a plan with the "I dunno,". The only thing they deprive them of is their freedom for the 3 or so days. You can't deprive a patient of their basic human needs.

As mentioned before: Youcouldpotentially fight the hold. It will be difficult though. You're going to have to get a lawyer that specializes in hospital negligence and malpractice.

Now that I think about it, wouldn't bankruptcy be worse than an unpaid hospital bill on your credit? At least for close to a decade?

Well strictly speaking of collection agencies (if this is different for medical collections sorry), they can sue you in court. If you fail to pay the court they'll garnish wages and whatever else comes with that.

For some people bankruptcy would be the best option.

Hoss_sl said:

You clearly misunderstood me. You must work in an outpatient clinic interviewing patients to see if they need to be involuntarily held.

I wasn't calling it BS that they were able to hold him. I was saying that whoever gave that person the power to do so, whether it was company policy, state law or federal law, THAT entity should be on the hook for the bill as soon as the patient tries to decline the care. At least they should be on the hook for whatever part of it the insurance doesn't pay. If he had an HSA, they might basically have to pay it all.

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A patient who can't make rational decisions can't refuse medical care. I'm sure in the socialist utopia you'd love America to be, we'd all share in the costs but that's not the America we live in.

Ambiturner_sl said:

A patient who can't make rational decisions can't refuse medical care. I'm sure in the socialist utopia you'd love America to be, we'd all share in the costs but that's not the America we live in.

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Now we do have a distinct lack of specifics but he's also being charged enough to bankrupt for... keeping him away from sharp objects and rope for a few days. It's not like he was rushed into trauma and had a lung transplant after being shot 3 times and went through 18 months of extensive outpatient rehabilitation.

Tarisk_sl said:

So it wasn't a rational decision to go there myself with the intent to get help in an outpatient environment? I can certainly see this argument holding up better if someone called the cops saying they found me running the car in the garage with the door closed or a hose into the window from the exhaust. Or if I was drinking heavily/downing meds/etc. I've never once attempted suicide and doubt I ever will. Hell, even if I had been just ranting "I think im gonna do it" to friends/family and them taking me there would be more of a reason than taking myself into a place, asking for help, not really knowing WHY they were asking the questions they did, etc.

I have however known people to do so and there are a lot more telling signs of inability to make rational decisions than taking one's self to the place to get treatment.

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Not sure where you get the idea that this is only a thing for someone in the middle of a suicide attempt. The goal is to catch people before they get to that point. I'm also not sure why you think these questions shouldn't count because you didn't know why they were asking them to you. If you go somewhere to get help because you're feeling depressed and they ask you questions about feeling suicidal, do you really have no idea why they're asking? I believe you were rational for the most part, but that part's bizarre.

In my experience, the majority of people put on the psych holds aren't actually going to harm themselves. The system's set up to err on the side of caution, though. They'd rather get people who weren't going to kill themselves than risk missing people who will

There's definitely a lot of room for improvement, my point was just that they did what they were supposed to do.

Read an article not long ago that about half of all hospital bills aren't paid. I'm guessing they make their money on the percentage paid by insurance.

I can see why. After having dealt with it for the last two years. Even when you attempt to pay they don't make it easy. Had a hospital bill me, paid it. Then they sent it to collections. Paid it as well to get rid of it. They still put it on my credit report. Dicked with the credit reporting agencies for a while and got it removed. 18 months later I got a refund from the hospital, still claiming they never were paid.

Today I got a call from a collector from a hospital I never got a bill from. I knew I hadn't got a bill so I called. My info I gave them didn't match their info (new hospital) so they couldn't give me my bill. Never mailed a bill, never called. Today a debt collector called (Hipaa). I asked if the hospital didn't have the number how did you get it...ummmmm.

Hospital still has no record of me going and can't find the records of what I had done. Good luck on my paying that one.

One of the hospitals I went to doesn't do billing. All their billing is done thru another company, that company had two halfs. Billing and collection. So the first notice you get is technically from a collection company and that's how they ID themself when they send you a bill.

Both of my children were born in a German hospital via c-section at a cost of about 4,000 Euro each. They would send us the entire bill which we sent to insurance( U.S) and I think we paid about 300 to include me staying in the extra bed. She took my son to the emergency room once for croup and had to the spend the day in the hospital in a room and we were billed 200 or so for it( again insurance paid for most of it) We lived there for 8 years and never had a billing issue.

I bring this up because my wife had to take my son to an emergency room for croup again while back visiting. We were billed $2,300 for a 10 minute Dr visit after waiting for 4 hours and sending him back home. About 8 months later we received a bill from a collection agency saying that we owed the entire amount and it wouldn't be covered by our insurance. We called our rep, she put us on a muted conference call and sorted it all out. We moved back to the States last August and we have had numerous billing issues with the dr/hospital we are using now. It stinks because its right across the street from us but we are considering looking around if they dont get their shit together.

Hoss_sl said:

You clearly misunderstood me. You must work in an outpatient clinic interviewing patients to see if they need to be involuntarily held.

I wasn't calling it BS that they were able to hold him. I was saying that whoever gave that person the power to do so, whether it was company policy, state law or federal law, THAT entity should be on the hook for the bill as soon as the patient tries to decline the care. At least they should be on the hook for whatever part of it the insurance doesn't pay. If he had an HSA, they might basically have to pay it all.

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That's just the way things are, for better or for worse. We are set up to protect society against the <1% that wants to harm us.

Look at how many billions of dollars we waste on TSA trying to catch terrorists bombing our planes. It's become a huge pain in the ass for travelers such as me, you and the other 99.9% of people who will never commit a terror act. But we do it to try to catch the 1 in a billion person who will bomb a plane. And doing a horrible job at it I might add.

Same with medical care. Tarisk CHOSE to go seek treatment. No one forced him to. And no one cares if he's rational 99% of the time, it's the 1% of the time he might be irrational and harm himself or others. Just like bipolar people, we don't care when they are under control, we care when they get delusional or harmful. Rational people don't tell others they might drive into oncoming traffic or that the only reason they won't shoot other people is they don't believe in guns. Those words would never escape my mouth, certainly not when I'm being psychologically evaluated. And that's the best case scenario, we have to believe that is what really Tarisk said. It could have been worse.

If there's two categories of people who never own up to how fucked up they are, it's psychotics and criminals. Everyone in jail thinks they are innocent or undeserving of their punishment, crazy people always think they aren't as crazy as they are. When either group tells me a story, I take what they say with a grain of salt. We should all be doing that as well with the picture Tarisk has painted us.

If Tarisk really was so rational or cognizant, he could have just signed out AMA (against medical advice). Doesn't sound like he was chained and locked down for 4 days.

Also, if he was at a for-profit facility, the last thing they would want is a patient like Tarisk, since he's a non-payer. The same reason why for-profit hospitals divert non-payers away from their ERs to county/government hospitals instead. Tarisk makes it sound like they kept him because they wanted more money from him, when in reality they would have wanted to kick his ass out the first day because he has no money. Don't forget it costs money to send people to collections, or collections take a significant amount of any recoverable amount.