Oh the joys of our American Medical system...

Okay, I have yet to mention it on here, but my mom is getting remarried. Which, while I am still getting used to that, and it being the reason I moved out, I am okay with. The guy is a great guy, has been around for years, and is one of my best friends fathers.

Well, the marriage is on the 30th of this month.

Him and my mom have been saving money for several months for it, over several thousand.

Well just last week the BBB put a garnishment on my mom's wages and wiped out her savings. Why?
Because the hospital we go to had reported her for failure to pay our bills. Thing is, we covered under insurance, both me and her thru our work.
They told the BBB that we never supplied any sort of insurance information or anything, which is comeplete bullshit.

For example, several months ago I nearly ripped me ACL. We went to the hospital, and gave all our information.
Three time, THREE FUCKING TIMES, they came over to us to verify our insurance information and double check everything. And again three times they came back saying everything was coming up in their system properly.

Now, we waited for almost an hour to be seen okay.
Then we get in there, they take my height, tempature, and weight , normal stuff. Send us back to the lobby. 20 minutes later, I get pulled back to the Xray room or whatever. 2 minutes later I was out of that room, and back in the lobby. 25 minutes later they come out and call us into a room. 5 minutes later the doctor comes in with the Xrays. Sits down, and says "OH YOU JUST SPRAINED IT! But very severely, from what the Xray showed us you majorly strained your ACL. Almost to the point of ripping. Now here is a doctor's note to keep you off work for three days, and you will need crutches. Take it easy, goodbye"

Now, they never gave me medication, or pain meds. Or hell, even crutches, I borrowed those from my grandfather.
Want to know how much that visit to the Hospital cost us? Where the Doctor's only saw me for no more then 20 minutes?
1800 fucking dollars.

And that is just one of the bills. There trying to bring my mom up on bills from 04, that were supposed to be covered under our insurance.

So the account my mom had been saving in for several months for her wedding, was wiped out almost entirely in under 2 weeks. And her normal 800+ weekly checks from work, she is now lucky to bring home 200 dollars because of that garnishment.

America, man AMERICA.

Where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, 'MURICA!FUCK YEAH!

DUDE! I'm not reading all that!

I'll just say Congratulations!

Or wait...

Sorry to hear that man I hope it all works out ok.

What Frost said. She went to the hospital the other dy, and the person in charge of all that stuff wasn't there. So they told her to call back tomorrow. Well shes been calling for 3 days and no one is ever there.

Also, the money for the wedding is needed by Monday.

Frostbyrn wrote:Basically Metal the Hospital pulled some Grade A bullshit lied their asses off and then stole all the money in his mums saving she was going to use for her wedding and they garnished her wages on top of that

Holy shit dude. That is terrible.
Are you going through some type of appeal process to sort it out? You might also want to talk to a lawyer immediately.

how can they even do that bullshit?I know if you go to the hospital with no insurance and never pay it it supposedly turns your credit bad,which I have some hospital bills I'll never have the money for...but that's all I thought they could ever do is send you bills in the mail....how the fuck could they just take your money >__>...maybe it's different here in Tx. cuz like by law here the hospital has to see you no matter what...even if it's rinky dink as fuck like my town is

Damn dude, that's some USDA Prime, Grade AAA horseshit. How the fuck is that even legal? Metal was right man, this would be an excellent time to call in a lawyer. Speaking of which, any lawyers on the SeC?)

Also, this is somewhat diminished by the bullshit, but congratulations to your mum. I hope she and her husband can pull through this and be happy.

Thanks Pariah.

And I don't know, all that I said is what I was told 2 days before I posted this. SO I don't exactly know everything that she is doing about it. I haven't talked to her since then until today.

But apparently she still has not gotten a hold of anyone from the hospital, and even the corporation/office that is garnishing her wages has yet to call her back.

But Its pissing me off too, because I can't do shit to help her. And well, my mom was in tears today at work when I tried talking to her.
Which, my mom is from the south, from Dallas to be precise.
So she has always been very prideful and stubborn. And very rarely have I ever seen her cry in my whole life. But today she was almost pouring, and I couldn't do shit but give her a hug and hold her.

Not as bad as what happened to you but last year I had this terrible pain in my jaw and couldn't wait for my doctors appointment on Monday so I went to the emergency room at around 11 pm. Gave the insurance information and then waited about 2 hours to be called back. The doctor came in and checked me and had blood drawn. Came back and said I had a cold which was causing fluid to build up in my jaw and cause the pain. Didn't even give me anything for the pain.


Come Monday I went to the doctors appointment and the woman that helped me said it was an abscessed tooth that needed a root canal. Had the root canal done and the pain was gone. Later the hospital tried to charge us twice for the visit. They later dropped the second charge. And to try to be fair to the doctor, I had just had an ear infection on that side.


I will say that I think that yours is a case of a terrible hospital and not necessarily something that I would blame totally on our overall medical system.

there really are alot of terrible hospitals that just try to rush you in and out,like the one here

What is this..."Paying" for medical appointments...

But again dude that fucking sucks and is complete and utter bullshit.

Hope it all works out for you and your mother.

Man, that seriously sucks. I'm really sorry that happened, I hope they figure it out

I have soooo many bad hospital stories! In February 2011 I blacked out in the middle of the night and Ehat took me to the ER (I'm sure some of you remember this but I'm telling it anyways, haha). I was there for seven hours, they did a CT scan and an EKG and ran all these tests because they thought I had a pulmonary embolism for some stupid reason. My CT scan came back, they told me I had fluid around my heart that was causing chest pain and to take Ibuprofen and sent me home. I went to my doctor the next day and she freaked out and sent me for sinus x-rays cause I was having horrible sinus pain (which I told the hospital about). Turns out, I had a sinus infection that spread to my lungs which is why I had chest pains and breathing problems. She said if I hadn't come to her it could have turned worse and I could have died. Stupid hospital. Then they sent me a $5,500 bill (which I got them to dismiss).

Hospitals are unbelievable. Especially if you don't have insurance. Here though, we have a program if you are under the poverty line they will erase your bill at a lot of hospitals. So that helps a lot of people without insurance.