An IMPORTANT update on emergency medical treatment! I've had a few people point out the "No Surprises Act" which was passed this year: www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/no-surprises-understand-your-rights-against-surprise-medical-bills Now, if you have health insurance, this act will "Ban surprise bills for most emergency services, even if you get them out-of-network and without approval beforehand (prior authorization)." This is super good news, and it means that you shouldn't be afraid of calling 911 in a medical emergency-you'll still have to pay for it (like an in-network procedure), but it won't be completely out of pocket if you go to an out-of-network hospital. The act will also "Require that health care providers and facilities give you an easy-to-understand notice explaining the applicable billing protections..." and though I'm less convinced about the "easy-to-understand" aspect, at the very least it means you SHOULD be notified about this when you receive the bill!
NSA was great, but also worth a shout out to the Transparency in Coverage regulation. Idealistically will also mean that you should be able to get an (at least approximate) rate from your health insurance provider for a given service.
Also REMEMBER EVERYONE: *If you have a procedure done that you are told is going to be covered and then when you get there to pay, they have an OUT-Of-NETWORK company give you Anesthesia but they never told you they weren't in-network & make you pay $2,380 for it, MAKE A COMPLAINT/APPEAL for it because not telling your patients about an additional out-of-network cost that's also being done is ILLEGAL.* Because this is against the law, your insurance company will APPROVE your Appeal and the doctor's office who you paid will have to PAY YOU BACK THAT MONEY. Get your money back!!! Don't overpay or let doctors get away with ILLEGAL shit like this!! I just had it happen to me TWICE so they're having to pay ME back over $3,000.
Yo, my current job is in a department that *enforces* the rules of the No Surprises Act! 😁 This "no-choice" loophole was a thorn in my side for *years* because it was "technically" legal. Now I get to call bullsh*t on their billing practices with the federal government to back me up, and save regular people from getting billed for things completely out of their control.
To elaborate, the "easy-to-understand" requirement includes - most importantly - a price estimate of the cost of the services you will be receiving voluntarily by providers who are out of your insurance network. You must be given this paperwork at least 72 hours before the expected procedure - if you weren't given the papers, then it's on them to explain why, not you. It also protects you from hospitals contracting out their labs/radiology/anesthesia to third party companies that stay out of network because they know people have no choice. (There's one company in particular that provided *neonatal care* that stayed out of network to take advantage of this loophole. That's right, *preying on families with newborns.* I'm SO glad they're finally facing consequences.)
Seeing this as an American in my early 20s is like walking down a long, dark, narrow corridor and seeing a text prompt telling me to hold Shift to sprint.
I don't usually leave comments like this, but this is genuinely one of the funniest and most encompassing descriptions I've ever heard for being an early 20-something. Thanks for the laugh and existential dread lol.
@@vulpinemachine Tell me about it. I'm going to a 200k dollar uni (my dumbass thought it was 50k because they never said that amount was per year on their website and I trusted them on that figure, stupid me) and while the president is getting a key to the city and spending 22 million on a football stadium, the music building literally has fucking asbestos in the noise cancelling panels on the walls and one of the dorm halls has a mold problem, the asbestos being a completely open secret and the mold issue being an open fact. The goal was never to make your life better. It's to give you the illusion that your life is better or will be better down the line
I mean they wrote the code for their maximum gain. The question is why we allowed them to. Seems like a functioning democracy should have stopped such a disgusting predatory system. Yet support for public healthcare in the US is only around 50%.
@@chazdomingo475 Wanna know another funny little trick Politicians don't want you to know? Being a politician with money causes your vote to all of a sudden carry a lot more weight than if you were broke.
I got charged for watching this video by my health insuarance. Apparently, Brian is an out-of-network consultant and I didnt get him approved beforehand as a specialist by my PCP. Now I'm broke! Thanks Insurance!
Too funny!! Doing research on all of this and it seems the affordable health care act and the government and IRS and people running it..have been banking. They have been receiving $6400 a month or more .. definetly $300 a week for EVERYONE with a social security number! And GOD knows how long this has been going on for..and to just think only a handful of people have actually "applied" to recieve there entitled benefits. Seems super shady and a way to line the government's pockets. Investigation is continuing and hopefully EVERYONE will be informed of the TRUTH very soon.
I have been diabetic for 30 years (since I was a kid) and let me tell you.. navigating the nightmare that is the American Healthcare system for my entire life has been soul crushing. It's worse than the fucking disease.
I will never forget hearing my 20 year old brother sobbing on the phone trying to get his diabetic supplies shipped to him after days of calling and hours on hold and after nearly a month of having no method of testing his glucose levels. To this day it makes my blood boil.
Not trying to be funny but I have a question, why not just leave America? For real, it's a shit hole, have you considered moving to a place with free healthcare?
@@Jehty_ the short answer is no every insurance is supposed to cover it. In practice many insurers have major caveats in their coverage regarding mental health fueled by the intrinsically subjective nature of such reports. For example I can take your blood pressure and objectively report to insurance that it's too high so you need corrective meds. But if you have depression there's no lab test, I am fully reliant on your reported symptoms to make a diagnosis and prescribe treatment. And if BDGs video was any indication it gets even more complicated when you start talking covered meds or therapy.
@@ohnoagremlin And are then surprised by the disproportionately large amount of mental health issues in our nation. Yup, the system's clearly working as intended, folks!
As a recent US immigrant, After getting health insurance that my job pays for, I decided to have my issues looked up. I started with tinnitus which was keeping me up at night. I made sure to go to a clinic that was "in-network". They tested my hearing and there were no issues and I didn't have to pay for any of it. So far so good. But then they suggested that the issue might be brain related and could be serious. So they directed me to another clinic in the same building to get a brain scan where I got scheduled. Little did I realize that the second clinic wasn't in network, so imagine my shock when I received a 1,500$ bill on my way out. Good news is, they didn't find anything wrong with my brain... This experience destroyed my willingness to get my issues checked out and my trust in the medical industry in general. Although I have many concerning issues with my body, I'd much rather take the risk of death than ruining my family's financial stability. And I have a sneaking suspicion that this is exactly what this system is engineered to do.
Of course it is on purpose, they make seeking help so troublesome so people do it as little as possible so they can get that premium every month without offering a service.
I find it more mind-blowing that people, like yourself, prefer the chance of death over an insane hospital bill....I had friends just let me lay on their floor after a seizure during a hangout night (had too much beer as a diabetic) only because they thought my health insurance wouldn't cover the ER room. But they were sure to say how scared they were for my life....If I'm dead, I will have no bills anyway. JESUS CHRIST THIS COUNTRY IS INSANE!
@AssBlasster that's the thing, they fucking don't. That's not what OP is saying, that's not what people in the US are saying. Most people want single payer. But the health industry lobbyists don't.
Yo, same. I learned the hard way that even if you have a life change that qualities you to get health insurance at a different time, you still might not be able to get it. In Massachusetts if you don’t have health insurance for three months, you get dinged on your taxes and I ALMOST hit that, luckily my employer helped me out and I got my plan sooner than later. I fucking hate this system.
You basically need an equivalent of a lawyer for healthcare. During the ACA transition, some states wanted to block advocacy services that guide people through this insanity.
As an ER doctor, that's true, we're often private contractors. Which also means I don't get health insurance through work. Which blows and also screws patients over because the middleman who staffs the ED is often out of network. Oh, and did you know that insurance companies can completely change what drugs are covered by their formulary anytime of the year? and that doesn't count as a qualifying life event? Wait is our medical system... Irretrievably... Broken?
Wtf doctors dont get health insurance....what a weird concept. it should be universal healthcare for doctors/nurses/other medical profs doing the work for our health care system!
@@Superboologan1 I'd assume that doctors have a good enough salary to be able to afford private healthcare and costs of out-of-network care, but at worst, the same thing that everyone else does when they don't have medical help. They die.
the american health care system was made to make money and not spend it.., thats what america is about.. making money as much as possible and making sure to not lose any... at any cost..
I think BDG may have found his true calling: making adulting PSAs. I can't even imagine how helpful this would have been if my high school had shown me this video 15 years ago. Please make this a series.
Adulting step one: if you say adulting you are neurodivergent and your needs are fundamentally different from every other person the system is created to accommodate and you never will be accommodated by said system. you must find solice and support within compasionate friends because you never will find solice or support through any system where money changes hands. The best you will ever do is learn to scrape by to be able to find more moments where you can be with people you trust.
As a Canadian that moved to the US for work, it was maddening trying to understand why people don't riot because of this. There is literally a whole private insurance industry and departments in hospitals dedicated to just dealing with billing. It wastes so much money.
I always thought it was hilarious that conservatives try to claim private healthcare is cheaper and more efficient. I'm no fan of wading through the swamp of government bureaucracy, but I'd take it any day over corporate bureaucracy that charges me a cover fee just to get into the bog.
'cause it's just normal for them, a lot of people think without it healthcare is worse in other countries, when it really really isn't, or that it has insane waiting times, when it doesn't, (and that one's always been insane 'cause their waiting times... Aren't good?) it's hard to see a different world without ever experiencing it. Especially with all the money that goes into preserving the fuckitude that the system is. It makes me so glad to be British. 'Cause we do know what it's like, and there would absolutely be riots across the country if our system became like theirs.
And it's larger than the department dedicated to just dealing with patients. Inside of a hospital, you ONLY see the tip of the iceberg, but every level between insurance and providers have to fund their own department dedicated to fighting the other parties on coverage and billing decisions. At a hospital, your doctor is conscripted into this effort with excessive charting requirements and justification checks and outside reviews that may cost them more time than actual patient care.
So, I have a friend with a chronic disease that was working in the States for a couple of months, and when he needed prescription drugs, he found it more convenient to fly back to Europe, go to the doctor, get the drugs and return. Not just in terms of money, because it was also cheaper to do so, but that way he didn't have to wrestle between several companies so he could get his damn drugs.
Literally what I do too, and I've lived in the US for four years now and have insurance. Even though I don't have my German insurance anymore and have to pay out of pocket, it's much cheaper to fly home and go see my old providers there every year or two. Especially women's health services in the US are sub-par compared to the rest of the world (it's basically just a manual exam and pap-smear in the US, where in other countries they're also checking everything via ultrasound, which makes much more sense). It's ridiculous.
It can be cheaper to fly to Mexico, have a vacation, get dental surgery, then go back by the time you can even get scheduled for one in the US Even with dental insurance
@@genderender Yeah but in the US it's done by doctors with dental tools, pretty sure in Mexico it's done by mechanics with auto tools who have some free time
I've heard a lot of people talk about getting a big hospital bill, asking for an itemised bill, and discovering that about half of the cost is for procedures they didn't even recieve.
Its always recommended to get an itemized bill to avoid problems like these. Knowing health insurances, they’d probably charge a fee to get it sooner or lager.
You would not believe the private and public armies that will be dispatched if they come under any serious pressure from the proletariat. A civil war would be hideous, unfortunately we have to use the government. Luckily we can still vote- for now.
The guillotine really isn't the best revolutionary symbol given its bedbugs used more as a tool for colonial violence than it's been used as against kings and the bourgeois.
@@chaosandbunnies8291 Imagine people not reporting it for spam. ..or worse, imagine a couple hundred people reporting it and UA-cam not doing anything about it for months.
Well... It is working. You just have to redefine "whom" it's working for. And that's definitely not anyone who is sick. Rich people get sick, they either are so rich they don't care or they blow through a ton of cash because they have sooooo much money that it really doesn't matter. If you don't believe me, google Sumner Redstone's net worth in 2014 and his net worth in 2020.
It's awfully convenient how health care doesn't cover psychological damage given that the structure of this system causes me the most psychological anguish
But then how will the government invest millions of dollar into the problem, steal most of the money, spend some money on something real to show as progress and get nothing done so they can justify another investiment to do it again?
The craziest part is actually that they categorically won't show you this in school because US curriculum don't include a single piece of information about a system that is going to dictate, more than anything else in your entire life, your health and your financial status until the day you die (possibly as a direct result of this very system). Fun! Is it not? How our educational institutions do nothing to educate us about the most consequential and universal realities of our upcoming adulthoods! Great all around.
And when you call the customer service line to check if something is covered, they rattle off a line about “nothing I say is a guarantee of coverage.” I asked a rep once how I could get a definite Yes or No before scheduling an appt and risk owing 100% of the bill. They said, “you can’t.”
tip from a health insurance agent who hates his job: if your drug list includes tier 3 and up drugs, you can submit a tier reduction request. basically, if your doctor says you can't take the generic/plan-preferred drug a lot of the time the plan has to "price match" your tier 3 drug to a lower tier. it's not always a guarantee but we have a pretty good success rate with getting these requests approved. most people aren't aware that this is a possibility but it could save you a bit of money. also this video is amazing and made me cackle 😂
It's honestly crazy how Brian comes up with these weird existential nightmare scenarios... Like could you imagine if that's how health insurance really worked? That would be terrifying!
Ha ha! Even just thinking about the existential crisis I would have over this totally nonexistent system is killing me! And I wouldn't be able to afford the medicine that would save me! 😂
Soooooo damn glad I'm German right now. You go to whichever doctor you like, let them do whatever they want, and never even see the bill for the treatment.
Also REMEMBER EVERYONE: *If you have a procedure done that you are told is going to be covered and then when you get there to pay, they have an OUT-Of-NETWORK company give you Anesthesia but they never told you they weren't in-network & make you pay $2,380 for it, MAKE A COMPLAINT/APPEAL for it because not telling your patients about an additional out-of-network cost that's also being done is ILLEGAL.* Because this is against the law, your insurance company will APPROVE your Appeal and the doctor's office who you paid will have to PAY YOU BACK THAT MONEY. Get your money back!!! Don't overpay or let doctors get away with ILLEGAL shit like this!! I just had it happen to me TWICE so they're having to pay ME back over $3,000.
I once watched EMTs debate which hospital they should take a patient to because they couldn’t remember which hospital was in what network, while the man held his own head wound closed. That’s when I realized I might want to leave the country… …and then I did. Never have to deal with this crap in Canada 🇨🇦
As someone who took an EMT course in America and is training to be an EMT; when I asked one of my instructors about why certain things were they way they were, the instructor literally told me: "Oh because of the power of Insurance companies, they set that up." Like, what the fuck?! How can someone who has not one minute of medical training possibly be determining what is covered or what a "pre-existing condition" is??? This whole system is a fucking farce. We need Universal Healthcare in the USA
@@robert-rv8lo The differences between late stage capitalism and fascism get so blurry that sometimes it is hard to tell when your democracy did die or if it even existed in the first place.
What kills me (literally) is when the insurance companies refused coverage for anything they could label a "pre-existing condition". An infamous case was a young rape victim being denied coverage for her treatment, because she had been raped a few years previously so her being a rape victim was a pre-existing condition.
Ah yes. How reasonable to expect a person with a concussion or with terrible wounds to stop their ambulance, doctor, and specialist before treatment and say, "Now, wait just a minute. Are you in my network? If not, would you kindly let my chances of living dwindle and get one who is? Thank you."
Actually this happened to my family. My sister had an injury and we called an ambulance just to waive their help and drive her ourselves to the hospital. We were still billed an insane amount, but it was better than the $2000 for the ride
I have yet to meet an insurance where an ambulance is covered. I have decided they are fancy scams on wheels and unless I hit gold or am literally dying I won’t/ can’t use one without going into debilitating debt lmao
@@musemccormack5436 the most depressing part about that is im canadian and when i was young i just went to an adult hospital and they let me take an ambulance for fun, and last year i had an ambulance called for me bc i had a panic attack at the dentist, so i know from being in one they are incredibly *incredibly* useful when in need of one, god americs makes me sad
i recently had to take an ambulance ride, its AMAZING how much they charge you for STUPID THINGS, like it was over a thousand dollars to be taken by ambulance LESS THAN FIVE MILES, (after seeing my bill, i looked it up, and found out i was LUCKY as someone not that far from me, was charged OVER EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS for a similar ambulance ride.) and of that, there were some CRAZY fees, like an almost $200 service charge.....because they used their radio, there was also a $100 fee because they turned the sirens and lights on....NOT EVEN JOKING...
I love how UA-camrs in our generation will just organically, randomly, make the critical educational content we need the most effective or memorable way possible.
@@toulouse1 I assume it counts enough, I watch some tiktok comps about stuff like leftism and disability info and stuff like that, mainly the ones by “a dude” (that’s their actual channel name /gen) which have some pretty good info in a pretty digestible format!
Oh sure I'll think about the others I've seen sometime. Just remember watching channels I'd know for one thing and then something would come up in their life and they'd make a video to help anyone else (like their subscribers for one) with that potential life scenario. But yeah someone should make a playlist out of them, since they're more watchable and thus easy-to-remember than more bland how-tos.
@@toulouse1 not quite 'critical', but "history of the entire world, i guess" by bill wurtz is a good example of spontaneous really helpful educational videos from someone who normally doesn't make them.
I still can't wrap my head around the fact that a health insurance can just say: "No we won't pay for THIS doctor. Yes, we agree that you broke your leg and needed a cast and pain medication, but it was done by the wrong guy. If Peter had done it we would pay, but we won't pay for Mark!"
One of my core memories is my mom being locked in the office on the phone like a full time job for several days because our insurance got bought out and they stopped covering ALL of my sister’s medical costs. Eye exams, tests, PCP appointments, EVERYTHING. After a LITERAL WEEK of being transferred , gathering documents, getting corporate phone numbers, she finally found out why: my sister was receiving health insurance from her two full time jobs which excluded her from the family plan. MY SISTER WAS 8. The best part is you have to confirm the patients name and DOB to access any information. They eventually got slammed with a fee (that was definitely way less than they made from charging people who didn’t have the knowledge or time to fight this battle) in a lawsuit. Turns out in the data transfer they purposely lost or altered data to shit like “grade schooler has 2 full time jobs” to siphon money out of people in the confusion and then use the confusion and unnavigability of a new system as a smoke screen. I love it here.
Btw if you know you are being charged unfairly DO NOT PAY. You should have a grace period to pay so that gives you time to fight back. Otherwise they’ll go “oh yeah there was a mistake but it looks like the bills already settled so that’s great!” And now you’re out $15000 and filing for bankruptcy. :/
@@Lorraine202I just learned this. My insurance company has been increasing the amount listed as what I owe for months even though the actual HCP’s costs were settled. Double check before paying anything to these vultures.
@@orppranator5230It depends, but that's the government's problem to deal with then. You still only pay a maximum of $35 per consultation or medically necessary procedure/medication, and your involvement in it ends there.
@@orppranator5230 A public system could be designed to be non-profit. If the government sets up a system where it's a CRIME to charge people then Any Charge At All will be su autosuspect that only the particularly uneducated would even try.
I just had an AUS friend send this to me to ask if this was supposed to be satire or if this was fact. I studied medical billing and coding for a year in the US and live in the US with chronic illnesses. This is not satire. This is accurate. This is how the US system works.
In Aus we have Medicare which means most general consults are government subsidied and you have the option to buy private insurance for certain stuff if you need it. Correct me if I'm wrong though
Check if your state provides subsidized insurance for people with disabilities. That information should be available on your state's department of health/public health website. I ended up paying like $60 a month for Medicare cause I'm constantly dying.
My sympathies. Also worth checking, if you’re still living with your family and are likely to for the foreseeable future, if you might be able to stay on theirs as a disabled dependent. (Which has its obvious downsides, but as someone who’s remained on parental health insurance after 26 because I can’t really work, I bring it up.)
As an American college student, this video is genuinely very helpful. They never teach you any of this stuff but it can be life ruining if you don't know about it.
Its by design. Creating an unnecessarily complicated system then justifies the existence of "experts" (Tax Experts, Insurance Experts, Ect) who can then make money off of people usually not having the time to learn these complicated systems. Its also why none of these systems are ever taught, and if anything is done to try and simplify it, lobbyist groups who represent those "experts" step in to keep the money making scheme going.
@@ThatOneREDScout Information asymmetry is one of the most common ways to capture profits. OP, the main thing you need to understand is that you live in a society that is trying to trick and trap you at every step. Never trust anyone.
The worst part is that most insurance companies don’t even play by their own convoluted rules and frequently deny coverage that they are contractually obligated to provide. They will make every excuse imaginable to withhold money from you and make zero effort to maintain a positive business relationship with you, their cash cow. The one constant I have seen over the 10 years of having private health insurance with various providers is that you have to fight like hell, for an exorbitant amount of time, to get what you need without bleeding money, as well.
And they're rude too, you call them and put up with their convoluted bullshit for an hour or more and the person on the other end almost always is an asshole, refusing to actually help you or explain things, their job is to suck you dry, not help you, you're just disagreeable food
reminds me of the time i had a procedure that was covered fail, and bcbs tried to charge me almost $300 for that failed procedure. EVEN THO if it had gone right, it wouldve cost me almost nothing at that point bc my family had already met our deductible!!!!!!!!!!
Why on earth would they play by their own rules? If a provider defrauds, say, 1.3 million people a year, how many of those people will realize they've been robbed? How many of the people who realized will be in a position to do something about it? How many of _those_ people will actually manage to get it done? Stealing money from your cash cows is, it turns out, _incredibly profitable and very low-risk._
Legal fees are just another calculated risk, and they are experts at calculating risk. They'll break their contract exactly as much as they calculate they can. The profits they save by denying you coverage are used to pay for the very lawyers that fight against you, the mathematicians that find optimal pathways to screw you, and the politicians that write laws in their favor. Ultimately you are the one funding their efforts against you. You never had a chance. You don't have teams of mathematicians helping you calculate your risk. You don't have teams of lawyers to make sure your contract is upheld, in which you didn't contribute any of the fine print, let alone half the contract. You don't have politicians in your pocket writing laws for you. You don't have economists keeping an eye on the markets for you. There is an extreme inequality of every economically important resource, both physical and conceptual, including time, attention, money, law, information, negotiating ability, and even general decision making skills such as game theory. The insurance company counted their win against you as predicted future profits before you were born.
And if I can point out, they may deny coverage for life-threatening conditions that your well-respected oncologist has ordered. You are so right about having to fight hard. Do it early - your private health insurance will likely explain that they are not obligated to provide you any answer sooner than 10 to 14 days; that's a problem when your platelets are low and dropping by 6k a day, but hey, if you bleed out because you bite your tongue, that solves their problem of expensive medical procedures....
About two thirds of the way in I felt a panic attack brewing because I was getting scared that I wasn't understanding this enough so I had to start repeating "I'm not American, I'm not American" to calm down. Not sure if that speaks more to how terrifying this system is or to how good you are at immersing me into a topic
Hahahaah well at least you dont actually live in this nightmare. I only have a year left being under my parents and im scared 😢 make sure this doesnt happen where you live!
@@princessalia6 Oh I've been trying. I live in Alberta, Canada and our last Premier (Basically a Governer, he was American too) tried his damnedest to privitize healthcare, and sadly enough a lot of people were on his side, but he never really got anywhere with it and ultimately if he did I wouldn't have been surprised if the Federal Govt stepped in and said "No", but for a hot minute I was pretty terrified
@@princessalia6 Not a thing apperently. I'm planning on moving at some point to Ontario or maybe Nova Scotia. The more time goes on the more Alberta is turning into a Little US inside of Canadian borders at best, or a fascist splinter state at worst and I don't wanna be here when the axe comes down either way
I can't speak to not living in this nightmare, but I can say that having lived in it all my life and now currently being unable to fix significant and life-altering problems with my teeth for several years to the point where I haven't been able to chew food and I don't know that fixing my teeth will even fix the problem now because I have no idea if I'll be able to chew like normal or if my jaw has atrophied...it's not great.
Pro tip: if you have to take a super expensive medication that has a high copay, the drug manufacturer will often have a program to cover the copay for you. This is because they'd rather eat the copay amount if it means they can still bill your insurance for the rest.
THIS. My specialty medication would have bankrupted me years ago if my doctor hadn't offhandedly mentioned that the manufacturer had a reimbursement system. It's saved me probably over $100K in the past decade.
@@nemo-zl1vm as someone who is not american and does not take medication it baffles me to think that a life-saving medicine could even cost 10k a year. is it subsidised at all?
@@acookie7548 This particular medication gets billed at $40K per dose, and I get 8 doses per year, but my max out of pocket for health insurance is about $7K. With the reimbursement program, I "only" end of paying a thousand or so a year for it. Sometimes my insurance likes to deny my claim for bullshit reasons, so I get to spend a few months thinking I'm suddenly $40K in debt while I beg them to change their mind. Whatever country you live in, vote like hell to prevent them from privatising health costs - it really is hard to exaggerate how hellish it can be. As for subsidies, there's lots of "it depends" that can take age or poverty status into account. You can theoretically deduct health costs from your taxes, but it's limited and it's difficult to qualify for it.
My favorite part about the deep dives on American healthcare is seeing the horrified reactions of people who aren't from the United States. This is an in depth beginners crash course on health insurance. None of the information presented here is satire, right down to the plans that are referred to as "Part A," "Part B," etc. It's exhausting.
I live in a third world country and I get literally EVERYTHING for free. "Oh but queue's must be super long!" I go see a doctor same day if I need to, and I if I have to I can get a doctor home visit (also free).
@@ThoughtsOnThoughts thank you, I swear I have people in my family who are obvious victims of the predatory privatized healthcare and they still go “well at least I only have to wait 3-6 months to even a year to see a doctor instead of however long the queues must be over in places with privatized healthcare!”
@@ThoughtsOnThoughts free? nothing is free my friend. Somebody always has to pay, people have to make the medications, work the hospitals, track the records, etc... payment comes through money or time. The real reason American health insurance is so bad, *aside from the shoddy bureaucracy* is because there is *basically* no upper limit to what the government will pay for different things. So in practice big pharma and hospitals can cooperate to charge exorbitant rates to insured people. Really, Americas insurance problem is deeply rooted in a very large number of other issues, like government money laundering and insider trading, gross government inefficient/malicious spending, outdated laws and systems... When people say they want insurance in the private sector, they don't normally mean completely independent from law, they just want it in businesses with a monetary incentive to do things right, and a minimal degree of government intervention necessary only for keeping the companies from cooperating to jack prices up and to keep insurance payments at a low price for consumers that is affordable but still profitable. Another reason people want private insurance is so that people that have enough money to not need insurance do not have to pay for other peoples insurance, either through taxes or payments. Long story short, governments don't normally have their peoples best interests in mind.*yes I am aware that businesses don't either, but they at least have an incentive existing in the bottom line they must meet*
@@theorderofthepurplephoenix3321ngl owning a weapon that is specifically designed to kill as many people as possible in a short time span doesn’t seem too appealing
@@tapwater4425 having the proper means to defend yourself and your home is something Europeans can’t do. If people break into your house you will have free healthcare when they injure you, but you won’t be able to defend yourself, you’re family, or your valuables
@@theorderofthepurplephoenix3321 there are ways of defending yourself aside from guns, like a baseball bat, or a knife. Besides, I do see some benefit to having a gun *if* the attacker also has a gun, but automatic weapons are a bit overkill and usually cause more harm than good.
@@tapwater4425 first of all, a bat or knife while not stop a group of people. Secondly, a knife or a bat is a much more brutal way to kill someone than a gun. And lastly, regular people aren’t allowed to own automatic weapons. To own a automatic weapon you either have to go a long and tedious background check and pay 50-120 grand or go through a almost impossible amount of paperwork to get an ffl. Felons, and people with a record of violent crimes are not allowed to own any guns. Automatic weapons are really only for the most diehard of rich gun collectors, a very niche market. Many robberies have been stopped by store owners/civilians who had guns and many live have been saved by guns. In America we do not have a gun crisis, we have a mental health crisis and not enough background checks for certain guns
As an example of a person living on one of the public healthcare parts of the world, I indeed appreciate you for the cautionary tale. I was already verbally agressive against people who defend privatization, now after this video I'll also get physical. Thanks!
Okay you call the guide terrible but this is actually a really excellent guide. I'm a whole-ass pharmacy technician, dealing with insurance bullshit is part of my job, and there's stuff in here I didn't know and I will 100% be copping some of your wording.
canadian here. i got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and have been insulin dependent since last year. my previous insurance plan no longer applies because I'm not in school this term and also our government prescription plan (OHIP) stopped covering insulin and other necessary diabetes prescriptions like blood sugar testing devices :D this is a very helpful video thank you. and remember kids: if you ever see the CEO of Lantus or any other insulin company, please remember to take their pancreas from them and then refuse them a hospital visit, thank you.
Wtf, I'm from Ontario too and I didn't know about insulin getting dropped from OHIP. What demonic logic did they use to remove insulin from the list - are they claiming it's a medication and not like a medical treatment or something so you have to get private insurance for it like most people have to for medications? So sorry to hear that. I'm so upset that gnome got reelected.
My wife has a blood condition that 4 people in the US have. It’s SUPER cheap to treat, but bc it’s rare, we’ve had to fight for 9 months to get care. Thank you for this cathartic, and hilarious, recap of our year.
Same thing happened to my family, insurance wouldn't accept the first Dr.s letter so had to literally beg the chief of medicine of a children's hospital in person so my family wouldn't be financially crippled for life... and we're the ones who are lucky
whoaa how do you even get a diagnosis for something that rare? because most doctors will have never even heard of it, and even for relatively common chronic illnesses like POTS it's ridiculously difficult to get a diagnosis or any type of referral for further testing
@@notebeans3134 She's now what you call a "case study." Lol. The diagnosis was by accident and by the American Red Cross. They noticed something was up with her blood and appropriately took action. God bless them.
This. Both my brother and my mother have had to go into preventable surgery that made it so they had exponentially worse short and long term health repercussions (with my mom's being life threatening emergency surgery) and too many a times have I turned to Google because it doesn't make sense to pay for a doctor's visit just for them to say 'your blood and pee is healthy go drink water or something'
And gets much worse the more of a minority you are. Trying to get chronic pain that I believe is MS, but my last doctor blamed it entirely on my trans HRT despite it starting to progress before starting that She did the same thing with my chronic migraines I finally needed meds for that I had been fighting for 10-15 years. And of course US healthcare is so underfunded that it takes months to get a new doctor
My sister had a similar problem, except she got coverage that didn't cover pre-existing conditions in the meantime, which meant she was paying premiums for useless insurance.
As someone who is almost off their parents insurance and is looking to go into an industry that usually doesn’t have benefits, this is immensely helpful and terrifying
@@swesleyc7 Ah yes I also chose to be born and make the world a shitty place where people will look down on one another and decide "hmm yes that person deserves the almost inevitable fate of suffering and death that is being denied healthcare, because they don't have a job I deem worthy". Absolutely a choice we, the young, made. Yes indeedy.
I think a key thing you should have mentioned is just how difficult it is for low-income people or even retired old people to even get Medicaid and Medicare in the first place. The requirements are very stringent and require you to relinquish any amount of money you have to even qualify for these programs. If you make $1 too much over the limit, you are automatically disqualified. It's a subtle and sinister caveat.
I would totally watch a series called "Adulting" by BDG that dives in or gives an overview of all the bs the world doesn't teach you enough about until it's too late.
I desperately need info on taxes. Like, every year, I spend months trying to figure this shit out and I have no idea. There's no help for people with learning disabilities like me, and I can't afford a tax service again this year, so I'm already shitting myself.
I work for a health insurance company, and I am strongly considering showing this video to my new hire class to help them understand this insanity. Definitely a broken system
as someone with ADHD who has tried several times to look into this stuff but simply CANNOT stay focused enough to do it, this was actually so insanely helpful and calming
I guess you'll just have to move. All this stuff is automatic in my country, I don't have to worry at all. If this is how it was for me, I wouldn't even have an ADHD diagnosis, and I'd probably end up dead before the age of 40 LMAO
Trying to get a psychiatrist is so stressful 😅 I've thought I might have adhd for over a year and haven't gotten to one because the process takes forever and I'm worried I'll do everything and it turns out they think I'm faking my symptoms or that I'm not dealing with enough sh*t to get help and that I just need to get over it
@@marshmallow4646 That's not how psychiatric evaluation and treatment works 😂 If it's impairing your life, then there's something wrong. Maybe it's ADHD, maybe it isn't. As long as you find some answers to your problems, isn't that good enough?
@@marshmallow4646 I can guarantee you that going into a doctors office and telling them what your prognosis is will get you a wide eyed look. There are many disorders that are comorbid (two or more disorders that are simultaneously present). When you go in for treatment, go in with an open mind. The doctors will work with you to find proper treatment but you need to trust the process. There is a huge rise in mental health talk lately which I can be happy about but it also comes at the cost of many self diagnoses. Don't be caught up on the label. All these labels are just acronyms and words to help the doctors better classify how to treat you, not a badge of honor you need to wear on your sleeve. Trust me: After I found the proper cocktail of medicines over 5 years of trying, the labels didnt matter anymore. I just felt proper.
@@justinb9185 @Severinsen I'm not going to go in and tell them I have adhd, I don't really care what I have as long as I can get help, my doctor and therapist have told me to go to one, I just think that I might have adhd because several people have told me they think I have it and it's what I've related the most too when looking up my symptoms and hearing people talk about there's, I've just also been told a lot by my family and others that my anxiety and depression which I've been diagnosed with are bullshit and to just get over myself so I'm nervous that I might go through all this shit for a psychiatrist to be told to get over myself or take another SSRI that doesn't work for me
No joke, I’m changing jobs right now - like, literally as of yesterday - for the first time in 13 years and this was EXACTLY what I needed to figure out my new employer’s insurance options, i.e. an informative video on basic terminology that didn’t cause my brain to liquefy and drip out through my eye sockets. Seriously, Brian, thank you.
My dad had a heart attack and drove HIMSELF to the hospital. To him, an ambulance ride wasn't worth the risk of being taken out of network (or the cost of the ride).
my dad had a stroke and drove himself to the hospital. i'm honestly not sure which would've been safer: me, on a learner's permit, or him, having a stroke.
@@glowstickblood Gosh, I'm sorry to hear that. If I had to pick I'd choose someone without a license at all over someone who just had a stroke or heart attack. There's just too much risk of a second event.
@@Eudaletism absolutely agree. i wish i had known before i heard his car pull out of the driveway so i could have driven him, but thankfully he's okay.
There was an excellent Brian Regan bit about driving to the hospital. "Merge, everybody merge. I'm only imploding." It's awesome and highlights just how insane our medical system happens to be structured.
Brian, you know your audience to a T. I’m turning 26 in 7ish months, and literally just last week was like “Oh I’ll look into health insurance!” then spent the next 2 hours recovering from the anxiety of 20 minutes of research. Thank you so much for this video. I will treasure it always
Just remember, if they give you the option between applying with financial assistance or without financial assistance, ALWAYS GO WITH. Even if you don't think you'll qualify for Medicaid, you'll probably qualify for advanced premium tax credits and the only way you'll be considered for them is if you apply with assistance! So many people make this mistake!!!!
@@chaotickreg7024 then asking your 50-70year old parents for help (if you’re so lucky to have them around and have a stable relationship), and them being so taken aback by the overt criminality of a system they used to be able to handle in shorter phone calls for exponentially cheaper prices. In my case, it’s 3 traumas for the price of 1!
As an international student in the US, I want to genuinely thank you for this video, Brian. It explains a lot about the whole messy system that I've always been afraid of, confused about and will have to deal with eventually. Stuff like this isn't useless. It's amazing.
My ex's family who are multi millionaires right now admitted that they straight up just dont have health insurance since its cheaper to pay out of pocket than pay insurance. Also knew people who quit a high paying job to get medicare(or aid the state one) because it had more coverage than a mid-upper tier insurance and is free. Anyways Im a dual citizen and go to Japan for all my dental and eye care since its too complicated to find a doctor here on medicare and if i do find them, theyre booked out for several months. I hate America's health system and thats the one major thing that turns me off from staying here long term. Literally back when i was in Guam people went to East/South East Asian countries to get medical care
An interesting note is that for QLEs giving birth is a qualifying life event, but becoming pregnant is not a qualifying life event and you have to wait until you give birth to enroll
I know, right??????? Good news tho: in Minnesota (don't know about the rest of the country) the income limits for medicaid eligibility for pregnant people is a LOT higher, it goes from being 20k/year for single-person household to 50k/year, so it's a lot easier to qualify for Medicaid (or medical assistance, as MN calls it for some reason) and public programs don't have enrollment periods so you can enroll at any time!
I guess the difference is that you can immediately tell if someone will need glasses in the ongoing future. If insurance companies could perfectly predict who would need heart surgery in the future, they would make that a separate payment too.
A fun thing that I recently found out after having a baby is that if you want to try and really cover your bases and you double insure your child, the insurance companies act like hostile and divorced parents who refuse to speak to each other and it's up to you to pass information between them on what's covered by each insurance plan. I had thought (naively) that they might have open lines of communication considering this is probably something pretty common. But instead I'm passing notes back and forth between two parties of adults who pretend the other one is to blame (and on the hook to pay) for everything. Oh, and also, the primary insurance for the child is the one that belongs to the parent with the earliest birthday in the calendar year. :D Which feels like a weird riddle that I had no idea I needed to solve before bringing my baby to a pediatrician.
It's because they're private companies, and their customer's information is a valuable source of revenue and targeted sales. No way they want to share that with competitors. My wife and I had equally good insurance that between us covered just about every provided in the area. It seemed on the surface that we should both add our new baby to both of our insurance plans. At the bottom of the research rabbit hole we discovered that it's less convenient and way more expensive. The whole thing is just designed to wring as much money out of people while doing as little as possible. Preventative care has copays because the companies get more money if people are neglected as early as possible so their disease are more expensive to treat. And that starts with infants.
My coworker who moved to the Netherlands: Yeah the facility apologized profusely because they had to charge me like $20-30 for my visit because I didn't have an insurance plan set up yet Me: I paid $89.13 AFTER insurance just to see a dermatologist for 15 minutes EDIT: I forgot to mention the cost of the prescriptions of course which were another $50-$60
I paid like $200 or something after insurance for a 30 minute DIGITAL CONSULTATION for an at home sleep study. Yeah, it was over video call, and all it was was me saying what my issues were surrounding sleep and then discussing the process and possible outcomes of the at home sleep study. And i paid a couple hundred dollars. After insurance. Don't even ask how much it cost for the actual sleep study as well as other tests and doctor visits i had for the same issue
bro if you dont know what sites have heavily discounted glasses, you could be spending nearly $200...plus taxes...even with no perscription...witch is another idk 50-100
I had to pay 100+ just so i get my doctor to write my prescription. And 50 dollars from the pharmacy for my meds Oh and my old meds costed 300 dollars so I would've end up paying $400 if i didn't have met my good person of a doctor
I had to take a covid test because my university sent me an email saying that I needed to. I went to the free test center and they told me I needed to go to the hospital to take a rapid test because I had a cough at the time. After an hour of waiting I get the test which took about 10 minutes, I got the result back an hour later and it was negative. I was under a health insurance plan provided by the university. NEXT DAY I HAVE A $324 CHARGE ON MY STUDENT ACCOUNT FOR THE VISIT.
As a french fellow, I first laugh. Then I remember my government craves to privatize our health system and the video became suddenly a LOT LESS funnier.
its because your goverment is paying billonaires out of the ass for products, it just appears free to you. trust me corporations are still raping the supposed "free" healthcare countries. your healthcare is owned by american and foreign corporations through your govermemt
@@jakobvanklinken Yeah ... no. Sure we have copays but don't pretend like we get insane pricings and holes in our coverage like in the US. Sure if you go to a specialist which isn't in basic insurance such as physical therapy you'll have to pay it yourself. But that's only if you don't have a certain chronic issue which requires you to go. And if you are in an emergency situation 'network' doesn't mean anything. And if it is 'out of network' you usually only pay about 10-30% of the full price. In a country as small as the Netherlands and like I said earlier ignoring emergency situations which don't apply there is basically no reason to go out of network in the Netherlands. Where American companies have those systems in place mostly for monetary gain, Dutch insurance companies have it in place to stop people from hopping from doctor to doctor, clogging up systems with inefficiency. The Netherlands has far from a perfect system. But it's harmful to the existing system and the people fighting for universal healthcare to state that the system in place in the Netherlands is anywhere near the system of the US.
I'm british and thought the ambulance ride costs were a clout myth until my american cousins visited for the holidays and I realised you STILL HAVE TO PAY AMBULANCE FEES WITH INSURANCE. Then I saw this video and realised the US healthcare system can still get _worse_
As a pharmacist constantly trying to explain to customers I am not the reason their med price is so high, I sincerely wish I could show all my patients this video. Insurance, private or government, is bonkers and is absolutely the greatest headache of my job when it doesn’t serve the people paying for the service. Well done, good sir 👌🏽
I'm French, and I already knew that our healthcare system is precious considering your situation, but MY GOD I didn't know this was so bad for you... Universal healthcare is really important. Dear Americans, fight to get it.
Unfortunately, 40% of us have been convinced that the government helping people IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER is morally wrong and "against the will of God". Public Roads? Communism. Universal Healthcare? Communism. Firefighters? Communism. Giant Military Industrial Complex? That's for Jesus 😊
@@Grintock *Laughs in the stupidity of the Electoral College* Sir I assure you a lot of us don't consider it freedom and are attempting to get better but there's some barriers in our way.
I'm Canadian and the idiotic premier of my province wants to privatize our healthcare. Maybe this video can help explain some things to his followers, but I doubt it.
As an American, to all the people who don't have to deal with all this: Help us! Oh God please help us! It's literally "your money or your life"! It's a straight up hostage situation!
Private healthcare is a bad idea on the face of it, but US's free market dystopia takes it to the next level. Bolivia, one of the poorest American countries, provides a considerably more comprehensive and cheaper (as in "cost per capita", but it's also fully tax-paid, so free at time of use) healthcare system than Statunitian health insurances.
Seriously! It stays this way because the rich and corporations have figured out that people are willing to pay almost anything when it's their lives on the line. What a perfect capitalist money maker 🤮
I haven't been to the doctor or interacted with the medical system here whatsoever since moving to the US (years ago) because I don't understand it, get most things done when I go back home (and I'm young and will never die), and every official website looks like a scam and asks me for my social security number. So thanks Brian. Because of you I might go and see someone now.
As a denials specialist (a position at some hospitals where the person's entire job is calling insurance companies and figuring out why the hell they're not covering x or y procedure), I absolutely love every ounce of this video. Definitely will send it to friends and fam, who very much often or not ask me to explain their insurance info to them because I'm the only one who can make a lick of sense of it lolol
I hate that your job exists. I’m sure you’re lovely and it sounds like you’re really trying to help people, but the fact that this has to be a specialized position is horrifying
It’s absolutely effed how insurance agents just trying to “profit” basically control the whole medical trajectory more than actual doctors. How can an insurance companies even tell a doctor “no he doesn’t need it”
@@monhi64 Insurance agents arent practicing medicine, they're just informing Actual Doctors who do Actual Work with Actual Patients what their cardboard cutout with a medical degree says is necessary.
Hey BDG, I used this video to help me write my ASL final project: Explaining U.S. health insurance entirely in American Sign Language. I got a 97! And I have you to thank for that. Can’t wait until we meet in 8 years and I take your job! I’ll thank you in person then. Love your work!
I hate how this is really comprehensive, yet wildly incomplete, yet probably an extremely accessible and beneficial resource for understanding the basics of health insurance. Great job, as someone who spent 3 years as a supervisor in health insurance customer service, this was incredibly painful to watch, which is the highest honor I can bestow to you. ❤
@@biggrocc19 intent wasn’t to be pretentious. I adjusted claims, administered benefits, forced through approvals, educated people on how to navigate their benefits, and heard thousands of people’s stories over the years. My point is merely that this video is a great insight to how terrible private insurance is in this country and how large of an issue health literacy is in this country due to it being intentionally complicated.
I have never felt more gratefull (and motivated to defend) for the Sécurité Sociale. And I'm having anxiety attack because it's being sabotaged by successive french gouvernement to discredite it and privatise the whole thing.
Wait but this is actually a really good clear explanation that my adhd brain could follow because it was hilarious. Please, I’m begging you, make more of these for understanding the rest of this dysfunctional world.
Same here! I’m so grateful Brian made this video because I need to know this stuff but researching health insurance has been impossible for me. This video is engaging and fun while also being super informative, it’s perfect!
I did an English-Spanish phone interpreting training last year, the job consisted of A LOT of medical/health insurance calls and it would've been AWESOME if they showed us this video
you don’t know the joys of private health insurance until you’ve made twice weekly phone calls for months on end to argue that the medication your doctor prescribed you for your diagnosed condition *is* medically necessary
Yeeeep. My health insurance company once decided that I didn’t need to be hospitalized as long as my doc said I did and refused to pay for the last week. I shudder to think what would have happened if the hospital hadn’t had a department that basically only deals with that kind of situation
This is honestly a wonderful way to present important adulting information. As an alleged adult in my early 20s this is how I want all financial information conveyed to me in the future. I would honestly love it if Brian did more videos like this.
I've been in the process of transitioning from a stable career (with benefits) to doing youtube full-time, and I would just like to thank you for the anxiety attack you have given me.
You know, it's weird seeing how in a post you made a while back you said you only planned on doing this whole UA-cam gig as a hobby. Good luck on it, man, I'm rooting for you, and pray you find a decent healthcare plan.
Honestly dude I did medical billing for a couple years and let me tell you this video is so good and comprehensive Thanks for putting this out, it was a nice refresher on the Insurance Monster💀
It's so dystopian to think that they can charge you for ambulance rides. Like one would think that, idk, it's kind of INCREDIBLY AMORAL to profit from someone having a life or death situation.
They pay garbage wages to paramedics. There is literally no logic to the price that they charge you for an ambulance ride. A guy I know quit that to deliver pizzas. That pays $7hr plus tips.
I lost my health insurance due to essentially a technical error. I found out when I needed a really expensive procedure at a facility with facilities fees. It took FOUR FUCKING MONTHS of daily calls, letters, eventually taking it to my attorney general and I had the assistance of an attorney friend who specializes in insurance. It was the hardest, most stressful thing I have ever done. If I hadn't desperately needed the medical procedure I would have given up. I don't know how anyone could do it. I had all the advantages a person could get and I think everest without oxygen would have been easier and taken less time. This system needs to be burned to the ground.
@@brandon0981 the only way it's not the norm is I actually won after 4 appeals. People get dumped all the time. If you're outside of open enrollment good luck. So if someone falls on hard times, they lose insurance, they can't get back on. They're off and there is no appeal.
@@flafflingforfun I don't know what you're talking about but you can get cobra at almost any time. And if you "fall on hard times" you have Medicaid. You are not the norm at all in any way. Again, sorry you went through that but this is not indicative of the system. The system does need to change in general though - insurance should be tied through your job it should be something anyone can get at any time just like other types of insurance.
@@brandon0981 you can't get COBRA when your employer doesn't supply health insurance. I, like a lot of people, work for a small business. There's only three of us. It's a small consulting firm. All of us are older so it would be obscene to offer insurance. We are all insured through the state exchange and the insurance is quite good at an affordable rate. The downside is you are your own HR department and when something goes wrong the exchange blames the insurer and vice versa. It's a completely different world than employer provided insurance. Things like COBRA don't exist. The rules are different. You're taxed different. It's still private insurance but how you manage it is completely different.
my mom is disabled which (and this sounds terrible) i have been very grateful for the past few years as it was the only way my siblings and i could stay on medicaid. this year my dad took a promotion at his job so that that could cover costs for repairing the home they live in and it put us a few thousand over the limit. now my appoints are $50 and to see my therapist it’s $150. to anyone who doesn’t live in a place with privatized insurance, the second people start pushing for it, fight like hell.
Stop. It’s not my fault you have mental health issues. And want to be on state insurance and rely on your father to pay for your health insurance. Get a job.
@@No-1-rt7tppeople who make these arguments act like it's the fault of the person with the issues. Like?? It's not like this person chose to have mental health issues... No one is responsible for the problem happening, but if you live in a country that believes in actual equality instead of a plutocracy, everyone should pitch in to help solve it
@@powerbeard5653 it's hard to do something against it since it's private. They'll use the ' then don't pay for it if you don't like it' card. Yes, if a lot of people stoped paying for it, they'd have to adapt to not lose income, but sadly, if pretty much the whole market works that way, you have to choose between being leeched by those companies or risk going super saiyan bankrupt if you have any health problem.
It's entirely deliberate. Ever wondered why big companies bankroll anti-public-healthcare politicians? Surely they would want state funded healthcare to remove the extra cost & overhead of managing health insurance for all their workers? Except no, because it stops people from leaving. When "I'm going to lose my health insurance if I lose this job" is on the table, suddenly you're willing to take a much lower wage and you might even vote for those anti-healthcare politicians yourself out of an aggrevied sense that you're already paying too much for your own healthcare, why should you pay for someone else's?
They scare a large majority into compliance by using communism/socialism as a scare tactic. Even though those are two completely different things that are not even remotely related to a Universal Health Care
As a recent member of the “turned 26 so they lost their parents health insurance” club, this video was immensely helpful. I’ve watched it twice through and legitimately took notes the second time as I choose new health insurance plans for myself.
This is genuinely a potentially life saving video. Thank you so much. I would love it if you did one on taxes, as there is no help for disabled people who need to file taxes but can't afford an accountant or tax service, and I struggle to use formal "guides" as videos like this are so much more helpful for me and many others like me. Just an idea; I would watch anything you make! But thanks again for doing this-- It's a crucial bunch of information, and it's the shame of the USA that any of it is necessary at all.
I don't know if you've heard about this, but a lot of schools with accounting or business departments have supervised trainees who do taxes for you for free! It's called the VITA program.
I've been paying for a single ambulance ride for 4 years now and every month they send me a thank you letter with a hand drawn happy face that I cannot bring myself to throw out so I have these letters hanging around my room like the room in a beautiful mind America feels like a dystopian novel I can't believe this is really our lives
i once called my insurance provider to ask what my HRT coverage was (it IS covered under my policy) and they just outright told me "we don't have access to that information" and kept trying to refer me to the pharmacy. once, i went to the pharmacy to pick up my T and one tech told me it would be $200 (goodRx said $30 but they couldn't take the coupon because despite my prescription, T is a controlled drug). so naturally i started ugly-crying right then and there, and then their supervisor came over and sold it to me for $50. All this is to say, ALL american healthcare is just made up on the fly. they ask a magic 8 ball for the numbers. all based on vibes.
They really told you they couldn't take the coupon? I've used a coupon like that before and gotten my T at that price with no problem. I was using it to pick up 4 bottles of testosterone during a vacation in Texas (which has stricter laws apparently compared to Oregon, where I live). There's definitely something off about that situation because a doctors prescription should be more than enough.
@@eternallaurum super wild! this was at a CVS in California less than 2 years ago. They just told me it was a new policy and wouldn't accept it. Good info though, thank you for sharing.
@@madicorn8 I work at CVS. Those discount cards take time to run through. They will work and are accepted, but Ive heard of some stores not accepting them just on policy because so many people come with them and want us to try like 3 different ones for their precription. By the way, I would say about 85 percent of the time if someone already has insurance but asks us to just "try" a discount card it will actually cost them more money than insurance. It also wastes our time, which we have very little of at the pharmacy. I flat out refuse people all the time because I just know they are going to be unhappy with the new price and I am just going to have to take if off again and rebill it through their insurance, which also takes time. However, for people who have incredibly shitty prescription coverage, or no insurance at all, discount cards are wonderful. Just know though, they are able to get you that price because they are selling your information.
@@TheAxebeard Not as much as your employer takes from your salary. Cuz hoo boy that's a shit ton more. Not so fun fact a burger flipper at McDonalds generates the company about 130 usd per hour.
An IMPORTANT update on emergency medical treatment! I've had a few people point out the "No Surprises Act" which was passed this year: www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/no-surprises-understand-your-rights-against-surprise-medical-bills
Now, if you have health insurance, this act will "Ban surprise bills for most emergency services, even if you get them out-of-network and without approval beforehand (prior authorization)." This is super good news, and it means that you shouldn't be afraid of calling 911 in a medical emergency-you'll still have to pay for it (like an in-network procedure), but it won't be completely out of pocket if you go to an out-of-network hospital. The act will also "Require that health care providers and facilities give you an easy-to-understand notice explaining the applicable billing protections..." and though I'm less convinced about the "easy-to-understand" aspect, at the very least it means you SHOULD be notified about this when you receive the bill!
radiohead
NSA was great, but also worth a shout out to the Transparency in Coverage regulation. Idealistically will also mean that you should be able to get an (at least approximate) rate from your health insurance provider for a given service.
Also REMEMBER EVERYONE:
*If you have a procedure done that you are told is going to be covered and then when you get there to pay, they have an OUT-Of-NETWORK company give you Anesthesia but they never told you they weren't in-network & make you pay $2,380 for it, MAKE A COMPLAINT/APPEAL for it because not telling your patients about an additional out-of-network cost that's also being done is ILLEGAL.*
Because this is against the law, your insurance company will APPROVE your Appeal and the doctor's office who you paid will have to PAY YOU BACK THAT MONEY.
Get your money back!!! Don't overpay or let doctors get away with ILLEGAL shit like this!!
I just had it happen to me TWICE so they're having to pay ME back over $3,000.
Yo, my current job is in a department that *enforces* the rules of the No Surprises Act! 😁 This "no-choice" loophole was a thorn in my side for *years* because it was "technically" legal. Now I get to call bullsh*t on their billing practices with the federal government to back me up, and save regular people from getting billed for things completely out of their control.
To elaborate, the "easy-to-understand" requirement includes - most importantly - a price estimate of the cost of the services you will be receiving voluntarily by providers who are out of your insurance network. You must be given this paperwork at least 72 hours before the expected procedure - if you weren't given the papers, then it's on them to explain why, not you. It also protects you from hospitals contracting out their labs/radiology/anesthesia to third party companies that stay out of network because they know people have no choice. (There's one company in particular that provided *neonatal care* that stayed out of network to take advantage of this loophole. That's right, *preying on families with newborns.* I'm SO glad they're finally facing consequences.)
Seeing this as an American in my early 20s is like walking down a long, dark, narrow corridor and seeing a text prompt telling me to hold Shift to sprint.
I don't usually leave comments like this, but this is genuinely one of the funniest and most encompassing descriptions I've ever heard for being an early 20-something. Thanks for the laugh and existential dread lol.
LMFAOOO
Is this a Sister Location reference? 💀
@@vitorpinho3290 idk i havent played it lol
@@vitorpinho3290 no but sister location is one of the many games that does this
As an outsider, this feels like the worlds greatest legal scam.
It is.
It is. The health care industry in America is a scam on top of a scam on top of a scam.
It's the SECOND greatest legal scam. The number one spot goes to student loans. But they often work in tandem to destroy people's lives (like mine).
Yes💀
@@vulpinemachine Tell me about it. I'm going to a 200k dollar uni (my dumbass thought it was 50k because they never said that amount was per year on their website and I trusted them on that figure, stupid me) and while the president is getting a key to the city and spending 22 million on a football stadium, the music building literally has fucking asbestos in the noise cancelling panels on the walls and one of the dorm halls has a mold problem, the asbestos being a completely open secret and the mold issue being an open fact.
The goal was never to make your life better. It's to give you the illusion that your life is better or will be better down the line
The developers really dedicated a lot of time into the worldbuilding of this dystopia. I'm beyond impressed.
I mean they wrote the code for their maximum gain. The question is why we allowed them to. Seems like a functioning democracy should have stopped such a disgusting predatory system. Yet support for public healthcare in the US is only around 50%.
I know and the game is so emersive! Hey, by the way, do you have any tips of turning it off?
A great amount of drugs and a gun gets you a secret ending tbh
Alternatively, being reckless or unlucky also nets you another secret ending as well.
@@chazdomingo475 Wanna know another funny little trick Politicians don't want you to know? Being a politician with money causes your vote to all of a sudden carry a lot more weight than if you were broke.
I got charged for watching this video by my health insuarance. Apparently, Brian is an out-of-network consultant and I didnt get him approved beforehand as a specialist by my PCP. Now I'm broke! Thanks Insurance!
Things have gotten to a point where this could be true
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Too funny!! Doing research on all of this and it seems the affordable health care act and the government and IRS and people running it..have been banking. They have been receiving $6400 a month or more .. definetly $300 a week for EVERYONE with a social security number! And GOD knows how long this has been going on for..and to just think only a handful of people have actually "applied" to recieve there entitled benefits. Seems super shady and a way to line the government's pockets. Investigation is continuing and hopefully EVERYONE will be informed of the TRUTH very soon.
mood
Ahhhh omg that's funny but not funny people go through that same situation every damn day because of stupid insurance rules
I have been diabetic for 30 years (since I was a kid) and let me tell you.. navigating the nightmare that is the American Healthcare system for my entire life has been soul crushing. It's worse than the fucking disease.
TRUE
Same my guy. It suuuucccckkkkkssss
I will never forget hearing my 20 year old brother sobbing on the phone trying to get his diabetic supplies shipped to him after days of calling and hours on hold and after nearly a month of having no method of testing his glucose levels. To this day it makes my blood boil.
Not trying to be funny but I have a question, why not just leave America? For real, it's a shit hole, have you considered moving to a place with free healthcare?
its weird to see that, im in a 3° world country and diabetic supplies are free here, i mean, the right of life dont apply to this situation?
A clear memory of mine: Watching my dad argue with the insurance company on the phone, from his hospital bed, battling with cancer
Jesús Christ how do you Americans put up with that, I'm so sorry
@@keqingsimp2174 Because Conservative chumps say, "Socialism bad".
@@keqingsimp2174 some of us don't! we go bankrupt or die!!!
Genuinely heartbreaking, I would be so enraged I could be on that phone for 2 days
@@keqingsimp2174 i want to agree but that Jesús might indicate a French keyboard and I can’t risk it
As a psychiatrist the part when you removed "Mental" from the definition made me laugh while crying tears of rage on the inside
APAB
So who pays for mental healthcare?
Do you have to get special insurance?
@@Jehty_ the short answer is no every insurance is supposed to cover it. In practice many insurers have major caveats in their coverage regarding mental health fueled by the intrinsically subjective nature of such reports. For example I can take your blood pressure and objectively report to insurance that it's too high so you need corrective meds. But if you have depression there's no lab test, I am fully reliant on your reported symptoms to make a diagnosis and prescribe treatment. And if BDGs video was any indication it gets even more complicated when you start talking covered meds or therapy.
@@Jehty_ in most cases folks just don't seek it.
@@ohnoagremlin And are then surprised by the disproportionately large amount of mental health issues in our nation. Yup, the system's clearly working as intended, folks!
As a recent US immigrant, After getting health insurance that my job pays for, I decided to have my issues looked up. I started with tinnitus which was keeping me up at night. I made sure to go to a clinic that was "in-network". They tested my hearing and there were no issues and I didn't have to pay for any of it. So far so good. But then they suggested that the issue might be brain related and could be serious. So they directed me to another clinic in the same building to get a brain scan where I got scheduled. Little did I realize that the second clinic wasn't in network, so imagine my shock when I received a 1,500$ bill on my way out. Good news is, they didn't find anything wrong with my brain...
This experience destroyed my willingness to get my issues checked out and my trust in the medical industry in general. Although I have many concerning issues with my body, I'd much rather take the risk of death than ruining my family's financial stability. And I have a sneaking suspicion that this is exactly what this system is engineered to do.
Lying until proven sickly
Yep.
If I were to say what I think should happen to the CEO's of the health insurance industry, I would be physiclly removed from this website.
Of course it is on purpose, they make seeking help so troublesome so people do it as little as possible so they can get that premium every month without offering a service.
I find it more mind-blowing that people, like yourself, prefer the chance of death over an insane hospital bill....I had friends just let me lay on their floor after a seizure during a hangout night (had too much beer as a diabetic) only because they thought my health insurance wouldn't cover the ER room. But they were sure to say how scared they were for my life....If I'm dead, I will have no bills anyway. JESUS CHRIST THIS COUNTRY IS INSANE!
@AssBlasster that's the thing, they fucking don't.
That's not what OP is saying, that's not what people in the US are saying. Most people want single payer. But the health industry lobbyists don't.
Can't wait for this to be the unironic insurance guide that everyone grows up with
Hey nice name
lord knows public schools aren't stepping up
This is better than my works training
@@Weckacore no u.
No jokes, it took me 2 of the past 3 years working in specialty pharmacy to get all this.
Now that Brian David Gilbert makes explainers, I think we can retire now? -John
I was gonna say, I think this is just Crash Course now?
john green in my bdg video?
Happy Pizzamas everybody ❤
Update: We can't retire we need health insurance. -John
Can you pay your health care providers in pizzamas merch?
I'm a 32 year old professional and this is the most time anyone has ever dedicated to explaining health insurance to me.
Yo, same. I learned the hard way that even if you have a life change that qualities you to get health insurance at a different time, you still might not be able to get it. In Massachusetts if you don’t have health insurance for three months, you get dinged on your taxes and I ALMOST hit that, luckily my employer helped me out and I got my plan sooner than later. I fucking hate this system.
You basically need an equivalent of a lawyer for healthcare. During the ACA transition, some states wanted to block advocacy services that guide people through this insanity.
@here is the full clip stop spamming
Are you professional at beign 32 😂?
@clairedark I was so good at it they promoted me to 33. :p
As an ER doctor, that's true, we're often private contractors. Which also means I don't get health insurance through work. Which blows and also screws patients over because the middleman who staffs the ED is often out of network. Oh, and did you know that insurance companies can completely change what drugs are covered by their formulary anytime of the year? and that doesn't count as a qualifying life event? Wait is our medical system... Irretrievably... Broken?
Wtf doctors dont get health insurance....what a weird concept. it should be universal healthcare for doctors/nurses/other medical profs doing the work for our health care system!
Bruh wtf do the doctors do when they don't have insurance?
@@Superboologan1 I'd assume that doctors have a good enough salary to be able to afford private healthcare and costs of out-of-network care, but at worst, the same thing that everyone else does when they don't have medical help. They die.
> is a doctor
> can't get health insurance from job
> doctor can't afford to go to the doctor
Conclusion: We are living in hell
the american health care system was made to make money and not spend it.., thats what america is about.. making money as much as possible and making sure to not lose any... at any cost..
I think BDG may have found his true calling: making adulting PSAs. I can't even imagine how helpful this would have been if my high school had shown me this video 15 years ago. Please make this a series.
I'd love to see him collab with Hank and John Green (vlogbrothers duo) to remake their How To Adult series
@@purplegill10 YEAHHHHHHHHHHH
get that complexly funding bdg!!!!!!!!!!!!
Honestly I would really like more videos of him explaining stuff like this
Like maybe he could help explain taxes next, that'd be really nice
Adulting step one: if you say adulting you are neurodivergent and your needs are fundamentally different from every other person the system is created to accommodate and you never will be accommodated by said system. you must find solice and support within compasionate friends because you never will find solice or support through any system where money changes hands. The best you will ever do is learn to scrape by to be able to find more moments where you can be with people you trust.
As a Canadian that moved to the US for work, it was maddening trying to understand why people don't riot because of this. There is literally a whole private insurance industry and departments in hospitals dedicated to just dealing with billing. It wastes so much money.
That's the point. It wastes your money, but someone is getting rich off it.
I always thought it was hilarious that conservatives try to claim private healthcare is cheaper and more efficient. I'm no fan of wading through the swamp of government bureaucracy, but I'd take it any day over corporate bureaucracy that charges me a cover fee just to get into the bog.
'cause it's just normal for them, a lot of people think without it healthcare is worse in other countries, when it really really isn't, or that it has insane waiting times, when it doesn't, (and that one's always been insane 'cause their waiting times... Aren't good?) it's hard to see a different world without ever experiencing it.
Especially with all the money that goes into preserving the fuckitude that the system is.
It makes me so glad to be British. 'Cause we do know what it's like, and there would absolutely be riots across the country if our system became like theirs.
And it's larger than the department dedicated to just dealing with patients. Inside of a hospital, you ONLY see the tip of the iceberg, but every level between insurance and providers have to fund their own department dedicated to fighting the other parties on coverage and billing decisions. At a hospital, your doctor is conscripted into this effort with excessive charting requirements and justification checks and outside reviews that may cost them more time than actual patient care.
@@MagicCardboardBox our system absolutely will become like theirs within the next decade, so I hope you’re ready to crack some skulls when it does
So, I have a friend with a chronic disease that was working in the States for a couple of months, and when he needed prescription drugs, he found it more convenient to fly back to Europe, go to the doctor, get the drugs and return. Not just in terms of money, because it was also cheaper to do so, but that way he didn't have to wrestle between several companies so he could get his damn drugs.
Literally what I do too, and I've lived in the US for four years now and have insurance. Even though I don't have my German insurance anymore and have to pay out of pocket, it's much cheaper to fly home and go see my old providers there every year or two. Especially women's health services in the US are sub-par compared to the rest of the world (it's basically just a manual exam and pap-smear in the US, where in other countries they're also checking everything via ultrasound, which makes much more sense). It's ridiculous.
It can be cheaper to fly to Mexico, have a vacation, get dental surgery, then go back by the time you can even get scheduled for one in the US
Even with dental insurance
@@genderender Yeah but in the US it's done by doctors with dental tools, pretty sure in Mexico it's done by mechanics with auto tools who have some free time
Wow, Europe sounds like a wonderful place with free and fast drugs, how can I join in? 😃
@@testname4464 doesn’t seem like a racist statement at all
I've heard a lot of people talk about getting a big hospital bill, asking for an itemised bill, and discovering that about half of the cost is for procedures they didn't even recieve.
Its always recommended to get an itemized bill to avoid problems like these. Knowing health insurances, they’d probably charge a fee to get it sooner or lager.
As someone with a JOB in insurance, I want nothing more than to burn this whole industry down.
Same. I love helping people find plans that fit their needs but hate the fact that I have to. If I had a vote to get rid of private insurance I would.
Meh they’re probably covered for that
it is your moral duty to do so in whatever way you can.
@@Owl325 oh geez I never thought of it that way. I guess you’re right 🙄
We still hate you.
I just thought you should know that.
As a French person, i started mechanically sharpening my guillotine while watching this
ship them over please
You would not believe the private and public armies that will be dispatched if they come under any serious pressure from the proletariat. A civil war would be hideous, unfortunately we have to use the government. Luckily we can still vote- for now.
@@Pistolita221 people have the power. but you're right, it will get messy, it always does and somehow it seems worse nowadays.
The guillotine really isn't the best revolutionary symbol given its bedbugs used more as a tool for colonial violence than it's been used as against kings and the bourgeois.
Maybe instead, ship over tips on how to make better barricades, you have a proud history of making those in the face of state violence.
Funnily enough, this is the most horrific video BDG has ever made.
One of those reasons that keep me faaar away from the USA. I don't even have to deal with this and it still stresses me the hell out
Yeah. It's crazy to think that people have actually died because of this
So rich people can make more money. Real people are actually dead
@i better call stop spamming
@@danielblank9917 bro it's a bot
@@chaosandbunnies8291 Imagine people not reporting it for spam.
..or worse, imagine a couple hundred people reporting it and UA-cam not doing anything about it for months.
The idea that some people look at this and think “the system is working” makes me question their grip on reality.
Well... It is working. You just have to redefine "whom" it's working for. And that's definitely not anyone who is sick. Rich people get sick, they either are so rich they don't care or they blow through a ton of cash because they have sooooo much money that it really doesn't matter. If you don't believe me, google Sumner Redstone's net worth in 2014 and his net worth in 2020.
They don't care because they have the money to cover medical bills or they have someone else do this stuff for them. My uncle is one of those people.
Propaganda is an extremely powerful force
Actually, the system IS working
We need to destroy it
Well when you see things like Canada’s MAID system…
I'm so upset this came out AFTER I had to learn all this myself LMAO
just come to canada bro
YOOOOO ITS CIRCLE
I’m one of the first ppl to respond to this
Same lol
Don’t worry, all the rules will change the moment any of us actually understand them. Isn’t this the best system ever?
It's awfully convenient how health care doesn't cover psychological damage given that the structure of this system causes me the most psychological anguish
Insurance also fairly regularly reaches the top of the most depressing jobs in the US
The craziest part of the US Healthcare is that this video is actually good enough to be shown in school...
But then how will the government invest millions of dollar into the problem, steal most of the money, spend some money on something real to show as progress and get nothing done so they can justify another investiment to do it again?
Beautiful
it would be great to see this in school
I wish I had seen it in school. Twice.
The craziest part is actually that they categorically won't show you this in school because US curriculum don't include a single piece of information about a system that is going to dictate, more than anything else in your entire life, your health and your financial status until the day you die (possibly as a direct result of this very system). Fun! Is it not? How our educational institutions do nothing to educate us about the most consequential and universal realities of our upcoming adulthoods! Great all around.
And when you call the customer service line to check if something is covered, they rattle off a line about “nothing I say is a guarantee of coverage.” I asked a rep once how I could get a definite Yes or No before scheduling an appt and risk owing 100% of the bill. They said, “you can’t.”
Me: I don't understand
America: That's the point, silly! Sign here.
tip from a health insurance agent who hates his job: if your drug list includes tier 3 and up drugs, you can submit a tier reduction request. basically, if your doctor says you can't take the generic/plan-preferred drug a lot of the time the plan has to "price match" your tier 3 drug to a lower tier. it's not always a guarantee but we have a pretty good success rate with getting these requests approved. most people aren't aware that this is a possibility but it could save you a bit of money.
also this video is amazing and made me cackle 😂
+++
Hero
@@sabinajoh In all fairness, in an ideal world, their job wouldn't exist.
thank you friend, i hope you can help as many ppl as possible
I understood nothing of this.
It's honestly crazy how Brian comes up with these weird existential nightmare scenarios... Like could you imagine if that's how health insurance really worked? That would be terrifying!
🤣🤣🤣
Ha ha! Even just thinking about the existential crisis I would have over this totally nonexistent system is killing me! And I wouldn't be able to afford the medicine that would save me! 😂
Soooooo damn glad I'm German right now.
You go to whichever doctor you like, let them do whatever they want, and never even see the bill for the treatment.
Also REMEMBER EVERYONE:
*If you have a procedure done that you are told is going to be covered and then when you get there to pay, they have an OUT-Of-NETWORK company give you Anesthesia but they never told you they weren't in-network & make you pay $2,380 for it, MAKE A COMPLAINT/APPEAL for it because not telling your patients about an additional out-of-network cost that's also being done is ILLEGAL.*
Because this is against the law, your insurance company will APPROVE your Appeal and the doctor's office who you paid will have to PAY YOU BACK THAT MONEY.
Get your money back!!! Don't overpay or let doctors get away with ILLEGAL shit like this!!
I just had it happen to me TWICE so they're having to pay ME back over $3,000.
@@emilytada455 Same in Canada! And I’m thankful for it.
I once watched EMTs debate which hospital they should take a patient to because they couldn’t remember which hospital was in what network, while the man held his own head wound closed. That’s when I realized I might want to leave the country…
…and then I did. Never have to deal with this crap in Canada 🇨🇦
Canada will try to push this system on its own citizens eventually... capitalism always leads to late stage capitalism
As someone who took an EMT course in America and is training to be an EMT; when I asked one of my instructors about why certain things were they way they were, the instructor literally told me: "Oh because of the power of Insurance companies, they set that up."
Like, what the fuck?! How can someone who has not one minute of medical training possibly be determining what is covered or what a "pre-existing condition" is???
This whole system is a fucking farce. We need Universal Healthcare in the USA
@@robert-rv8loInteresting that you and OP didn’t/won’t move to a commie country
@@robert-rv8lo The differences between late stage capitalism and fascism get so blurry that sometimes it is hard to tell when your democracy did die or if it even existed in the first place.
What kills me (literally) is when the insurance companies refused coverage for anything they could label a "pre-existing condition". An infamous case was a young rape victim being denied coverage for her treatment, because she had been raped a few years previously so her being a rape victim was a pre-existing condition.
You what now?
I swear, the U.S. healthcare system should be investigated by the U.N. or something for crimes against humanity.
@@qzamboni unfortunately that will never happen because the US is one of the primary financial backers of the UN
Obamacare got rid of pre-existing condition restrictions.
I...
How in the fuck? Do rape survivors not deal with enough shit already!? Thats baffling, like inexplicably absurd
Ah yes. How reasonable to expect a person with a concussion or with terrible wounds to stop their ambulance, doctor, and specialist before treatment and say, "Now, wait just a minute. Are you in my network? If not, would you kindly let my chances of living dwindle and get one who is? Thank you."
Actually this happened to my family. My sister had an injury and we called an ambulance just to waive their help and drive her ourselves to the hospital. We were still billed an insane amount, but it was better than the $2000 for the ride
This is America 🇺🇸
ok
I have yet to meet an insurance where an ambulance is covered. I have decided they are fancy scams on wheels and unless I hit gold or am literally dying I won’t/ can’t use one without going into debilitating debt lmao
@@musemccormack5436 the most depressing part about that is im canadian and when i was young i just went to an adult hospital and they let me take an ambulance for fun, and last year i had an ambulance called for me bc i had a panic attack at the dentist, so i know from being in one they are incredibly *incredibly* useful when in need of one, god americs makes me sad
This is genuinely the most terrifying thing Brian has ever posted, nothing is scarier than the American healthcare system.
Send help
Except, quite possibly, the American Tax System, which is just as confusing, and carries criminal charges if you don't do it correctly
'The IRS' has entered the chat
North American gun laws and gun culture are also quite scary.
At least they can't calculate your HP yet
i recently had to take an ambulance ride, its AMAZING how much they charge you for STUPID THINGS, like it was over a thousand dollars to be taken by ambulance LESS THAN FIVE MILES, (after seeing my bill, i looked it up, and found out i was LUCKY as someone not that far from me, was charged OVER EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS for a similar ambulance ride.) and of that, there were some CRAZY fees, like an almost $200 service charge.....because they used their radio, there was also a $100 fee because they turned the sirens and lights on....NOT EVEN JOKING...
I love how UA-camrs in our generation will just organically, randomly, make the critical educational content we need the most effective or memorable way possible.
could you link/name some? this is the only example I've seen of what you're describing
@@toulouse1 I assume it counts enough, I watch some tiktok comps about stuff like leftism and disability info and stuff like that, mainly the ones by “a dude” (that’s their actual channel name /gen) which have some pretty good info in a pretty digestible format!
Oh sure I'll think about the others I've seen sometime. Just remember watching channels I'd know for one thing and then something would come up in their life and they'd make a video to help anyone else (like their subscribers for one) with that potential life scenario. But yeah someone should make a playlist out of them, since they're more watchable and thus easy-to-remember than more bland how-tos.
well exactly. They're filling a vital niche that no one else is. Anyway, Brian's cool.
@@toulouse1 not quite 'critical', but "history of the entire world, i guess" by bill wurtz is a good example of spontaneous really helpful educational videos from someone who normally doesn't make them.
honestly, BDG pivoting into edutainment was not something I expected, but I'm all for it.
I dunno it definitely has an “unraveled” vibe which I have sorely missed, I just wish the topic wasn’t so rl horrifying.
@@MrPiptron *laughs in Britishness*.
did you forget the second part of the complete pokerap? for shame
@@MrPiptron Unravel is definitely edutainment.
Pivoting? Unraveled was very edutainment
I still can't wrap my head around the fact that a health insurance can just say: "No we won't pay for THIS doctor. Yes, we agree that you broke your leg and needed a cast and pain medication, but it was done by the wrong guy. If Peter had done it we would pay, but we won't pay for Mark!"
Don't forget how the broken leg could be a cosmetic issue and therefore not covered
@@MintyMoron64 No no, This broken leg is a pre-existing condition
if you didn't want to have to pay for your broken leg you should have thought about that before you decided to have legs
@@danhonks6264 but make sure mark doesn't amputate them we won't pay for that
@@MintyMoron64 you bruised your knee badly once before, so a harmed leg is a pre-existing condition
One of my core memories is my mom being locked in the office on the phone like a full time job for several days because our insurance got bought out and they stopped covering ALL of my sister’s medical costs. Eye exams, tests, PCP appointments, EVERYTHING. After a LITERAL WEEK of being transferred , gathering documents, getting corporate phone numbers, she finally found out why: my sister was receiving health insurance from her two full time jobs which excluded her from the family plan. MY SISTER WAS 8. The best part is you have to confirm the patients name and DOB to access any information.
They eventually got slammed with a fee (that was definitely way less than they made from charging people who didn’t have the knowledge or time to fight this battle) in a lawsuit. Turns out in the data transfer they purposely lost or altered data to shit like “grade schooler has 2 full time jobs” to siphon money out of people in the confusion and then use the confusion and unnavigability of a new system as a smoke screen.
I love it here.
Btw if you know you are being charged unfairly DO NOT PAY. You should have a grace period to pay so that gives you time to fight back. Otherwise they’ll go “oh yeah there was a mistake but it looks like the bills already settled so that’s great!” And now you’re out $15000 and filing for bankruptcy. :/
@@Lorraine202I just learned this. My insurance company has been increasing the amount listed as what I owe for months even though the actual HCP’s costs were settled. Double check before paying anything to these vultures.
To be fair, that’s just blatant corruption and that would occur in a public healthcare system as well.
@@orppranator5230It depends, but that's the government's problem to deal with then. You still only pay a maximum of $35 per consultation or medically necessary procedure/medication, and your involvement in it ends there.
@@orppranator5230 A public system could be designed to be non-profit.
If the government sets up a system where it's a CRIME to charge people then Any Charge At All will be su autosuspect that only the particularly uneducated would even try.
I just had an AUS friend send this to me to ask if this was supposed to be satire or if this was fact. I studied medical billing and coding for a year in the US and live in the US with chronic illnesses. This is not satire. This is accurate. This is how the US system works.
Nice try, I know this is a joke because it does not, in fact, work
@@crunglemcbungley I haven’t laughed this hard since I finished this video.
Oh my gosh. How do you guys survive
In Aus we have Medicare which means most general consults are government subsidied and you have the option to buy private insurance for certain stuff if you need it. Correct me if I'm wrong though
@@thefabulouskitten7204 we don't
i’m on the edge of my seat for this video to devolve into horror
the true horror is the system itself
@@briandavidgilbert As well as the fact that there are people who think this is a good thing
@@samlevy9897 YES
HH : healthcare horror
@@briandavidgilbert the real horror was the friends we made along the way
As someone recently diagnosed with a chronic illness and about to no longer be covered by my parents' insurance, this is perfect timing
Check if your state provides subsidized insurance for people with disabilities. That information should be available on your state's department of health/public health website. I ended up paying like $60 a month for Medicare cause I'm constantly dying.
@@0000-r2b definitely will, thanks so much
My sympathies. Also worth checking, if you’re still living with your family and are likely to for the foreseeable future, if you might be able to stay on theirs as a disabled dependent. (Which has its obvious downsides, but as someone who’s remained on parental health insurance after 26 because I can’t really work, I bring it up.)
As an American college student, this video is genuinely very helpful. They never teach you any of this stuff but it can be life ruining if you don't know about it.
Its by design. Creating an unnecessarily complicated system then justifies the existence of "experts" (Tax Experts, Insurance Experts, Ect) who can then make money off of people usually not having the time to learn these complicated systems. Its also why none of these systems are ever taught, and if anything is done to try and simplify it, lobbyist groups who represent those "experts" step in to keep the money making scheme going.
@@ThatOneREDScout Information asymmetry is one of the most common ways to capture profits.
OP, the main thing you need to understand is that you live in a society that is trying to trick and trap you at every step. Never trust anyone.
@@chazdomingo475 capitalism moment
@@Artameful sadly. Business moment for sure but especially a capitalism moment
oh don't worry, it's life ruining even if you do know about it.
The worst part is that most insurance companies don’t even play by their own convoluted rules and frequently deny coverage that they are contractually obligated to provide. They will make every excuse imaginable to withhold money from you and make zero effort to maintain a positive business relationship with you, their cash cow. The one constant I have seen over the 10 years of having private health insurance with various providers is that you have to fight like hell, for an exorbitant amount of time, to get what you need without bleeding money, as well.
And they're rude too, you call them and put up with their convoluted bullshit for an hour or more and the person on the other end almost always is an asshole, refusing to actually help you or explain things, their job is to suck you dry, not help you, you're just disagreeable food
reminds me of the time i had a procedure that was covered fail, and bcbs tried to charge me almost $300 for that failed procedure. EVEN THO if it had gone right, it wouldve cost me almost nothing at that point bc my family had already met our deductible!!!!!!!!!!
Why on earth would they play by their own rules? If a provider defrauds, say, 1.3 million people a year, how many of those people will realize they've been robbed? How many of the people who realized will be in a position to do something about it? How many of _those_ people will actually manage to get it done? Stealing money from your cash cows is, it turns out, _incredibly profitable and very low-risk._
Legal fees are just another calculated risk, and they are experts at calculating risk. They'll break their contract exactly as much as they calculate they can. The profits they save by denying you coverage are used to pay for the very lawyers that fight against you, the mathematicians that find optimal pathways to screw you, and the politicians that write laws in their favor. Ultimately you are the one funding their efforts against you.
You never had a chance. You don't have teams of mathematicians helping you calculate your risk. You don't have teams of lawyers to make sure your contract is upheld, in which you didn't contribute any of the fine print, let alone half the contract. You don't have politicians in your pocket writing laws for you. You don't have economists keeping an eye on the markets for you.
There is an extreme inequality of every economically important resource, both physical and conceptual, including time, attention, money, law, information, negotiating ability, and even general decision making skills such as game theory. The insurance company counted their win against you as predicted future profits before you were born.
And if I can point out, they may deny coverage for life-threatening conditions that your well-respected oncologist has ordered. You are so right about having to fight hard. Do it early - your private health insurance will likely explain that they are not obligated to provide you any answer sooner than 10 to 14 days; that's a problem when your platelets are low and dropping by 6k a day, but hey, if you bleed out because you bite your tongue, that solves their problem of expensive medical procedures....
About two thirds of the way in I felt a panic attack brewing because I was getting scared that I wasn't understanding this enough so I had to start repeating "I'm not American, I'm not American" to calm down. Not sure if that speaks more to how terrifying this system is or to how good you are at immersing me into a topic
Hahahaah well at least you dont actually live in this nightmare. I only have a year left being under my parents and im scared 😢 make sure this doesnt happen where you live!
@@princessalia6 Oh I've been trying. I live in Alberta, Canada and our last Premier (Basically a Governer, he was American too) tried his damnedest to privitize healthcare, and sadly enough a lot of people were on his side, but he never really got anywhere with it and ultimately if he did I wouldn't have been surprised if the Federal Govt stepped in and said "No", but for a hot minute I was pretty terrified
@@PerishingPurplePulsar Holy sheit that was way too close! Have they not learned anything from us!?
@@princessalia6 Not a thing apperently. I'm planning on moving at some point to Ontario or maybe Nova Scotia. The more time goes on the more Alberta is turning into a Little US inside of Canadian borders at best, or a fascist splinter state at worst and I don't wanna be here when the axe comes down either way
I can't speak to not living in this nightmare, but I can say that having lived in it all my life and now currently being unable to fix significant and life-altering problems with my teeth for several years to the point where I haven't been able to chew food and I don't know that fixing my teeth will even fix the problem now because I have no idea if I'll be able to chew like normal or if my jaw has atrophied...it's not great.
Pro tip: if you have to take a super expensive medication that has a high copay, the drug manufacturer will often have a program to cover the copay for you. This is because they'd rather eat the copay amount if it means they can still bill your insurance for the rest.
THIS. My specialty medication would have bankrupted me years ago if my doctor hadn't offhandedly mentioned that the manufacturer had a reimbursement system. It's saved me probably over $100K in the past decade.
You guys have to worry about this!?😭
Damn, I didn't know US Americans were struggling _this_ hard...
@@nemo-zl1vm as someone who is not american and does not take medication it baffles me to think that a life-saving medicine could even cost 10k a year. is it subsidised at all?
@@acookie7548 I don't think you understood. That IS the subsidized price.
@@acookie7548 This particular medication gets billed at $40K per dose, and I get 8 doses per year, but my max out of pocket for health insurance is about $7K. With the reimbursement program, I "only" end of paying a thousand or so a year for it. Sometimes my insurance likes to deny my claim for bullshit reasons, so I get to spend a few months thinking I'm suddenly $40K in debt while I beg them to change their mind. Whatever country you live in, vote like hell to prevent them from privatising health costs - it really is hard to exaggerate how hellish it can be.
As for subsidies, there's lots of "it depends" that can take age or poverty status into account. You can theoretically deduct health costs from your taxes, but it's limited and it's difficult to qualify for it.
My favorite part about the deep dives on American healthcare is seeing the horrified reactions of people who aren't from the United States. This is an in depth beginners crash course on health insurance. None of the information presented here is satire, right down to the plans that are referred to as "Part A," "Part B," etc. It's exhausting.
Yeah I'm not from the US and I have to say that this is fucking terrifying
I could never move to there for this reason
I live in a third world country and I get literally EVERYTHING for free. "Oh but queue's must be super long!" I go see a doctor same day if I need to, and I if I have to I can get a doctor home visit (also free).
@@ThoughtsOnThoughts thank you, I swear I have people in my family who are obvious victims of the predatory privatized healthcare and they still go “well at least I only have to wait 3-6 months to even a year to see a doctor instead of however long the queues must be over in places with privatized healthcare!”
Yeah I just show up to the hospital and say "treat me" Done. U wait a little while and u pay nothing or a symbolic value like 5€
@@ThoughtsOnThoughts free? nothing is free my friend. Somebody always has to pay, people have to make the medications, work the hospitals, track the records, etc... payment comes through money or time. The real reason American health insurance is so bad, *aside from the shoddy bureaucracy* is because there is *basically* no upper limit to what the government will pay for different things. So in practice big pharma and hospitals can cooperate to charge exorbitant rates to insured people. Really, Americas insurance problem is deeply rooted in a very large number of other issues, like government money laundering and insider trading, gross government inefficient/malicious spending, outdated laws and systems... When people say they want insurance in the private sector, they don't normally mean completely independent from law, they just want it in businesses with a monetary incentive to do things right, and a minimal degree of government intervention necessary only for keeping the companies from cooperating to jack prices up and to keep insurance payments at a low price for consumers that is affordable but still profitable. Another reason people want private insurance is so that people that have enough money to not need insurance do not have to pay for other peoples insurance, either through taxes or payments. Long story short, governments don't normally have their peoples best interests in mind.*yes I am aware that businesses don't either, but they at least have an incentive existing in the bottom line they must meet*
i live in Europe so watching this made me nauseous. I actually feel sick listening to it
Our waiting times for healthcare are basically non existent so no waitlist AND as a bonus we can own semi automatic rifles and Europeans can’t.
@@theorderofthepurplephoenix3321ngl owning a weapon that is specifically designed to kill as many people as possible in a short time span doesn’t seem too appealing
@@tapwater4425 having the proper means to defend yourself and your home is something Europeans can’t do. If people break into your house you will have free healthcare when they injure you, but you won’t be able to defend yourself, you’re family, or your valuables
@@theorderofthepurplephoenix3321 there are ways of defending yourself aside from guns, like a baseball bat, or a knife.
Besides, I do see some benefit to having a gun *if* the attacker also has a gun, but automatic weapons are a bit overkill and usually cause more harm than good.
@@tapwater4425 first of all, a bat or knife while not stop a group of people. Secondly, a knife or a bat is a much more brutal way to kill someone than a gun. And lastly, regular people aren’t allowed to own automatic weapons. To own a automatic weapon you either have to go a long and tedious background check and pay 50-120 grand or go through a almost impossible amount of paperwork to get an ffl. Felons, and people with a record of violent crimes are not allowed to own any guns. Automatic weapons are really only for the most diehard of rich gun collectors, a very niche market. Many robberies have been stopped by store owners/civilians who had guns and many live have been saved by guns. In America we do not have a gun crisis, we have a mental health crisis and not enough background checks for certain guns
As an example of a person living on one of the public healthcare parts of the world, I indeed appreciate you for the cautionary tale. I was already verbally agressive against people who defend privatization, now after this video I'll also get physical. Thanks!
The good thing is, they'll be able to get healthcare for their injuries without going bankrupt
don't forget to rob them of several thousand dollars to take care of the cost of any broken bones caused by that fight!
Just don't get physical on folks from the USA; we can't afford treatment after
Okay you call the guide terrible but this is actually a really excellent guide. I'm a whole-ass pharmacy technician, dealing with insurance bullshit is part of my job, and there's stuff in here I didn't know and I will 100% be copping some of your wording.
canadian here. i got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and have been insulin dependent since last year. my previous insurance plan no longer applies because I'm not in school this term and also our government prescription plan (OHIP) stopped covering insulin and other necessary diabetes prescriptions like blood sugar testing devices :D this is a very helpful video thank you. and remember kids: if you ever see the CEO of Lantus or any other insulin company, please remember to take their pancreas from them and then refuse them a hospital visit, thank you.
ah, another victim of the horrible reign of Doug Ford. (someone please send help, this man is ruining our province)
Hey don’t worry, next they’ll ask you when you want to be Euthanized (For free! 😊). Isn’t the Canadian Healthcare system great?
Wtf, I'm from Ontario too and I didn't know about insulin getting dropped from OHIP. What demonic logic did they use to remove insulin from the list - are they claiming it's a medication and not like a medical treatment or something so you have to get private insurance for it like most people have to for medications? So sorry to hear that. I'm so upset that gnome got reelected.
Eat the pancreas of the rich
@@Shinigami13133 *slams out SOS with her forehead on the desk in front of her* I curse those that voted that ~REDACTED~ jerk back into office.
My wife has a blood condition that 4 people in the US have. It’s SUPER cheap to treat, but bc it’s rare, we’ve had to fight for 9 months to get care. Thank you for this cathartic, and hilarious, recap of our year.
Same thing happened to my family, insurance wouldn't accept the first Dr.s letter so had to literally beg the chief of medicine of a children's hospital in person so my family wouldn't be financially crippled for life... and we're the ones who are lucky
whoaa how do you even get a diagnosis for something that rare? because most doctors will have never even heard of it, and even for relatively common chronic illnesses like POTS it's ridiculously difficult to get a diagnosis or any type of referral for further testing
what disease is this??
@@notebeans3134 She's now what you call a "case study."
Lol. The diagnosis was by accident and by the American Red Cross. They noticed something was up with her blood and appropriately took action. God bless them.
@@VelvetWxtch I need to know too 0.o
And what sucks is when you DO go to the hospital and pay all that money you often don’t get taken serious and end up going home with a misdiagnosis
This. Both my brother and my mother have had to go into preventable surgery that made it so they had exponentially worse short and long term health repercussions (with my mom's being life threatening emergency surgery) and too many a times have I turned to Google because it doesn't make sense to pay for a doctor's visit just for them to say 'your blood and pee is healthy go drink water or something'
And gets much worse the more of a minority you are. Trying to get chronic pain that I believe is MS, but my last doctor blamed it entirely on my trans HRT despite it starting to progress before starting that
She did the same thing with my chronic migraines I finally needed meds for that I had been fighting for 10-15 years. And of course US healthcare is so underfunded that it takes months to get a new doctor
yep took my doctors over 6 months to figure out I didn't have post nasal drip, but a brain tumor (I'm ok now, they cut that shit out 4 years ago)
My sister had a similar problem, except she got coverage that didn't cover pre-existing conditions in the meantime, which meant she was paying premiums for useless insurance.
@@scharlesworth93 I was told my sui-level headaches are “TMJ” and I’m legitimately terrified that it’s a fucking tumor that no one will go looking for
I am literally an office manager at a medical clinic and this 10x longer and better than the training I got
Truly. I work as a medical biller and I am sharing this with all the newbies tomorrow.
... Your training is a 3 minute video? Wow
@@adewilliam9047 3 minutes 6 seconds.
As someone who is almost off their parents insurance and is looking to go into an industry that usually doesn’t have benefits, this is immensely helpful and terrifying
Sounds like that's a choice you made...
literally same here. and ^ dude the point is healthcare should be available for everyone
for your own sake, please reconsider
ok
@@swesleyc7
Ah yes I also chose to be born and make the world a shitty place where people will look down on one another and decide "hmm yes that person deserves the almost inevitable fate of suffering and death that is being denied healthcare, because they don't have a job I deem worthy". Absolutely a choice we, the young, made. Yes indeedy.
I think a key thing you should have mentioned is just how difficult it is for low-income people or even retired old people to even get Medicaid and Medicare in the first place. The requirements are very stringent and require you to relinquish any amount of money you have to even qualify for these programs. If you make $1 too much over the limit, you are automatically disqualified. It's a subtle and sinister caveat.
As an Ontarian, I have never been more afraid of the provincial government’s recent rumblings about healthcare privatization! Thank you Brian!!
Yeah that fact scares me and I hope other provinces don't have that happen
Yeah, y'all are worrying the shit out of me.
-American
Same fears in Alberta
Go to your dentist now while it's still free
@@Rylee_G Dentistry is not covered under our healthcare unfortunately :(
I would totally watch a series called "Adulting" by BDG that dives in or gives an overview of all the bs the world doesn't teach you enough about until it's too late.
I desperately need info on taxes. Like, every year, I spend months trying to figure this shit out and I have no idea. There's no help for people with learning disabilities like me, and I can't afford a tax service again this year, so I'm already shitting myself.
I couldn't get through it without encouraging fight club
This would be incredible. I definitely trust him to learn the things I'm to dumb to figure out and teach them to me via entertaining videos
taxes would be very good
I mean this is a specifically US problem, same goes for taxes
I work for a health insurance company, and I am strongly considering showing this video to my new hire class to help them understand this insanity. Definitely a broken system
as someone with ADHD who has tried several times to look into this stuff but simply CANNOT stay focused enough to do it, this was actually so insanely helpful and calming
I guess you'll just have to move.
All this stuff is automatic in my country, I don't have to worry at all. If this is how it was for me, I wouldn't even have an ADHD diagnosis, and I'd probably end up dead before the age of 40 LMAO
Trying to get a psychiatrist is so stressful 😅 I've thought I might have adhd for over a year and haven't gotten to one because the process takes forever and I'm worried I'll do everything and it turns out they think I'm faking my symptoms or that I'm not dealing with enough sh*t to get help and that I just need to get over it
@@marshmallow4646 That's not how psychiatric evaluation and treatment works 😂
If it's impairing your life, then there's something wrong.
Maybe it's ADHD, maybe it isn't. As long as you find some answers to your problems, isn't that good enough?
@@marshmallow4646 I can guarantee you that going into a doctors office and telling them what your prognosis is will get you a wide eyed look. There are many disorders that are comorbid (two or more disorders that are simultaneously present). When you go in for treatment, go in with an open mind. The doctors will work with you to find proper treatment but you need to trust the process.
There is a huge rise in mental health talk lately which I can be happy about but it also comes at the cost of many self diagnoses. Don't be caught up on the label. All these labels are just acronyms and words to help the doctors better classify how to treat you, not a badge of honor you need to wear on your sleeve.
Trust me: After I found the proper cocktail of medicines over 5 years of trying, the labels didnt matter anymore. I just felt proper.
@@justinb9185 @Severinsen I'm not going to go in and tell them I have adhd, I don't really care what I have as long as I can get help, my doctor and therapist have told me to go to one, I just think that I might have adhd because several people have told me they think I have it and it's what I've related the most too when looking up my symptoms and hearing people talk about there's, I've just also been told a lot by my family and others that my anxiety and depression which I've been diagnosed with are bullshit and to just get over myself so I'm nervous that I might go through all this shit for a psychiatrist to be told to get over myself or take another SSRI that doesn't work for me
No joke, I’m changing jobs right now - like, literally as of yesterday - for the first time in 13 years and this was EXACTLY what I needed to figure out my new employer’s insurance options, i.e. an informative video on basic terminology that didn’t cause my brain to liquefy and drip out through my eye sockets. Seriously, Brian, thank you.
My dad had a heart attack and drove HIMSELF to the hospital. To him, an ambulance ride wasn't worth the risk of being taken out of network (or the cost of the ride).
my dad had a stroke and drove himself to the hospital. i'm honestly not sure which would've been safer: me, on a learner's permit, or him, having a stroke.
@@glowstickblood Gosh, I'm sorry to hear that. If I had to pick I'd choose someone without a license at all over someone who just had a stroke or heart attack. There's just too much risk of a second event.
@@Eudaletism absolutely agree. i wish i had known before i heard his car pull out of the driveway so i could have driven him, but thankfully he's okay.
Sad
There was an excellent Brian Regan bit about driving to the hospital. "Merge, everybody merge. I'm only imploding." It's awesome and highlights just how insane our medical system happens to be structured.
i actually need BDG to explain every adult concept to me in this exact manner.
Brian, you know your audience to a T. I’m turning 26 in 7ish months, and literally just last week was like “Oh I’ll look into health insurance!” then spent the next 2 hours recovering from the anxiety of 20 minutes of research. Thank you so much for this video. I will treasure it always
Just remember, if they give you the option between applying with financial assistance or without financial assistance, ALWAYS GO WITH. Even if you don't think you'll qualify for Medicaid, you'll probably qualify for advanced premium tax credits and the only way you'll be considered for them is if you apply with assistance! So many people make this mistake!!!!
This is the adult experience
Me: "Let's get through this."
Me: reads one sentence
Me: "I have learned new unthinkable evils and I have to go recover."
@@chaotickreg7024 then asking your 50-70year old parents for help (if you’re so lucky to have them around and have a stable relationship), and them being so taken aback by the overt criminality of a system they used to be able to handle in shorter phone calls for exponentially cheaper prices.
In my case, it’s 3 traumas for the price of 1!
@@BradsGonnaPlay I had to take my mom to my appointments so she could pay and yeah, it was 3-for-1 trauma.
Ah yes. The system working as intended.
As an international student in the US, I want to genuinely thank you for this video, Brian. It explains a lot about the whole messy system that I've always been afraid of, confused about and will have to deal with eventually. Stuff like this isn't useless. It's amazing.
My ex's family who are multi millionaires right now admitted that they straight up just dont have health insurance since its cheaper to pay out of pocket than pay insurance. Also knew people who quit a high paying job to get medicare(or aid the state one) because it had more coverage than a mid-upper tier insurance and is free.
Anyways Im a dual citizen and go to Japan for all my dental and eye care since its too complicated to find a doctor here on medicare and if i do find them, theyre booked out for several months. I hate America's health system and thats the one major thing that turns me off from staying here long term. Literally back when i was in Guam people went to East/South East Asian countries to get medical care
An interesting note is that for QLEs giving birth is a qualifying life event, but becoming pregnant is not a qualifying life event and you have to wait until you give birth to enroll
I know, right??????? Good news tho: in Minnesota (don't know about the rest of the country) the income limits for medicaid eligibility for pregnant people is a LOT higher, it goes from being 20k/year for single-person household to 50k/year, so it's a lot easier to qualify for Medicaid (or medical assistance, as MN calls it for some reason) and public programs don't have enrollment periods so you can enroll at any time!
I think they were trying to push through some state laws that made pregnancy a QLE as well, at least in New Yorl
🤔🤔 Let me guess... Most US citizens are Scorpio, Sagitarius or Capricorn, Right?
“Glasses aren’t covered because some ppl don’t need them”
Hey just like heart surgery and literally everything else in medicine🎉
Also, doesnt like, 60% of the population need vision corrections?
I guess the difference is that you can immediately tell if someone will need glasses in the ongoing future. If insurance companies could perfectly predict who would need heart surgery in the future, they would make that a separate payment too.
A fun thing that I recently found out after having a baby is that if you want to try and really cover your bases and you double insure your child, the insurance companies act like hostile and divorced parents who refuse to speak to each other and it's up to you to pass information between them on what's covered by each insurance plan. I had thought (naively) that they might have open lines of communication considering this is probably something pretty common. But instead I'm passing notes back and forth between two parties of adults who pretend the other one is to blame (and on the hook to pay) for everything.
Oh, and also, the primary insurance for the child is the one that belongs to the parent with the earliest birthday in the calendar year. :D Which feels like a weird riddle that I had no idea I needed to solve before bringing my baby to a pediatrician.
cool, I'm just gonna remain childfree.
It's because they're private companies, and their customer's information is a valuable source of revenue and targeted sales. No way they want to share that with competitors.
My wife and I had equally good insurance that between us covered just about every provided in the area. It seemed on the surface that we should both add our new baby to both of our insurance plans. At the bottom of the research rabbit hole we discovered that it's less convenient and way more expensive.
The whole thing is just designed to wring as much money out of people while doing as little as possible. Preventative care has copays because the companies get more money if people are neglected as early as possible so their disease are more expensive to treat. And that starts with infants.
@@DLiev ...Jesus christ.
So it's better/cheaper to insure your child with two insurers instead of one "better" insurance?
How does that make any sense?
I turn 26 in two days, I’ve got like 15 tabs open on my laptop while watching this, and I’m consumed by fear and confusion. 🦅🇺🇸
me soon and i’m horrified. losing my parent’s health insurance feels like losing a limb
My coworker who moved to the Netherlands: Yeah the facility apologized profusely because they had to charge me like $20-30 for my visit because I didn't have an insurance plan set up yet
Me: I paid $89.13 AFTER insurance just to see a dermatologist for 15 minutes
EDIT: I forgot to mention the cost of the prescriptions of course which were another $50-$60
I paid like $200 or something after insurance for a 30 minute DIGITAL CONSULTATION for an at home sleep study. Yeah, it was over video call, and all it was was me saying what my issues were surrounding sleep and then discussing the process and possible outcomes of the at home sleep study. And i paid a couple hundred dollars. After insurance. Don't even ask how much it cost for the actual sleep study as well as other tests and doctor visits i had for the same issue
bro if you dont know what sites have heavily discounted glasses, you could be spending nearly $200...plus taxes...even with no perscription...witch is another idk 50-100
I had to pay 100+ just so i get my doctor to write my prescription.
And 50 dollars from the pharmacy for my meds
Oh and my old meds costed 300 dollars so I would've end up paying $400 if i didn't have met my good person of a doctor
I had to take a covid test because my university sent me an email saying that I needed to. I went to the free test center and they told me I needed to go to the hospital to take a rapid test because I had a cough at the time. After an hour of waiting I get the test which took about 10 minutes, I got the result back an hour later and it was negative. I was under a health insurance plan provided by the university. NEXT DAY I HAVE A $324 CHARGE ON MY STUDENT ACCOUNT FOR THE VISIT.
@@joeyschalip3854 tha'ts insane. I have taken atleast 10 covid tests(private and work) and not a single time I had to worry about any costs
As a french fellow, I first laugh. Then I remember my government craves to privatize our health system and the video became suddenly a LOT LESS funnier.
Do not let them do that, I pray to you use your natural inborn abilities as a Frenchman to riot and strike to prevent that.
if they do, prepare the guilotines
its because your goverment is paying billonaires out of the ass for products, it just appears free to you. trust me corporations are still raping the supposed "free" healthcare countries. your healthcare is owned by american and foreign corporations through your govermemt
Yes, guilotines, bro.
@@ChipCheerioOh yeah, you frenchies are my heroes for that.
Reminder, people of Europe. THIS is what “privatized healthcare” means.
We have this in the Netherlands too, so europe, sadly, knows
@@jakobvanklinken Yeah ... no. Sure we have copays but don't pretend like we get insane pricings and holes in our coverage like in the US. Sure if you go to a specialist which isn't in basic insurance such as physical therapy you'll have to pay it yourself. But that's only if you don't have a certain chronic issue which requires you to go. And if you are in an emergency situation 'network' doesn't mean anything. And if it is 'out of network' you usually only pay about 10-30% of the full price.
In a country as small as the Netherlands and like I said earlier ignoring emergency situations which don't apply there is basically no reason to go out of network in the Netherlands. Where American companies have those systems in place mostly for monetary gain, Dutch insurance companies have it in place to stop people from hopping from doctor to doctor, clogging up systems with inefficiency.
The Netherlands has far from a perfect system. But it's harmful to the existing system and the people fighting for universal healthcare to state that the system in place in the Netherlands is anywhere near the system of the US.
And South America
Ok
If by private you mean heavily regulated at state and federal levels
I'm british and thought the ambulance ride costs were a clout myth until my american cousins visited for the holidays and I realised you STILL HAVE TO PAY AMBULANCE FEES WITH INSURANCE. Then I saw this video and realised the US healthcare system can still get _worse_
As a pharmacist constantly trying to explain to customers I am not the reason their med price is so high, I sincerely wish I could show all my patients this video. Insurance, private or government, is bonkers and is absolutely the greatest headache of my job when it doesn’t serve the people paying for the service.
Well done, good sir 👌🏽
Can't you though? Is this video out of network?
I'm French, and I already knew that our healthcare system is precious considering your situation, but MY GOD I didn't know this was so bad for you... Universal healthcare is really important. Dear Americans, fight to get it.
Unfortunately, 40% of us have been convinced that the government helping people IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER is morally wrong and "against the will of God". Public Roads? Communism. Universal Healthcare? Communism. Firefighters? Communism. Giant Military Industrial Complex? That's for Jesus 😊
They voted for this. This is what Americans consider freedom.
@@Grintock *Laughs in the stupidity of the Electoral College*
Sir I assure you a lot of us don't consider it freedom and are attempting to get better but there's some barriers in our way.
I'm Canadian and the idiotic premier of my province wants to privatize our healthcare. Maybe this video can help explain some things to his followers, but I doubt it.
we have been for so long 😭
As an American, to all the people who don't have to deal with all this: Help us! Oh God please help us! It's literally "your money or your life"! It's a straight up hostage situation!
Private healthcare is a bad idea on the face of it, but US's free market dystopia takes it to the next level.
Bolivia, one of the poorest American countries, provides a considerably more comprehensive and cheaper (as in "cost per capita", but it's also fully tax-paid, so free at time of use) healthcare system than Statunitian health insurances.
Seriously! It stays this way because the rich and corporations have figured out that people are willing to pay almost anything when it's their lives on the line. What a perfect capitalist money maker 🤮
I haven't been to the doctor or interacted with the medical system here whatsoever since moving to the US (years ago) because I don't understand it, get most things done when I go back home (and I'm young and will never die), and every official website looks like a scam and asks me for my social security number. So thanks Brian. Because of you I might go and see someone now.
As a denials specialist (a position at some hospitals where the person's entire job is calling insurance companies and figuring out why the hell they're not covering x or y procedure), I absolutely love every ounce of this video. Definitely will send it to friends and fam, who very much often or not ask me to explain their insurance info to them because I'm the only one who can make a lick of sense of it lolol
I hate that your job exists. I’m sure you’re lovely and it sounds like you’re really trying to help people, but the fact that this has to be a specialized position is horrifying
Lol same.
It’s absolutely effed how insurance agents just trying to “profit” basically control the whole medical trajectory more than actual doctors. How can an insurance companies even tell a doctor “no he doesn’t need it”
@@monhi64 The whole system is a scam and honestly feels like it's been designed with the express purpose of making people suffer until death.
@@monhi64 Insurance agents arent practicing medicine, they're just informing Actual Doctors who do Actual Work with Actual Patients what their cardboard cutout with a medical degree says is necessary.
Someone give this man a Nobel prize for service to the community.
Lest be honest we waited so long for this ua-cam.com/users/shortsjqSbkAHTPLg?feature=share
Hey BDG, I used this video to help me write my ASL final project: Explaining U.S. health insurance entirely in American Sign Language. I got a 97! And I have you to thank for that.
Can’t wait until we meet in 8 years and I take your job! I’ll thank you in person then. Love your work!
the idea that you have to enroll at a certain time of year instead of just. whenever. is actually mind boggling
I hate how this is really comprehensive, yet wildly incomplete, yet probably an extremely accessible and beneficial resource for understanding the basics of health insurance. Great job, as someone who spent 3 years as a supervisor in health insurance customer service, this was incredibly painful to watch, which is the highest honor I can bestow to you. ❤
Lol you cite your qualifications like you're an HMO provider, though you were just a customer service supervisor.
@@biggrocc19 intent wasn’t to be pretentious. I adjusted claims, administered benefits, forced through approvals, educated people on how to navigate their benefits, and heard thousands of people’s stories over the years. My point is merely that this video is a great insight to how terrible private insurance is in this country and how large of an issue health literacy is in this country due to it being intentionally complicated.
@@biggrocc19 Sounds like their opinion on this topic is a hell of a lot more relevant than your opinion about their opinion. :)
@@biggrocc19 cringe
I work in healthcare administration and this is actually the clearest most informative video on insurance terms I have ever seen, no joke.
I have never felt more grateful for the NHS, ever
Tories wanna replace your NHS with something like this.
I have never felt more gratefull (and motivated to defend) for the Sécurité Sociale.
And I'm having anxiety attack because it's being sabotaged by successive french gouvernement to discredite it and privatise the whole thing.
@Please refer to my lawyer🇺🇦 Don't ignore it, fight against it.
Please don't become us.
This is incredible
amazing work
Health care means superb
Good time buck
Good outincome source
Very good
Wait but this is actually a really good clear explanation that my adhd brain could follow because it was hilarious. Please, I’m begging you, make more of these for understanding the rest of this dysfunctional world.
Same here! I’m so grateful Brian made this video because I need to know this stuff but researching health insurance has been impossible for me. This video is engaging and fun while also being super informative, it’s perfect!
SAME. PLEASE, THANK YOU
I did an English-Spanish phone interpreting training last year, the job consisted of A LOT of medical/health insurance calls and it would've been AWESOME if they showed us this video
you don’t know the joys of private health insurance until you’ve made twice weekly phone calls for months on end to argue that the medication your doctor prescribed you for your diagnosed condition *is* medically necessary
Yeeeep. My health insurance company once decided that I didn’t need to be hospitalized as long as my doc said I did and refused to pay for the last week. I shudder to think what would have happened if the hospital hadn’t had a department that basically only deals with that kind of situation
This is honestly a wonderful way to present important adulting information. As an alleged adult in my early 20s this is how I want all financial information conveyed to me in the future. I would honestly love it if Brian did more videos like this.
I've been in the process of transitioning from a stable career (with benefits) to doing youtube full-time, and I would just like to thank you for the anxiety attack you have given me.
Shoot, if you go full-time, maybe we can get more than one Cobbler Crackdown every couple months! That sounds great, go for it!
Youre my favorite youtuber!
just make the third rome video and I'll give you my liver
Dawg I'm a square with a white collar job and this shit gives *me* an anxiety attack. I WISH YOU LUCK jfc
You know, it's weird seeing how in a post you made a while back you said you only planned on doing this whole UA-cam gig as a hobby.
Good luck on it, man, I'm rooting for you, and pray you find a decent healthcare plan.
Honestly dude I did medical billing for a couple years and let me tell you this video is so good and comprehensive
Thanks for putting this out, it was a nice refresher on the Insurance Monster💀
It's so dystopian to think that they can charge you for ambulance rides. Like one would think that, idk, it's kind of INCREDIBLY AMORAL to profit from someone having a life or death situation.
And if you are in a life flight ride? Forget it.
They pay garbage wages to paramedics. There is literally no logic to the price that they charge you for an ambulance ride. A guy I know quit that to deliver pizzas. That pays $7hr plus tips.
*Immoral.*
It is no wonder that some people will call a cab/ride share to get them to the hospital rather than be taken by an ambulance…
it costs less to actually rent a car than to ride in an ambulance
I lost my health insurance due to essentially a technical error. I found out when I needed a really expensive procedure at a facility with facilities fees. It took FOUR FUCKING MONTHS of daily calls, letters, eventually taking it to my attorney general and I had the assistance of an attorney friend who specializes in insurance. It was the hardest, most stressful thing I have ever done. If I hadn't desperately needed the medical procedure I would have given up. I don't know how anyone could do it. I had all the advantages a person could get and I think everest without oxygen would have been easier and taken less time. This system needs to be burned to the ground.
Sorry you had this happen, but you are not the norm. Also this story seems fake as hell anyways.
@@brandon0981 go lick some boots somewhere else, this is an extremely normal story that millions of Americans go through all the time.
@@brandon0981 the only way it's not the norm is I actually won after 4 appeals. People get dumped all the time. If you're outside of open enrollment good luck. So if someone falls on hard times, they lose insurance, they can't get back on. They're off and there is no appeal.
@@flafflingforfun I don't know what you're talking about but you can get cobra at almost any time. And if you "fall on hard times" you have Medicaid. You are not the norm at all in any way. Again, sorry you went through that but this is not indicative of the system. The system does need to change in general though - insurance should be tied through your job it should be something anyone can get at any time just like other types of insurance.
@@brandon0981 you can't get COBRA when your employer doesn't supply health insurance. I, like a lot of people, work for a small business. There's only three of us. It's a small consulting firm. All of us are older so it would be obscene to offer insurance. We are all insured through the state exchange and the insurance is quite good at an affordable rate. The downside is you are your own HR department and when something goes wrong the exchange blames the insurer and vice versa. It's a completely different world than employer provided insurance. Things like COBRA don't exist. The rules are different. You're taxed different. It's still private insurance but how you manage it is completely different.
my mom is disabled which (and this sounds terrible) i have been very grateful for the past few years as it was the only way my siblings and i could stay on medicaid. this year my dad took a promotion at his job so that that could cover costs for repairing the home they live in and it put us a few thousand over the limit. now my appoints are $50 and to see my therapist it’s $150.
to anyone who doesn’t live in a place with privatized insurance, the second people start pushing for it, fight like hell.
Stop. It’s not my fault you have mental health issues. And want to be on state insurance and rely on your father to pay for your health insurance. Get a job.
@@No-1-rt7tppeople who make these arguments act like it's the fault of the person with the issues. Like?? It's not like this person chose to have mental health issues... No one is responsible for the problem happening, but if you live in a country that believes in actual equality instead of a plutocracy, everyone should pitch in to help solve it
It’s terrifying how the companies have so clearly made getting help as convoluted and confusing as physically possible
it's more terrifying that the people have passively sit by and let this happen to them.
@@powerbeard5653 it's hard to do something against it since it's private. They'll use the ' then don't pay for it if you don't like it' card. Yes, if a lot of people stoped paying for it, they'd have to adapt to not lose income, but sadly, if pretty much the whole market works that way, you have to choose between being leeched by those companies or risk going super saiyan bankrupt if you have any health problem.
It's entirely deliberate. Ever wondered why big companies bankroll anti-public-healthcare politicians? Surely they would want state funded healthcare to remove the extra cost & overhead of managing health insurance for all their workers? Except no, because it stops people from leaving. When "I'm going to lose my health insurance if I lose this job" is on the table, suddenly you're willing to take a much lower wage and you might even vote for those anti-healthcare politicians yourself out of an aggrevied sense that you're already paying too much for your own healthcare, why should you pay for someone else's?
They scare a large majority into compliance by using communism/socialism as a scare tactic. Even though those are two completely different things that are not even remotely related to a Universal Health Care
As a recent member of the “turned 26 so they lost their parents health insurance” club, this video was immensely helpful. I’ve watched it twice through and legitimately took notes the second time as I choose new health insurance plans for myself.
Exact same boat here. Any tips on what you eventually decided on?
Don’t pay for it your young. Let the system collapse on itself please it’s our only hope.
@@d.p.9567 Oh yeah I'll just pay for my thousands of dollars of medical expenses out of pocket instead!!! great idea!!! idiot.
Same, moving out at 24 with scoliosis hoping I can find good coverage and avoid any major accidents with whatever job I end up having to work :')
@@d.p.9567 not an option for a lot of us. I need my meds to survive and I need insurance for my meds.
This is genuinely a potentially life saving video. Thank you so much. I would love it if you did one on taxes, as there is no help for disabled people who need to file taxes but can't afford an accountant or tax service, and I struggle to use formal "guides" as videos like this are so much more helpful for me and many others like me. Just an idea; I would watch anything you make! But thanks again for doing this-- It's a crucial bunch of information, and it's the shame of the USA that any of it is necessary at all.
I don't know if you've heard about this, but a lot of schools with accounting or business departments have supervised trainees who do taxes for you for free! It's called the VITA program.
You might be able to get free assistance through something like turbotax
Just wanted to let you know, I am using your video in my collage essay about how the American medical Industry is corrupt and awful lol
I've been paying for a single ambulance ride for 4 years now and every month they send me a thank you letter with a hand drawn happy face that I cannot bring myself to throw out so I have these letters hanging around my room like the room in a beautiful mind
America feels like a dystopian novel I can't believe this is really our lives
i once called my insurance provider to ask what my HRT coverage was (it IS covered under my policy) and they just outright told me "we don't have access to that information" and kept trying to refer me to the pharmacy.
once, i went to the pharmacy to pick up my T and one tech told me it would be $200 (goodRx said $30 but they couldn't take the coupon because despite my prescription, T is a controlled drug). so naturally i started ugly-crying right then and there, and then their supervisor came over and sold it to me for $50. All this is to say, ALL american healthcare is just made up on the fly. they ask a magic 8 ball for the numbers. all based on vibes.
They really told you they couldn't take the coupon? I've used a coupon like that before and gotten my T at that price with no problem. I was using it to pick up 4 bottles of testosterone during a vacation in Texas (which has stricter laws apparently compared to Oregon, where I live). There's definitely something off about that situation because a doctors prescription should be more than enough.
True
@@eternallaurum super wild! this was at a CVS in California less than 2 years ago. They just told me it was a new policy and wouldn't accept it. Good info though, thank you for sharing.
@@madicorn8 I work at CVS. Those discount cards take time to run through. They will work and are accepted, but Ive heard of some stores not accepting them just on policy because so many people come with them and want us to try like 3 different ones for their precription. By the way, I would say about 85 percent of the time if someone already has insurance but asks us to just "try" a discount card it will actually cost them more money than insurance. It also wastes our time, which we have very little of at the pharmacy. I flat out refuse people all the time because I just know they are going to be unhappy with the new price and I am just going to have to take if off again and rebill it through their insurance, which also takes time. However, for people who have incredibly shitty prescription coverage, or no insurance at all, discount cards are wonderful. Just know though, they are able to get you that price because they are selling your information.
i am sorry for what you had to go through
I currently live in a country that has free universal health cara and still I'm having a panic attack by watching this video.
What country and how easy is it to emmigrate?
you could almost throw a dart at a map and get a better deal
How much of it comes out of your taxes?
@@TheAxebeard Not as much as your employer takes from your salary. Cuz hoo boy that's a shit ton more. Not so fun fact a burger flipper at McDonalds generates the company about 130 usd per hour.
That is not true at all lmao