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I’d totally watch a comedy/slice of life/horror anime about a Japanese person having to go live in America. If for no other reason than to see a whole anime where most of the cast are Joseph Joestar level English speakers.
Lol, what a steal. Or maybe this is the 90ies
$1400? Damn I hope I get that lucky if ever need an ambulance ride.
The last ambulance ride I took was $5,000 (US); that was after the insurance write down. Distance was about 5 miles and no “special treatment” other than a back board.
Are y’all great yet? Asking for a friend.
The US healthcare system is so broken… In Europe government pays nearly everything necessary for the injured or ill people. Kick out your clowns.
This comic is such bullshit.
Ambulances are $3k, minimum. If you need helivac you’re look at $20-30k.
So what happens if you cant afford it? Like if you’re awake can you say “no I’d rather die on the street and let the city have to clean up my corpse”? And if you’re unconscious and you’re revived what happens? Like if you can’t afford any of it? And say you’ve already gone bankrupt and have no assets to seize or no job to garnish wages off of? Is it jail time? Do they just expect you to starve to death after? I’m not american so I’m curious, this seems like a fucking CRAZY system.
Like if you’re awake can you say “no I’d rather die on the street and let the city have to clean up my corpse”?
They will disregard that request and charge you anyway, which has led to people literally fleeing from ambulances to avoid the expenses. But it gets even worse.
Many mental health hotlines will contact the police if they think you present a danger to yourself and others. You can then be taken to a hospital and forced to stay there against your will, and by the time you’re able to leave you’ve accumulated a mountain of medical debt. Which, if you’ve been driven to contemplate suicide due to material circumstances, isn’t exactly going to help things.
However, for anyone thinking of calling a helpline, there are ones that don’t contact the police. You just have to look it up.
Like if you can’t afford any of it? And say you’ve already gone bankrupt and have no assets to seize or no job to garnish wages off of? Is it jail time? Do they just expect you to starve to death after?
The whole thing has gotten so inflated that people not being able to pay is pretty normal. What that means is that it is possible to haggle it down somewhat and negotiate on monthly payments. The actual value of these debts to the companies that hold them is a tiny fraction of the actual dollar amount of the debt, because they know a lot of them won’t be repaid. However, the companies will be try to get every drop they can squeeze from you, and even if you negotiate the payments down to something you can afford, the principal will be hanging over your head, likely for the rest of your like.
If you can’t pay, there’s no jail time, but there’s bankruptcy and foreclosures. If you own any significant assets, like say your house or car, that can potentially be seized in the event of bankruptcy, leaving you homeless or forced to pay rent, which is generally more expensive than mortgage payments, and potentially unable to get to work.
They won’t put you in jail (not until you’re homeless and charged with sleeping in public), but they will drain every drop of blood from your body like the vampires they are. In some cases literally, given that some people resort to selling blood to make ends meet.
Remember; America can afford to give border agents electrocution gloves, but can’t afford healthcare.
Someone else already answered the “what if” questions you had in another comment, but you’re right: it is a fucking crazy system. That is, until you realize its purpose is to keep us on unsure footing and beholden to employers so we’re more easily controlled.
You just go into more debt. They can do stuff like sue to garnish wages or put a lein on your property, but mostly it just ruins your credit score.
Most non-profit hospitals have a budget for indigent care, though. And many hospitals will settle for a much lower amount if you just go talk to them.
I knew someone who racked up over $300k in cancer treatment, and when they talked to billing to set up a payment plan the hospital was so surprised someone actually wanted to pay that they dropped it to $10k.
The reason that health care costs are so high is because hospitals jack up the price so they can “negotiate” with insurance and everyone feels like they won. A lot of the massive bills you see are what hospitals send out before even billing insurance.
Due to reasons I took an ambulance ride. For one and a half miles. From one hospital to another. They billed my insurance $6K
And both of those EMTs probably have a second job.
I had a seizure in a gas station. When I regained consciousness in the back of an ambulance I told them I asked them not to take me anywhere and to let me go on my way because I couldn’t afford the ride. The look on their faces told me a lot about how shitty our country is. They knew I was refusing medical attention I probably needed because I couldn’t afford for them to take me to a hospital I couldn’t afford treatment at, even with health insurance.
what the fuxxx
Didn’t factor in the hospital bill, the doctor bill, the nursing staff bill, the ems bill, the er doc bill, or the overnight fees… and then there’ll still be more and all separate.
And they still probably expect tip too those morons.
Thankfully no tip line on those bills, but zero consolidation does make it hard to set up payments and know everything is taken care of… if that’s even possible.
That’s so scary not knowing whether a debt has been paid off properly or not.
While I appreciate my Japanese healthcare (I find it a bit better than Canada’s), it’s kinda weird not knowing the ballpark amount I’m going to pay BEFORE seeing the doctor. I get a bill at the end of my visit. They have an itemized list of things they did. Each item is given “points,” and they’re converted into yen at the end. I’m not even sure what each point amounts to how many yen (although, that’s purely on me, the answer is probably a duckduckgo search away). I don’t like the feeling that I might end up with a surprisingly expensive bill.
The paperwork bill for generating all the paperwork. The admin bill, to review the paperwork. The convenience surcharge, for the cost of generating paperwork.
I wish it was only $1400. My last ride was $3400 for 8 miles. Even more crazy is my plan is $3600 a month for a family of 4. Kiaser HMO.
I would rather pay higher taxes than let these middle men take all our fucking money…
I will agree with both extremes. Either full government healthcare that is taxed but then it’s completely free, OR full private with no government intervention. Both have their benefits, but ours is the worst of both worlds and more expensive.
Whoa, I heard that in the US you have to pay for an ambulance, but $1,400? And this is with insurance?
$1400 is unrealistically cheap to the point where I’m pretty sure it’s part of the punch line here
When I was in college and on my own for the first time I tripped on the stairs and tore a ligament in my foot. I thought I’d broken something and the school called an ambulance. The ambulance drove me 1 mile to the hospital, where I was given an ice pack and crutches and then turned out with no way to get home (I had to hobble my way to a store to pull out cash to take a bus home).
This entire ordeal was $3000 after insurance. My mom then called me and bitched me out for not taking a taxi.
Capitalism turns an ordeal into a tragedy
$1400 is a wildly conservative estimate. In reality, it will be twice that.
There’s a reason why people often opt for an Uber or just drive themselves to the hospital.
I made the mistake of calling for an ambulance once, and that’s the day I learned that they are owned by private companies in the US. I couldn’t afford the bill, so I had to put up with seven years of bad credit before the charge finally disappeared off my record and I was allowed to own a credit card and buy a vehicle without paying for it in full with cash.
On the bright side, weed is legal and abundant. And unlike in Amsterdam, you don’t even have to smoke it because it comes in so many different forms! So instead of going to the doctor, I just drink and vape to my health.
God I hate living in this country.
Can be. The numbers are basically made up. It’s not uncommon for people to get their X-rays done at a chiropractor and take those to the Dr because it’s cheaper and insurance refuses to pay or it costs more even with insurance. I know someone who realized his wife’s insurance copay was more than if he paid cash for their kids birth. The insurance situation is insane and very complicated. Everything you hear about it is true and happens regularly. I tell people that I would rather have socialize medicine just for getting rid of the paperwork and nonsense. Unfortunately greed and racism are standing in the way.
What’s the point of insurance then? Sounds like a waste of money.
The point, at least in America, of insurance, is to make outrageous profits
The times when it’s tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. The way it’s set up usually these days is that you have to pay for the first few thousand, then insurance pays part of the next few thousand and then they take over the rest. Unless they can figure out a way not to pay it. Because of insurance companies the cost of medical care has become massively inflated as well. Not just the extra paperwork and people, but also the hospital doesn’t care about being competitive, and they make up even bigger numbers so they can give insurance companies “discounts”. Then insurance just passes the cost back on the consumers.
for the possibility of actually expensive treatment, like getting severely burned and needing skin transplants.
Fear. The insurance is not for “oh what if I break an arm and don’t have much cash in the bank” it’s “if I get cancer, or need to spend even a week in the hospital, all my life’s savings will be taken by this. Better give boatloads of cash every month forever to protect what I have against this.”
Then the insurance company does its best to wriggle out of paying anyways.
to make money, just not for you
I paid 600 bucks for an ambulance to a hospital i could have walked to faster. Less than a mile… I couldn’t carry my mom, though so, ambulance it was. This was 20 years ago with good insurance.
woops meant to reply to Shatur
$1,400? That’s only a small portion of a US ambulance ride. I’ve seen over $6k.
When I lived in the States back in '04, I took a 0.25 mile ambulance ride with no medical services provided. They didn’t even take my blood pressure. I was charged almost $7500 and paid nearly $700 after insurance. That’s about… $1400 in 2026 USD!
Honestly read it as 14,000 and didn’t think twice until you corrected it.
OP is giving prices from the good old days.
That’s the VIP one where they offer things life a bed, vehicle suspension, paramedics.
My dad used an ambulance about a year and a half ago. It was 3 blocks from his house to the hospital, and they still billed around $4k.
I’m not sure this artist has the firmest grasp on reincarnation or biology.
No this is exactly how reincarnation works
No…it isn’t.
This is exactly what you said last time.
Gets out of the hospital, goes to a new school in this strange new place, gets shot, winds up back in the same hospital
Groundhog Day 2 is a bit grittier than the original.
When Truck-kun sends you straight to hell.
Only $1400 for an ambulance ride? Must be the co-pay on insurance. My last ambulance ride cost me ~$5000 and that was in 2008.
My mom had to take an ambulance to the hospital a few years ago. She later got a bill for $2800 although medicare paid for some of that. Turns out the hospital she went to had its own associated ambulance service which wasn’t the ambulance service that gave her the ride. She later got a second bill from the hospital’s ambulance service, also for $2800, even though they hadn’t even given her the ride (medicare naturally enough did not pay for any of this bill). My mom was going to pay this second bill because I guess her generation just pays every fucking bill that shows up in the mail no matter what, but I put my foot down and insisted that she didn’t. I had a lot of fun calling them up and yelling at them about this bullshit. They refused to retract the bill and sent it a few more times, but eventually they gave up and didn’t send it to collections.
A fun side note to this story is that the hospital system in question became in danger of bankruptcy and put itself up for sale. A vulture capitalist firm noticed that the value of just the hospital system’s real estate holdings was a lot more than the sale price, so they purchased it and ran up a ton more debt paying themselves more than a billion dollars in bonuses. Then they spun off the real estate as a separate entity to which the hospitals started paying rent, which increased their operating deficit and debt still further. Eventually the hospitals declared bankruptcy and were closed down, leaving an entire city (of poor black people, natch) without any hospitals at all. Capitalism is just so awesome.
vulture capitalist
I’m going to reuse this
You should. Economists and other English speakers have been using it since at least 2008.
It’s a whole category, not a new term.
That’s amazing.
