Chapter 3223

Among Bruce's list, there were quite a few people who had only recently moved to this community. The reason they moved here was very simple: most of them had become impoverished due to illness.

Many people might find it hard to imagine the high level of medical bills in the United States. To summarize in the most concise sentence: even if you are a billionaire, it only takes one night to return to poverty due to illness.

Some might think this is an exaggeration, but in reality, the formulation of medical bill costs in the United States has completely exceeded the normal scope.

For example, in a big city on the US East Coast, the cost of a normal hospital visit is about a few hundred dollars.

Note, this is just the consultation fee, meaning you spend a few hundred bucks just to see a doctor.

After you ask about your situation and decide to undergo treatment, you are charged separately based on the different drugs and instruments used. A most ordinary CT scan without any insurance coverage requires about 6,000-8,000 dollars.

When you spend this money to get the scan done and then take the scan to see the doctor, you have to spend a few hundred bucks more in consultation fees.

And when the doctor formulates the next treatment plan based on the content of the scan, you still need to pay for each category.

For example, if you have a fracture and need treatment, besides paying for materials, you also have to pay the doctor who treats you, pay extra for every follow-up visit, and when the wound heals and it's confirmed you can remove the splint, you have to pay consultation and operation fees again.

The whole process doesn't sound particularly outrageous, but the problem is that if the money to be paid for each link is thousands of dollars, then for a simple fracture treatment, the medical bill you receive will be about 60,000 to 80,000 dollars.

This is just the cost required for ordinary medical care; if it's an emergency, this cost will double by about 5 to 8 times.

Some people will definitely think that if it's so outrageous, wouldn't Americans all die of illness at home?

But in reality, they raise the bill costs to this level precisely to force people to buy insurance.

Taking university insurance in the US as an example, after purchasing various comprehensive insurance plans, the bill will shrink to about one-twentieth. If you count the cost of insurance, the required payment is about 5% to 10% of the medical bill.

Although spending thousands of dollars for a fracture is also quite outrageous, if it's just ordinary inflammation or a cold, the cost to be paid is within the affordable range of ordinary people.

But this is only an ideal situation. In most cases, ordinary people are unable to afford very comprehensive insurance, and there are many very expensive instruments that are not covered by any insurance company. You can only pray that you don't get a disease related to this instrument, otherwise, the bill will be very scary.

The most outrageous thing is that many instruments and drugs have designated hospitals. Suppose you bought Package A, and the hospital you visited for the first time uses Instrument B. Well, sorry, the instrument cost is not covered.

If you want to cover the instrument cost, you have to go to a hospital that has Instrument A, but the first consultation fee is not covered.

After arriving at the hospital with Instrument A, there are too many people using this instrument and you need to queue, so you can only wait. If you don't want to wait, you have to go to a hospital in another state that has this instrument.

But using this instrument in another state, the cost is also not covered.

Instruments and such are fine, the key is there are also drugs. If you bought insurance from a certain company, you can only use drugs of certain brands. If there are no such drugs, you go to another state to buy them, but self-pay is not covered.

I believe many people have already seen the trick in this. If you choose one state out of five to sell a certain type of drug, and the other four states don't sell it, and this drug is relatively common and has a high profit margin, then residents of the other four states can only come to this state to buy this drug.

The insurance bought by residents of the other four states covers this drug, but it's not available in their own state, so it can't be covered. The only state that has this drug doesn't include it in any insurance contract, so it still can't be covered.

The insurance companies ruling these five states make money just by standing there.

This is just the simplest means of shifting things around. Almost every sentence in those complex insurance contracts is a trap. When it really comes to seeing a doctor, almost no American can achieve perfect coverage. Most people just cover some and give up some, as long as they can get the insurance money back.

Even so, there are about one-third of Americans who can't even earn back the insurance premiums they paid, basically equivalent to never having successfully claimed coverage once.

Some people might also say, if this insurance is so pit-like, why buy it?

But if you don't buy it, hospitals have already raised bills to an outrageous astronomical figure because of their cooperation with insurance companies, which is what was said before: a small illness can easily cost tens of thousands, which no one can afford.

The US medical system is a capitalized "choose the lesser of two evils." Buying it doesn't mean it will be covered, not buying it means you can't afford to be sick, so you can only spend the insurance money to take a gamble.

Siltek Medical Insurance Company obviously hasn't done less of this kind of thing. Just by searching randomly on the internet, Bruce found five or six hundred complaints related to insurance claims in this city, and all of them happened within this year.

After screening, Bruce found about forty or fifty families who had received no compensation at all and had fallen in class because of it, most of which also involved human lives.

Generally speaking, hospitals treat first and collect money later, sending the bill after the treatment. But the first course of treatment is also called treatment, but people who have encountered monster events simply cannot be cured in one or two courses.

Without subsequent insurance money, it is impossible to afford the cost of the first course of treatment, let alone subsequent treatment, so they can only be kicked out of the hospital to live or die.

The home of Ms. Theresa, whom Bruce just visited, was in such a situation. Her daughter encountered a monster event and suffered large-area burns all over her body, but was refused compensation by the insurance company because the insurance situation was not clearly defined.

The reason for the refusal was roughly that although she did indeed encounter a monster event, her burns had nothing to do with the monster event; it was because someone accidentally ignited the curtains while running away, and Ms. Theresa's daughter didn't run out in time, rather than being directly caused by the monster, so it was not covered.

That's right, in the insurance contracts of most states in the US, if there is an opportunity to avoid danger, not actively avoiding it in time is also not covered, and it is even possible to be sued for insurance fraud.

To treat her daughter, Ms. Theresa spent all the family's savings and also divorced her husband. Her life plummeted, so she could only move from the middle-class community to the slums.

There were about sixty victims in situations like Ms. Theresa's this year, and all of them silently accepted it.

It's not that they wanted to accept it, the key is that this situation is too common; basically, you can't find a person in the entire United States who hasn't experienced this kind of thing.

During the Cat Getan renovation project, in order to improve people's livelihood, Bruce also wanted to introduce better insurance services to Cat Getan, but the whole process was a mess, and the result was a disaster.

If you say it was introduced, it was indeed introduced, but it only improved the situation where no insurance company dared to insure Cat Getan people before. As for the discounts on packages and terms, there were none at all.

Even a super billionaire like Bruce, with the most professional legal team, found it difficult to take advantage when arguing with the legal representatives of medical insurance companies. At most, it was a draw, and he had to make concessions where he had to.

After all, after the decline of US manufacturing, the status of manufacturing and industrial giants like Wei En Enterprises gradually slipped. Even if Wei En Enterprises was still a military-industrial complex, there was almost no military industry left, so there was no talk of any complex.

Even Bruce Wei En found it difficult to scrape meat from the mouths of medical insurance giants, let alone ordinary people.

This group of people wanted to accept it, but Bruce didn't intend to let them accept it. Although the number of people wasn't large, the situations they encountered were all extreme. Many people were facing the death of their closest loved ones, and not much time had passed since the events, so those extreme emotions hadn't been completely digested.

Bruce and the Pale Face wore expensive suits, wore famous watches and designer jewelry, and went from door to door, various sarcasms and mockery, pulling hatred to the max.

And Bruce intentionally or unintentionally revealed the news that Old Siltek would participate in a news interview, and indicated that besides Old Siltek, there would also be well-known hosts and experts in the medical insurance industry, as well as many sharp-tongued reporters.

After completing his task, Bruce parked the luxury car back in its original position, drove the original pickup truck, came to the park next to the news broadcast center, and found a quiet place to park the car.

He walked around the area and found that many reporters were already staking out. They parked their cars near the TV broadcast center, opened half the car window, and scanned the passing pedestrians with eyes as sharp as falcons.

Bruce and the Pale Face, two people dressed quite high-class, immediately attracted their attention.

Bruce and the Pale Face walked into a coffee shop. Almost immediately, a man wearing a hood walked out of a black car parked on the side of the road, holding a square microphone in his hand.

A woman in professional attire also walked out of the street opposite him. The two exchanged glances and looked at Bruce and the Pale Face standing at the front desk of the coffee shop.

Bruce ordered two cups of coffee and found a seat by the window, afraid that others wouldn't see him. Not long after, a woman in professional attire walked over with a smile and said, "Good afternoon, are you staff from the TV broadcast center?"

Bruce looked at the woman, deliberately letting his gaze linger on her exquisite makeup for two seconds, and then said very enthusiastically, "No, ma'am, we are staff from the Public Relations Department of Siltek Medical Insurance Company..."

A glimmer of light immediately flashed in the woman's eyes. She said, "I am a host from the TV station. The seats by the window are full. Can I share a table with you?"

"Of course, this afternoon is even better because of a beautiful lady like you," Bruce said, resting his hands on the table and staring at the woman's face without blinking.

The woman sat down, smiled at the staff member who delivered the coffee, and then turned her head and said, "Your boss has an interview tomorrow morning. He should be well-prepared, right? Actually, I haven't been transferred here for long and haven't seen such a big shot yet, so I'm inevitably a little nervous."

"Oh, I'm fine, ma'am. Our boss is a very approachable person. Today he even arranged for me to comfort some clients who failed to receive insurance compensation..."

The woman's eyes lit up and she said, "Comfort? How did you comfort them?"