I may not be a perfect person but at least I have never yelled at an employee in a store
I have a long story about controlling your consumer frustration.
When I was 19, back in 2004, I was in the navy, stationed at the naval airbase in Rota, Spain. I got leave to go home for the first time since bootcamp. I was going home for the first time in almost two years. I had a flight on Iberian airlines to Heathrow, and from there on Virgin to the US. Well… the Iberian flight landed late. Me and three other people ran to our connecting flight, which was leaving in 32 minutes, but it was never going to happen. If you know anything about Heathrow, you know that a connection break that narrow is impossible. So, I had to get another flight home.
Here’s where it gets rough. Iberian said it wasn’t their responsibility. They had no affiliation with Virgin airlines and wasn’t responsible for my connections. I missed my flight because of them and they didn’t care (or, rather, the company didn’t care and the employee had no means with which to help me). Virgin told me that missing my flight was also not their fault and I would simply have to buy another ticket on a later flight. So there I am, 19 years old, stranded in a foreign airport with $120 to my name, being told I need to buy a day-of ticket across the Atlantic (which cost more than I made in a month).
I cried in the bathroom, guys. I wandered around an airport that was the most sprawling, nonsensical spaghetti mess of old, new, clean, dirty, I had ever seen (there were whole terminals that looked like they had been just been abandoned in 1972. Like someone just said, “fuck it, we’re not going use this whole wing anymore”). At one point, I was looking at my ticket from the first Iberian flight and on the back I saw the various symbols of all the airlines who were together in some business cooperation, like they all dealt with one another. One of them was British Airways. Okay. Iberian said “get stuffed, you live in this airport now”, but maybe one of their business “partners” could help me. I was young and scared and stupid and my American brain said “I’ll try the British. I’ve seen British TV shows. We’re cousins, right? Oh, please, dear God!”
I was told that to talk to the British Airways people I had to “land”, as they call it, getting my passport stamped and go to the main front entrance where all the airlines desks are. My Iberian ticket didn’t give me permission to do this, but luckily the British security guy seemed to be about 146% done with life’s bullshit too that day and just waved me in. I saw the British airlines desk, I saw the guys sitting there doing some kind of paperwork, and I decided I was going to play it cool. I was going to be confident. They WERE going to help me get home because that was what they had to do (they didn’t have to), but I wasn’t going to bomb this guy with my crisis. I wasn’t going to make my terrible problem HIS problem. So I rolled up, smiling, and told him that my Iberian flight landed late and my connection was “a whole 35 minutes, but I guess that’s not enough?” and I let HIM tell me how that was way too short and oh my God you were never going to make that connection, ma’am, no way at all…and I’m sorry there’s no flight to Ronald Reagan, but we have one leaving for Dulles in 3 hours. Will that do?
Will that do? WILL THAT DO?! I wanted to marry that scruffy flush-cheeked dude and his accent. I laughed about the connection, and laughed harder when HE started bitching about Iberian and how they never helped anyone ever, and so on, until I found myself with a business class ticket to the US for no extra money after 9 hours–9 HOURS!!–wandering around an airport trying to figure out how I was going to get out of there without getting into massive trouble with my squadron.
Now, I can’t be 100% sure, but I’m very confident in saying that if I had come up to that guy yelling and freaking out and saying how he HAD to do this and that, and I DEMAND this and that, I probably would have gotten nothing. He would have shut down, rambled off whatever rejections he could to get rid of me as fast as he could, and I would have had no choice but to contact the US embassy and beg a place on a military flight or whatever else…which would have definitely gotten back to my CO and gotten me in massive trouble.
Be calm. Be kind. No one wants to help an asshole.
This.
99% of the time the person customers choose to yell at has nothing to do with their issue and everything to do with the solution. Just don’t be an asshole.
Hot take: There are legitimate criticisms that can be made about Fortnite’s pay to win/manipulative microtransaction style system but those are the fault of the game producers and not the people who play it and if you actively bully and mock children for enjoying something you’re pretty much just an asshole.
A lil bit of memeing, lmao’ing and inevitable second hand embarrassment=/=actually mercilessly mocking and bullying actual children for falling bait, hook, and sinker into a game made to attract young people.
I’m all for pyrocynical level jokes about how the game inept, annoying, a cash grab and a fade that will be forgotten the next year, but like, leave children alone for real, yeah it’s annoying and cringy, but goddamn let the kids actually enjoy themselves and probably help them understand they should enjoy the game for what it is and not spend mountains of money into it.
DO THAT CHALLENGE.
Exactly. Like I’m all for calling out stupid bullshit like YouTubers offering their gullible followers vbucks for likes and subs and that shit but I’ve seen people literally attack little ass kids or talk about how much they “hate this generation“ because they saw an eight-year-old flossing. Lighten the fuck up. I bet you remember vividly the first time in adult made you feel shitty for the things you enjoyed, Pokémon, Animal Crossing, whatever. Remember how crap that was? Tell me how you’re any better than annoying ass boomers who constantly talk shit about “millennials” and shit on their hobbies? Children have just a few years to actually enjoy life before they get crushed with a million responsibilities. Don’t suck all the enjoyment out of something harmless just because you’re a bitter old shit.
Hot take: There are legitimate criticisms that can be made about Fortnite’s pay to win/manipulative microtransaction style system but those are the fault of the game producers and not the people who play it and if you actively bully and mock children for enjoying something you’re pretty much just an asshole.
A lil bit of memeing, lmao’ing and inevitable second hand embarrassment=/=actually mercilessly mocking and bullying actual children for falling bait, hook, and sinker into a game made to attract young people.
I’m all for pyrocynical level jokes about how the game inept, annoying, a cash grab and a fade that will be forgotten the next year, but like, leave children alone for real, yeah it’s annoying and cringy, but goddamn let the kids actually enjoy themselves and probably help them understand they should enjoy the game for what it is and not spend mountains of money into it.
DO THAT CHALLENGE.
Exactly. Like I’m all for calling out stupid bullshit like YouTubers offering their gullible followers vbucks for likes and subs and that shit but I’ve seen people literally attack little ass kids or talk about how much they “hate this generation“ because they saw an eight-year-old flossing. Lighten the fuck up. I bet you remember vividly the first time in adult made you feel shitty for the things you enjoyed, Pokémon, Animal Crossing, whatever. Remember how crap that was? Tell me how you’re any better than annoying ass boomers who constantly talk shit about “millennials” and shit on their hobbies? Children have just a few years to actually enjoy life before they get crushed with a million responsibilities. Don’t suck all the enjoyment out of something harmless just because you’re a bitter old shit.
If you want to be a biologist, then I have the first lesson for you right here – there is NO way a gene screening can predict your educational success. Even if you have a chromosomal disorder like Down’s syndrome that tends to be linked to intellectual disability, that’s not a sure-fire prediction.
What are your life circumstances? Do you have any neuropsychological disorders or mental illnesses (and no, last I heard none of those had been directly linked to any particular genes to an extent that’d let one screen for them – there’s no “ADHD gene”) that might make things harder for you? Can your family afford to support you financially so you won’t have to worry as much about debt or work? Do you have any personality traits or knacks that could help you in academia – are you curious, stubborn, disciplined, creative, competitive? Do you have a good memory? Can you read quickly, or write well? Are you good at networking and organizing?
All those things say a LOT more about your likelihood of succeeding in higher education than a gene scan ever could.
I would be JUST as dubious over somebody deciding they can’t be a biologist from a look at their IQ test, honestly. This is both because low IQ isn’t a death sentence for your dreams, and because the ability for “educational achievement” isn’t a stable trait.
We have long assumed that raw intelligence is what makes someone able to go to college. A baby would be born with Down’s syndrome and the doctor would blithely say, “This child will never succeed in school or live very long.” And guess what? That was because the baby wasn’t likely to be GIVEN adequate schooling and medical care! The same way the life expectancy of people with Down’s syndrome increased dramatically over the last century with better medical care, in the last few decades people with developmental disabilities HAVE started to get adequate educations, and HAVE started to get college degrees and professional careers!
So this is me giving that genetic test the greatest degree of latitude possible, giving it the very big benefit of the doubt as to whether it’s actually detecting a real intellectual disability. I’m not a geneticist; maybe it’s actually possible. In which case, the “educational attainment” scores of people with certain genes has been so low for so long because schools made a POINT of detecting them as early as possible and kicking them OUT of the educational system or warehousing them in “schools” that taught them nothing! For hundreds of years!
(deep breath)
But I actually deeply doubt that the test is picking up something real, because the best way to find out if someone’s going to struggle in higher education is to see how they’re doing in education now. In a good system, someone with intellectual or developmental disabilities should already have been noticed, identified, and given supports. In a crappy system, they or their teachers might notice things that make them a “bad student” in some particular way–bad grades, trouble paying attention in class, greater difficulty in some areas than others, frustration or anger problems, trouble socializing. Those would be the first sign of trouble, not a genetic test in someone old enough to write in a mature fashion about “plugging genetic data” into a DNA database and their passion to become a biologist.
Anon, if you’re worried about achieving your dreams, my best advice is to reach out to people–your teachers, your school’s counsellors, science mentoring groups, science bloggers, scientists you admire, or local professional scientific associations–and say, “I want to become a biologist; what help or advice can you give me for difficulties I might run into?” Even/especially if you’re having trouble already. If you’re at all worried you might struggle, then you need help figuring out how to succeed in school and how to find a job in your field. That comes from things like disability assessments, academic coaching or tutoring, camps, internships, mentors, peers, and colleagues.
So don’t just keep pursuing your dream, anon. Go even harder. If you want to be a scientist–especially a researcher–you’re going to need to learn how to bounce back from setbacks and disappointments. Almost every scientist I know has had to deal with rejected grant applications and research papers. Government priorities change and suddenly you have to pivot your entire career to stay in the business. And for a lot of young scientists, it’s a difficult dance to find good paying work in the area you want. You’re going to have to learn how to fight even when the going is tough; why not start now?
I’m not precisely a scientist (I’m a mental health therapist), but I flunked a lot of classes in university before my ADHD was diagnosed, and every time I got back marks with a D among them, I had to ask myself, “How bad do I want this? Do I want to keep going even if it’s this hard?” As it turned out, the answer kept being “yes”, so I kept going, and after I got my diagnosis my school did everything they could to keep me from flunking out, so I survived and graduated.
And it has been, let me tell you, EXTREMELY useful experience to have under my belt as I grow into An Old and start mentoring and counselling struggling students. Which might be something that you, as a scientist, will someday do.
Yo, I’m a biologist, they gave me the PhD and everything, and that “Promethease” thing sounds like 100% unadulterated bullshit. There is NO genetic test that can predict how you, an individual, will succeed academically. There just isn’t.
Feel free to ignore the fuck out of it and take all the excellent advice above instead.
Also, OP, consider how Promethease got those results. Dig into the methodology. I strongly suspect that you’ll find that this is a sampling size thing or a race or class thing or all of the above, and really means people with your genes are underrepresented either in education or in the pool of people sharing their DNA with 23andme or ancestry.com. Or both. “Discriminated against” is not the same thing as “lacks potential or ability,” and that’s an important thing to learn if you want a STEM career. And so is identifying bad science or bad science reporting/education when you see it.
(And please use Promethease with caution. It’s not all bullshit, but it’s not a qualified genetic counselor either.)
Yeah, another biologist here: Dear Anon, don’t give up based on this, go forth study biology, and you’ll find out exactly how much nonsense that is.
I’m with @vassraptor here, any gene variant or collection of them that apparently means “poor academic achievement” I see two possibilities there.
1: The gene/s is linked to a specific mental impairment, in which case it would be labelled as such rather than just “poor academic prospects”.
2: The gene/s are linked with ethnic groups that are typically denied access to educational resources, and any correlation with poor academic achievement is just a product of social factors.
Like, legit, if you ignore other factors you can probably correlate genes for higher skin melanin with lower academic achievement, not because black people are inherently stupid but just because there’s a load of places where they are denied access to quality education. If you predominantly sample from those places as well it will skew results further.
Lack of attainment does not equal lack of ability, and correlation does not equal causation.
Other things to consider are that genes do not exist in a vacuum, they interact in a million ways with each other. I mean if you’ve got two damaged copies of the CFTR gene you’re definitely going to have Cystic-Fibrosis, but anything as nebulous as “academic achievement” or “intelligence”? Nah.
I have ADHD, and as pointed out there is no “ADHD gene”, what there is is a whole collection of genes associated with ADHD. Each of which having multiple variants (alleles), some of which contribute to ADHD and some of which don’t. You don’t have ADHD by having one gene that makes you ADHD, you have ADHD by having enough of these pro-ADHD alleles in the right combinations to cause ADHD. Neither of my parents have ADHD but I can see some of the traits in both of them, they clearly both have quite the collection of alleles that can lead to ADHD but below the disabling threshold.
Why do I mention this? Because these genes can, in moderation, really be beneficial to say academia, however above a certain threshold they become a disadvantage. Depending on how you sampled though you could correlate many of these alleles either with enhanced achievement or academic failure and even if you sampled perfectly, the average of them does not paint the full picture.
Tl;dr: Don’t let some Highly Questionable voodoo-science tell you you’re doomed before you start.
Oh also I just had a look at what they’re using to calculate this
I think you’re giving that data vastly, vastly more weight than it ought to have. Scores can only predict “in a group of a thousand people with this trait, how many of them will accomplish this thing?” I think often we’re not even competent enough yet to predict that with any confidence. I’m not sure this should have much more weight than a horoscope.
If you already know how you do in school, that’s vastly more information than you can get from your genetic data. You should basically not even consider your genetic data on any subject where the effects are also things you can directly observe. You know your grades and your ability-to-learn-stuff and your ambition-to-learn-stuff; Promethease adds, as far as I can tell, literally no information to that.
Please don’t sabotage yourself or abandon things you care about because of the output of a fairly inaccurate online test that even at its best would be screened off by ‘how do you do in class?’.
Since then, the SSGAC has uncovered more than 1,000 genetic variations associated with years of schooling. Benjamin’s team has gone out of its way to make it clear that each one exerts only a teeny tiny bit of influence—three additional weeks of education, max—and that even collectively, the variants are not powerful enough to predict an individual’s academic achievement.
So, yeah, don’t sweat it.
@biologyweeps you should make some interesting screeching noises upon reading this.
If you want to be a biologist, then I have the first lesson for you right here – there is NO way a gene screening can predict your educational success. Even if you have a chromosomal disorder like Down’s syndrome that tends to be linked to intellectual disability, that’s not a sure-fire prediction.
What are your life circumstances? Do you have any neuropsychological disorders or mental illnesses (and no, last I heard none of those had been directly linked to any particular genes to an extent that’d let one screen for them – there’s no “ADHD gene”) that might make things harder for you? Can your family afford to support you financially so you won’t have to worry as much about debt or work? Do you have any personality traits or knacks that could help you in academia – are you curious, stubborn, disciplined, creative, competitive? Do you have a good memory? Can you read quickly, or write well? Are you good at networking and organizing?
All those things say a LOT more about your likelihood of succeeding in higher education than a gene scan ever could.
I would be JUST as dubious over somebody deciding they can’t be a biologist from a look at their IQ test, honestly. This is both because low IQ isn’t a death sentence for your dreams, and because the ability for “educational achievement” isn’t a stable trait.
We have long assumed that raw intelligence is what makes someone able to go to college. A baby would be born with Down’s syndrome and the doctor would blithely say, “This child will never succeed in school or live very long.” And guess what? That was because the baby wasn’t likely to be GIVEN adequate schooling and medical care! The same way the life expectancy of people with Down’s syndrome increased dramatically over the last century with better medical care, in the last few decades people with developmental disabilities HAVE started to get adequate educations, and HAVE started to get college degrees and professional careers!
So this is me giving that genetic test the greatest degree of latitude possible, giving it the very big benefit of the doubt as to whether it’s actually detecting a real intellectual disability. I’m not a geneticist; maybe it’s actually possible. In which case, the “educational attainment” scores of people with certain genes has been so low for so long because schools made a POINT of detecting them as early as possible and kicking them OUT of the educational system or warehousing them in “schools” that taught them nothing! For hundreds of years!
(deep breath)
But I actually deeply doubt that the test is picking up something real, because the best way to find out if someone’s going to struggle in higher education is to see how they’re doing in education now. In a good system, someone with intellectual or developmental disabilities should already have been noticed, identified, and given supports. In a crappy system, they or their teachers might notice things that make them a “bad student” in some particular way–bad grades, trouble paying attention in class, greater difficulty in some areas than others, frustration or anger problems, trouble socializing. Those would be the first sign of trouble, not a genetic test in someone old enough to write in a mature fashion about “plugging genetic data” into a DNA database and their passion to become a biologist.
Anon, if you’re worried about achieving your dreams, my best advice is to reach out to people–your teachers, your school’s counsellors, science mentoring groups, science bloggers, scientists you admire, or local professional scientific associations–and say, “I want to become a biologist; what help or advice can you give me for difficulties I might run into?” Even/especially if you’re having trouble already. If you’re at all worried you might struggle, then you need help figuring out how to succeed in school and how to find a job in your field. That comes from things like disability assessments, academic coaching or tutoring, camps, internships, mentors, peers, and colleagues.
So don’t just keep pursuing your dream, anon. Go even harder. If you want to be a scientist–especially a researcher–you’re going to need to learn how to bounce back from setbacks and disappointments. Almost every scientist I know has had to deal with rejected grant applications and research papers. Government priorities change and suddenly you have to pivot your entire career to stay in the business. And for a lot of young scientists, it’s a difficult dance to find good paying work in the area you want. You’re going to have to learn how to fight even when the going is tough; why not start now?
I’m not precisely a scientist (I’m a mental health therapist), but I flunked a lot of classes in university before my ADHD was diagnosed, and every time I got back marks with a D among them, I had to ask myself, “How bad do I want this? Do I want to keep going even if it’s this hard?” As it turned out, the answer kept being “yes”, so I kept going, and after I got my diagnosis my school did everything they could to keep me from flunking out, so I survived and graduated.
And it has been, let me tell you, EXTREMELY useful experience to have under my belt as I grow into An Old and start mentoring and counselling struggling students. Which might be something that you, as a scientist, will someday do.
Yo, I’m a biologist, they gave me the PhD and everything, and that “Promethease” thing sounds like 100% unadulterated bullshit. There is NO genetic test that can predict how you, an individual, will succeed academically. There just isn’t.
Feel free to ignore the fuck out of it and take all the excellent advice above instead.
Also, OP, consider how Promethease got those results. Dig into the methodology. I strongly suspect that you’ll find that this is a sampling size thing or a race or class thing or all of the above, and really means people with your genes are underrepresented either in education or in the pool of people sharing their DNA with 23andme or ancestry.com. Or both. “Discriminated against” is not the same thing as “lacks potential or ability,” and that’s an important thing to learn if you want a STEM career. And so is identifying bad science or bad science reporting/education when you see it.
(And please use Promethease with caution. It’s not all bullshit, but it’s not a qualified genetic counselor either.)
Yeah, another biologist here: Dear Anon, don’t give up based on this, go forth study biology, and you’ll find out exactly how much nonsense that is.
I’m with @vassraptor here, any gene variant or collection of them that apparently means “poor academic achievement” I see two possibilities there.
1: The gene/s is linked to a specific mental impairment, in which case it would be labelled as such rather than just “poor academic prospects”.
2: The gene/s are linked with ethnic groups that are typically denied access to educational resources, and any correlation with poor academic achievement is just a product of social factors.
Like, legit, if you ignore other factors you can probably correlate genes for higher skin melanin with lower academic achievement, not because black people are inherently stupid but just because there’s a load of places where they are denied access to quality education. If you predominantly sample from those places as well it will skew results further.
Lack of attainment does not equal lack of ability, and correlation does not equal causation.
Other things to consider are that genes do not exist in a vacuum, they interact in a million ways with each other. I mean if you’ve got two damaged copies of the CFTR gene you’re definitely going to have Cystic-Fibrosis, but anything as nebulous as “academic achievement” or “intelligence”? Nah.
I have ADHD, and as pointed out there is no “ADHD gene”, what there is is a whole collection of genes associated with ADHD. Each of which having multiple variants (alleles), some of which contribute to ADHD and some of which don’t. You don’t have ADHD by having one gene that makes you ADHD, you have ADHD by having enough of these pro-ADHD alleles in the right combinations to cause ADHD. Neither of my parents have ADHD but I can see some of the traits in both of them, they clearly both have quite the collection of alleles that can lead to ADHD but below the disabling threshold.
Why do I mention this? Because these genes can, in moderation, really be beneficial to say academia, however above a certain threshold they become a disadvantage. Depending on how you sampled though you could correlate many of these alleles either with enhanced achievement or academic failure and even if you sampled perfectly, the average of them does not paint the full picture.
Tl;dr: Don’t let some Highly Questionable voodoo-science tell you you’re doomed before you start.
Oh also I just had a look at what they’re using to calculate this
I think you’re giving that data vastly, vastly more weight than it ought to have. Scores can only predict “in a group of a thousand people with this trait, how many of them will accomplish this thing?” I think often we’re not even competent enough yet to predict that with any confidence. I’m not sure this should have much more weight than a horoscope.
If you already know how you do in school, that’s vastly more information than you can get from your genetic data. You should basically not even consider your genetic data on any subject where the effects are also things you can directly observe. You know your grades and your ability-to-learn-stuff and your ambition-to-learn-stuff; Promethease adds, as far as I can tell, literally no information to that.
Please don’t sabotage yourself or abandon things you care about because of the output of a fairly inaccurate online test that even at its best would be screened off by ‘how do you do in class?’.
Since then, the SSGAC has uncovered more than 1,000 genetic variations associated with years of schooling. Benjamin’s team has gone out of its way to make it clear that each one exerts only a teeny tiny bit of influence—three additional weeks of education, max—and that even collectively, the variants are not powerful enough to predict an individual’s academic achievement.
So, yeah, don’t sweat it.
@biologyweeps you should make some interesting screeching noises upon reading this.
don’t just pay it. do not automatically pay the hospital bill when you receive it. call your health insurance provider and POLITELY say, “excuse me, i just received a bill for $1200 for my hospital visit/ER visit/etc., is that the correct amount i’m supposed to pay?” because hospitals bill you before your health insurance and they will take your money no matter how the amount due may change based on your health insurance looking at it. 90% of the time, if your health insurance is in any way involved in the payment of that bill, you do not have to pay as much as the hospital is billing you for. call your health insurance provider first, and POLITELY request clarification, always remember that the person you are talking to is human and this is just their job, and then you will very likely find out you actually only owe $500.
don’t shout at anyone about it, don’t get mad, just understand that this is The Way Things Are right now and call your health insurance provider before paying the bill your hospital just sent you. there’s a chance the hospital bill might be correct, true, but call your health insurance provider.
THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT. after my car accident last year the hospital billed me ~$8000. They sent me letters asking me to pay, and I called them back saying my insurance was processing the claim. This is also what I told the collection agency when they kept calling me about the $1000 emergency room fee (billed separately from the hospital fee, mind you). Once everything got straightened out, all I was actually liable for was my $200 emergency copay.
!!!!!!! things my ass didn’t know !!!!!!!!
Yes this is a life lesson my adulting ass didn’t know I needed and I’m out 80 bucks for an anti-nausea pill. 😒😒😒😒😒
Reblogging for American friends.
Also, it is important [for people receiving medical care in the USA] to carefully read all of the items on the medical bill and look for errors and overcharges. I know that the normal feelings of avoidance and dread can make it hard to look at scary hospital bills, and that’s okay! But as the OP mentions, private orgs like hospitals don’t monitor overpayment of bills – they are motivated to charge you extra – and it is basically impossible to get your money back. Read the bill carefully and make sure that the charges are correct, using the links below for help if you need. If they haven’t sent you an itemized list, you can ask for one. Sometimes you will be charged extra for items or treatment you didn’t receive. Most people don’t know that you can dispute medical bills! But in 2009, Consumer Reports stated that 8 out of 10 medical bills scrutinized by a watchdog had errors, and generally you are not obligated to pay for someone else’s error.
You may be charged for using medication that you actually brought into the hospital with you – that’s easy to dispute! You may be charged for the consumables used during your stay such as sheets, gloves, gowns, etc – the hospital should actually cover that under its running budget. You may be charged for a brand name drug if the generic was available for cheaper – the links below explain how and when you can dispute this. You may be charged a surprisingly expensive “oral administration fee” (where a nurse puts pills for you to take in a little clean paper cup and then hands it to you) but that’s worth disputing if you were actually able to take the pill out of a bottle and put it in your own mouth. And so on.
don’t just pay it. do not automatically pay the hospital bill when you receive it. call your health insurance provider and POLITELY say, “excuse me, i just received a bill for $1200 for my hospital visit/ER visit/etc., is that the correct amount i’m supposed to pay?” because hospitals bill you before your health insurance and they will take your money no matter how the amount due may change based on your health insurance looking at it. 90% of the time, if your health insurance is in any way involved in the payment of that bill, you do not have to pay as much as the hospital is billing you for. call your health insurance provider first, and POLITELY request clarification, always remember that the person you are talking to is human and this is just their job, and then you will very likely find out you actually only owe $500.
don’t shout at anyone about it, don’t get mad, just understand that this is The Way Things Are right now and call your health insurance provider before paying the bill your hospital just sent you. there’s a chance the hospital bill might be correct, true, but call your health insurance provider.
THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT. after my car accident last year the hospital billed me ~$8000. They sent me letters asking me to pay, and I called them back saying my insurance was processing the claim. This is also what I told the collection agency when they kept calling me about the $1000 emergency room fee (billed separately from the hospital fee, mind you). Once everything got straightened out, all I was actually liable for was my $200 emergency copay.
!!!!!!! things my ass didn’t know !!!!!!!!
Yes this is a life lesson my adulting ass didn’t know I needed and I’m out 80 bucks for an anti-nausea pill. 😒😒😒😒😒
Reblogging for American friends.
Also, it is important [for people receiving medical care in the USA] to carefully read all of the items on the medical bill and look for errors and overcharges. I know that the normal feelings of avoidance and dread can make it hard to look at scary hospital bills, and that’s okay! But as the OP mentions, private orgs like hospitals don’t monitor overpayment of bills – they are motivated to charge you extra – and it is basically impossible to get your money back. Read the bill carefully and make sure that the charges are correct, using the links below for help if you need. If they haven’t sent you an itemized list, you can ask for one. Sometimes you will be charged extra for items or treatment you didn’t receive. Most people don’t know that you can dispute medical bills! But in 2009, Consumer Reports stated that 8 out of 10 medical bills scrutinized by a watchdog had errors, and generally you are not obligated to pay for someone else’s error.
You may be charged for using medication that you actually brought into the hospital with you – that’s easy to dispute! You may be charged for the consumables used during your stay such as sheets, gloves, gowns, etc – the hospital should actually cover that under its running budget. You may be charged for a brand name drug if the generic was available for cheaper – the links below explain how and when you can dispute this. You may be charged a surprisingly expensive “oral administration fee” (where a nurse puts pills for you to take in a little clean paper cup and then hands it to you) but that’s worth disputing if you were actually able to take the pill out of a bottle and put it in your own mouth. And so on.
I’m going to give you the best piece of Adult Life Is Hard advice I’ve ever learned:
Talk to people when things go to shit.
I don’t just mean get it off your chest, although that’s good. I mean: Something’s wrong with your paycheck/you lost your job/you had unexpected emergency car repairs and now you’re broke so your credit card payment is late. Like, not just 15 days late. We’re talking, shit got crazy and now you’re 90 days late with compounded interest and late fees and the Minimum Payment Due is, like, $390, and you’ve got about $3.90 in your bank account. Call the credit card company.
I know it’s scary. I know you feel like you’re going to get in trouble, like you’re gong to get yelled at or scolded for not having your life together. But the credit card company isn’t your parents; they’re just interested in getting money from you. And you can’t squeeze blood from a stone or money from someone who doesn’t have any. So what you do is you call them. You explain you’re experiencing temporary financial hardships, and you’re currently unable to bring your account up to date, but you don’t want to just let it get worse. Can you maybe talk to someone about a payment plan so you can work something out? Nine times out of ten you’ll be able to negotiate something so that at least it’s not just taking a constant, giant shit on your credit score.
– Can’t pay your power bill? Call the power company.
– Can’t pay your full rent? Talk to your landlord.
– Had to go to the hospital without insurance and have giant medical bills looming in your place? Call the hospital and ask if they have someone who helps people with financial hardships. Many do.
– Got super sick and missed half a semester of class because flu/pneumonia/auto-immune problems/depressive episode? Talk to your professor. If that doesn’t help, talk to your advisor.
You may not be able to fix everything, but you’ll likely be able to make improvements. At the very least, it’s possible that they have a list of people you can contact to help you with things. (Also, don’t be afraid to google things like, “I can’t pay my power bill [state you live in]” because you’d be surprised at what turns up on Google!) But the thing is, people in these positions gain nothing if you fail. There’s no emotional satisfaction for them if your attempts at having your life together completely bite the dust. In fact, they stand to benefit if things work out for you! And chances are, they’ll be completely happy to take $20 a month from you over getting $0 a month from you, your account will be considered current because you’ve talked to them and made an agreement, you won’t get reported to a collections agency, and your credit score won’t completely tank.
Here’s some helpful tips to keep in mind:
1. Be polite. Don’t demand things; request them. Let me tell you about how customer service people hold your life in their hands and how many extra miles they’ll go for someone who is nice to them.
2. Stick to the facts, and keep them minimal unless asked for them. Chances are they’re not really interested in the details. “We had several family emergencies in a row, and now I’m having trouble making the payments” is better than “Well, two months ago my husband wrecked his bike, and then he had a reaction to the muscle relaxer they gave him, and then our dog swallowed a shoestring and we had to take him to the emergency clinic, and just last week MY car broke down, and now my account’s in the negatives and I don’t know how I’m gonna get it back out.” The person you’re talking to is aware shit happens to everyone; they don’t need the details to prove you’re somehow “worthy” of being helped. They may ask you for details at a certain point if they have to fill out any kind of request form, but let them do that.
3. Ask questions. “Is there anything we can do about X?” “Would it be possible to move my payment date to Y day instead so it’s not coming out of the same paycheck as my rent?” The answer may be “no.” That’s not a failure on your part. But a good customer service person may have an alternate solution.
Anyway! I hope that helps! Don’t just assume the answer is “no” before you’ve even begun. There is more help out there than you ever imagined.
ifesbob 