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When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

features.propublica.org

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Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#101

Post by journalctl »

wdn wrote: post #99
mars4rp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people in HN hate to talk about politics, but this is a political problem. People, please vote for medicare for all candidates, it might not affect your life now, but you don't know what the future holds for you.

Medicare for all is not a solution. The solution is make health insurance act like insurance. Health service provider needs to post their price like all services and products. They need to compete for our business.

Stop with this free market nonsense. This is healthcare, this is real lives. It’s not the same as choosing which burger joint to patronize, it’s life and death.

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#103

Post by ekianjo »

CharlesW wrote: post #33
ekianjo wrote: post #8

Out of topic but they seem to be using film photography to illustrate that article. Medium Format if not large. Very nice to see.

The photographer: https://www.edmundfountain.com/ABOUT/

Thanks for finding it out!

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#105

Post by fzeroracer »

wpdev_63 wrote: post #19

Obviously it goes without saying, shop around. Fly to another country if you have to. Canadian/Mexican doctors are more than happy to take cash and will often charge less than half what they charge here. Obviously there's medical problems you can't travel for but more often than not you can. Also note that hospitals is one of the very few businesses that you have to get permission from other hospitals to open. It's a…

Flying to another country implies you have the money to front a ticket to another country, that you've had the foresight to get a passport to go to mexico (I guarantee if you asked many poor people if they had one, they'd say no) and that you can actually take time off to do said medical tourism.

For a lot of people? A few days off means they lose their job and everything else. So they work through the pain or the illness until it becomes a severe medical emergency.

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#106

Post by ijiiijji1 »

I was in a coffee shop in Redding, CA that was apparently across the street from a bankruptcy court. Inside said cafe I was in line with a gal who had Stage IV cancer and was battling debt collectors to keep a car, house and the proverbial shirt on her back because the hospitals, doctors and insurance companies wanted everything while she was dying. This is what vampiric, grotesque, cannibalistic wealth transfer from the very poor to the very rich looks like in a third-world country without universal healthcare.

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#107

Post by fzeroracer »

wdn wrote: post #99
mars4rp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people in HN hate to talk about politics, but this is a political problem. People, please vote for medicare for all candidates, it might not affect your life now, but you don't know what the future holds for you.

Medicare for all is not a solution. The solution is make health insurance act like insurance. Health service provider needs to post their price like all services and products. They need to compete for our business.

Absolute nonsense.

What about the poor people who only have one hospital nearby that might not accept their insurance? What about people who go to a hospital that's in their network, but it turns out one of the many doctors was not? The people who have a time critical illness who can't afford to do the whole Free Market thing right after a accident?

How does anyone know that when they arrive somewhere the exact number of treatments needed to cure their illness? Are you expected to walk out of the hospital and refuse treatment because you've tabulated all of the prices for all of the services needed, then ask the ambulance to take you somewhere else?

The free market solution to health insurance simply does not work and it's insulting to see people suggest it time and time again. It ironically only works in heavily centralized areas where people actually have a choice, and not the more rural areas where hospitals are far more spaced out. There's far too many variables at play for even software engineers to manage unless you dedicate a significant amount of your free time to maintaining an excel spreadsheet of every hospital near you and their prices, formulate the exact cheapest plan on the fly according to your personal needs and can pull that out immediately when you have a medical emergency.

And that's assuming they didn't decide to go out of network the day before and delayed updating their database.

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#108

Post by Keverw »

wisty wrote: post #84
77pt77 wrote: post #34

> Judges don’t need a law degree in Kansas, or many other states, to preside over cases like these You can't make this up!

In the US you don't need a law degree to be a Supreme Court Judge. It's pretty common with elected positions - it's up to voters to make the decision.

I know sheriffs are elected too. I wonder if some rich person could just spend a bunch of money on ads with no qualifications when it comes to law enforcement and win in their county. Sounds like something a bored millionaire who retired early might do just for fun.

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#109

Post by AnthonyMouse »

journalctl wrote: post #101
wdn wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicare for all is not a solution. The solution is make health insurance act like insurance. Health service provider needs to post their price like all services and products. They need to compete for our business.

Stop with this free market nonsense. This is healthcare, this is real lives. It’s not the same as choosing which burger joint to patronize, it’s life and death.

> This is healthcare, this is real lives. It’s not the same as choosing which burger joint to patronize, it’s life and death.

We're not talking about the life and death part though. There are already laws requiring emergency rooms to see anyone who shows up. The question is how to pay for it, which is a matter of economics.

Medical providers not being able to provide the total cost for a non-emergency procedure up-front but then expecting people to pay whatever price they make up after the fact is practically fraud. The fact that it leads to outrageous costs is entirely predictable.

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#110

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

wdn wrote: post #99
mars4rp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people in HN hate to talk about politics, but this is a political problem. People, please vote for medicare for all candidates, it might not affect your life now, but you don't know what the future holds for you.

Medicare for all is not a solution. The solution is make health insurance act like insurance. Health service provider needs to post their price like all services and products. They need to compete for our business.

The nature of medical care doesn't allow for "users" to decide rationally. This is primarily due to the lack of domain knowledge concerning medicine. If you have a lump somewhere, and a doctor wants to X-Ray/Biopsy/Open You Up, you generally don't know which one is best. So prices don't help at all. And that's if by chance you are conscious and able to consent. When you are under, you don't get to consent to the actions of the surgeons ,anesthesiologists or whomever else they decide to bring in to assist.
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