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When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

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Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#181

Post by t0mas88 »

grumple wrote: post #117

> Hassenplug replied, “Well, this will end when one of us dies.” So he's going to continue to waste: 1) his own time. 2) the other guy's time. 3) a judge's time (and therefore taxpayer money). Aside from the moral implications of the method of debt collection itself (harassing the most helpless), this is basically a crime against everyone. Such a waste.

I'm genuinely surprised this guy hasn't been murdered yet.

If several defendants got to the point of committing suicide you would expect at some point one of them breaks and you end up with a mass shooting at the debt collectors office or a hospital or something? They have nowhere to go, totally hopeless situation, and there are a lot of them. So the probability of running into one with a serious mental health issue and a gun are non-zero.

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#182

Post by xhgdvjky »

hannasanarion wrote: post #122
xhgdvjky wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Medicare for all vs other reforms

Because for-profit healthcare is immoral, wasteful, and inevitably results in scenarios like the above. A Bismarck system (nonprofit govt sponsored insurance companies that all charge the same and are taken by all doctors) would be fine too, but that's not on the table in the US

I mostly agree with what you're saying. however I am concerned that sudden and large changes to critical components of America will 1) be hard to do right and 2) create a lot of dissent from people who think differently.

remember healthcare.gov? we were pretty glad we had other redundancies from day 1! it takes time to build a system and in my (granted unrelated) experience, big changes are best done in small steps

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#183

Post by RHSeeger »

w1nst0nsm1th wrote: post #154
RHSeeger wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point was that there are multiple different reforms that are important, and why health care over another. What if there is a candidate that is for health care reform, but against something else you consider important, but there's another candidate that's for the other reform, but against health care reform? Or there is a candidate that is for health care reform but also for other things your are strongly…

You speak, you debate, you argue and because of this, nothing gets done. Even for the most urgent issues like universal healthcare that have been literaly implemented by all western countries a long time ago as well as in most developing countries, you say : "But me..." Since you're not directly affected by the matter, you simply don't care. Even if you could be the next... You're part of the problem and nothing will…

I was merely debating the idea that "if you believe X is important, then you must vote for the person that supports X", because it's not as black and white as that. Like it or not, there are too many other factors that come into play. The only way "vote for X is you support X" is black and white is if each topic comes up for it's own vote. Even then, it's possible that the vote could be for a horrible way to support X.

> You're part of the problem and nothing will never get done in America because of people like you.

You don't know me and you don't know what I do / do not vote for. I recommend you keep your insults to yourself.

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#184

Post by xhgdvjky »

yladiz wrote: post #139
RHSeeger wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point was that there are multiple different reforms that are important, and why health care over another. What if there is a candidate that is for health care reform, but against something else you consider important, but there's another candidate that's for the other reform, but against health care reform? Or there is a candidate that is for health care reform but also for other things your are strongly…

Politics is all about compromises, so the answer to all of those questions is, “it depends”.

It's easy to forget the importance of compromise during a primary. Sometimes it feels like a positive feedback loop.

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#185

Post by MertsA »

fzeroracer wrote: post #107
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.

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 numbe…

Case and point, I have three reasonably sized hospitals within an hour of my house by car. All three of those hospitals made this list of top 50 most overpriced hospitals.

https://www.menshealth.com/health/a19543406/50-most-overpric...

My state has the highest rate of uninsured residents in the country and also one of the states that did not expand medicaid and take in federal funds to cover 90% of that. I paid for the best health insurance plan I could find on healthcare.gov and went with a doctor that was listed as a preferred provider with my insurance explicitly because my insurance provider claimed that any lab work, referrals, etc from that preferred provider would be covered and that they partnered with them to ensure that there wouldn't be any surprise out of network bills that weren't covered. The best health insurance plan I could buy left me out to dry for ~$600 in bills that were supposed to be covered 100% by my plan.

The notion of the magic of the free market driving down healthcare spending is nothing more than a libertarian fantasy. By any objective measure we spend far more than any other country on the planet for a given medical service. The fact that doctors and hospitals can't even tell you how much a given service will actually cost beforehand should be enough to tell you that the free market clearly isn't working here.

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#186

Post by _jal »

bhupy wrote: post #141
_jal wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. For that matter, some bigger corporations in the US choose to run their own. But it is just math - bigger pools have more resources over a larger population, and so are better positioned to survive shocks.

You’re not really refuting my point...by that logic the entire world should have one big shared risk pool, it’s just math! My point is that you can have adequate risk pools at a lower administrative level (the states), while not having to deal with having to build up political will among a large, heterogenous polity.

That's because I'm not arguing with you.

It is a complex topic, and the variety of "solutions" to the problem give us a lot to chew on.

I don't personally think that's optimal - there are a number of problems US states have that nation-states don't. (Deficit financing, exclusion and latitude to make its own rules being larger ones.) Also, one cost of running "laboratories of democracy" is that some of them fail, and some of them are run incompetently or corruptly or cruelly.

But if you like the idea of state level fixes, by all means pull for that. There is no single right answer.

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#187

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

kgantchev wrote: post #177
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. So when you have flu complications? Gall bladder issues? When you fell and twisted your ankle but don't need emergency services even though you can't really walk? When you need a stint put in? Or how about when you've been diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder? Sure, you technically have time to shop, but it seems to me that this is just an excuse and makes sick people suffer more.

In all of those cases you can: 1. Take 30 mins to find the most affordable option. 2. Ask for a lower price.

1. The most affordable option may be a complete waste of money, and you have no way to tell ahead of time. 2. Ditto.

You also could just live in a country with a good single payer health service, and know that you'll be treated without any bullshit.

The fact that anyone would seriously suggest shopping around for treatment, as if there is a convincing and credible reason why anyone should even have to consider this, is beyond astonishing to me.

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#188

Post by Betelgeuse90 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #135
pbourke wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I’d like to turn the question around and ask folks who believe that the healthcare problem is one of not enough market freedom: what’s an example of a cou…

The Netherlands and Switzerland both have functioning private insurance systems. There are also several functioning hybrid systems, like Germany and Israel. But the primary reason you don't see more successes is the lack of attempts. It's not as if there is a long list of countries with failed free market healthcare systems, either.

Here in Israel the majority of large health providers are essentially contractors, are largely indistinguishable and don't compete on price at all. Everybody pays a health tax as a percentage of their income. You don't have to pay anything aside from it, but if you want additional coverage like improved dental and discounts for non-essential medication, the best available coverage through the largest providers would cost you about $25 a month on top of the health tax.

I don't know in what meaningful sense Israel is a "hybrid" system, it functions almost exactly like a 'Medicare for all' type proposal would.

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#189

Post by Shacklz »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #135
pbourke wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I’d like to turn the question around and ask folks who believe that the healthcare problem is one of not enough market freedom: what’s an example of a cou…

The Netherlands and Switzerland both have functioning private insurance systems. There are also several functioning hybrid systems, like Germany and Israel. But the primary reason you don't see more successes is the lack of attempts. It's not as if there is a long list of countries with failed free market healthcare systems, either.

Swiss here: Our health insurance providers might be privatized, but they're strongly regulated and every Swiss citizen must have healthcare. They do function, but not because of their free market incentives (my opinion), but because of strong regulations. Also, if there was a vote to go from public -> private insurers again (historically, they were public once), I think they'd stay public, because we're not really seeing the benefits of their privatization, only the downsides (tons of ads, calls, arcane coverage rules etc.)

Re: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

#190

Post by black_puppydog »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #112
black_puppydog wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

actually, maybe read the linked paragraphs. from what I understand "many Americans" have basically no access to healthcare whatsoever (think homeless people for example) so your statement might not hold as tightly as you'd like...

Pretty much anyone homeless is going be eligible for Medicaid. Problem for them is navigating the system to get care.

The administrational/bureaucracy seems to generally be a problem with the US healthcare system, even for more affluent people. But for homeless people it needs to be close to zero. For moral reasons (it would and does effectively prevent them from being treated like the humans they are) but also for efficiency reasons. If there's clearly no money to be had from someone, minimize your handling losses by giving them what they legally deserve without making it a lot of work for everyone.
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