They have 330million people, that's terrifying.
Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt
81–90 of 381 posts
Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt
#82Still better than dealing with rationing. The rest of the world better hope the US never goes socialist with health care - kiss innovation goodbye.
For all the downvoters - this was also on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31767347 Downvote away though :p
Go ask any law enforcement officer, fire fighter, or EMT how many times a week they hear "please don't call an ambulance, I can't afford it" and the answer will be so depressing that you may change your tone about this.
Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt
#83Still better than dealing with rationing. The rest of the world better hope the US never goes socialist with health care - kiss innovation goodbye.
If you think our current system doesn't have rationing, I'm not sure what to tell you. "Long wait times" are one way to ration care -- but equally effective is just denying 30 million people the ability to get any care at all due to unaffordable insurance and ruinous costs for any 'touch' with the system. Another effective way to ration care is to make routine things so expensive that people self-select out of receiving care or filling prescriptions even when they are insured.
Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt
#84Still better than dealing with rationing. The rest of the world better hope the US never goes socialist with health care - kiss innovation goodbye.
It’s already rationing with a different mechanism that you personally prefer
Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt
#85Still better than dealing with rationing. The rest of the world better hope the US never goes socialist with health care - kiss innovation goodbye.
We already have rationing. My (expensive FAANG-funded) health insurance said no MRI without 4 weeks of PT.
Yes, technically I could pay the couple thousand dollars out of pocket, but in most socialized health care systems you can do that as well.
Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt
#86Still better than dealing with rationing. The rest of the world better hope the US never goes socialist with health care - kiss innovation goodbye.
can you elaborate on the "rationing" part?
I'm guessing you tied "socialist" and "rationing" together, but did you do it in the context of other developed economies (i.e most of Europe?)
Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt
#87Just watched John Q (2002) last night, and can't believe that despite all the attention it gets, nothing has changed at all. Can't say I'm surprised though.
Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt
#88Interesting: > For many Americans, debt from medical or dental care may be relatively low. About a third owe less than $1,000, the KFF poll found. I wonder how they'd count me, who puts all expenses on a credit card and pays it off each month, technically I'm going into debt ...
I wonder how they consider my family who receives bogus bills that are being mishandled by insurance or the hospital or both.
Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt
#89Interesting: > For many Americans, debt from medical or dental care may be relatively low. About a third owe less than $1,000, the KFF poll found. I wonder how they'd count me, who puts all expenses on a credit card and pays it off each month, technically I'm going into debt ...
At worst they'd put you as one of the 37% of people who haven't had to cut spending on food, clothing, or other basics.
Of course, 63% of the people with health care debt have (according to study).
So while your case is interesting from a technical point of view, it isn't really practically or morally interesting, and can only serve to detract from the important points of the study.
Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt
#90Still better than dealing with rationing. The rest of the world better hope the US never goes socialist with health care - kiss innovation goodbye.
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