141–150 of 381 posts
I hate the way the health-care system works and how it's affected me and those close to me. I spent much of my adult life paying off medical debt exactly like they describe. Defrayed by parents somewhat, but still a significant burden for many years. On one hand, we have debt and bankruptcy as a tool to help individuals deal with costs that would be impossible to save up for. On the other hand, this quote from the ar…
Interesting: > 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 also intentionally go in to debt for any of my expenses subject to deductible, because my hospital offers zero-interest payment plans. I then pay their payment plan with a credit card, get 2% back, and pay it off at the end of the month.
Still better than dealing with rationing. The rest of the world better hope the US never goes socialist with health care - kiss innovation goodbye.
Also, note that 63% of the people in debt are already literally rationing.
"Cut spending on food, clothing, and other basics" - 63%
I hate the way the health-care system works and how it's affected me and those close to me. I spent much of my adult life paying off medical debt exactly like they describe. Defrayed by parents somewhat, but still a significant burden for many years. On one hand, we have debt and bankruptcy as a tool to help individuals deal with costs that would be impossible to save up for. On the other hand, this quote from the ar…
The entirety of the US economy is tuned to create debt; healthcare is just one example of it.
Just 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.
Basically the way things work in the US is that even if you can get an overwhelming majority of people to agree that something is a problem, you will never get them to agree on a solution. In this instance, the two proposed solutions are: make healthcare the government's responsibility like many countries that don't have this problem, or do nothing because that solution isn't perfect.
I always figured that the reason why I make as much money as possible is so that I can pay for medical expenses when things go wrong.
> Elizabeth Woodruff drained her retirement account and took on three jobs after she and her husband were sued for nearly $10,000 by the New York hospital where his infected leg was amputated. I'm not sure what sort of retirement they had planned to have on less than 10k, but it looks like in this case the hospital knew they could afford to pay but preferred not to. When people use number of jobs rather than hours wo…
> Average nurse practitioner salary 115k. Why are they putting medical debt on credit cards? Are you asking why they couldn't afford 70% of an average salary (which, there is a 50% chance this person made less than the average) in one shot? Your entire post seems to be victim blaming based on a few sentences of context. You don't know what other debts and obligations these people had, nor what other avenues they trie…