151–160 of 381 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The money going into medicare is enough to extend coverage to all americans provided the system is run with the cost efficiency of the typical EU healthcare system.
But then people go into debt to pay the tax to pay the other guy's medical debt.
Also known as 100M people who may have died without medical care, but were provided it despite their inability to pay for it. If you remove the ability for medical workers to seek payment for their services, most medical workers are just gonna say fuck it and not work for free. Medical care providers have families they have to feed too.
> 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…
Your entire post is really rather uncharitable and judgmental towards these people but, anyway: > Why are they putting medical debt on credit cards? Doesn't say they did - reads to me like they built up debt on the credit card with regular living expenses while servicing the medical debt.
not that it honestly matters. the whole cabal of private healthcare has become such a teetering house of cards post covid that credit reporting agencies no longer count medical debt in your score. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-finance/medical-debt...
My wife had a decent chunk of medical debt when we got married which was long before COVID. Even at that time medical debt didn't count terribly against her. Maybe a 10 pt drop in her score. And eventually the debt fell off her credit.
Simply walking away from medical debt if there is only a minor impact on credit score seems like a decent option if not.
> 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…
The emergency room has ludicrously high costs, and none of his medical history. You're literally saying "don't expect to be able to see your primary care provider, go to the emergency room instead" -because of existing debt-.
You're making a lot of assumptions...all of which miss the point. Why is life shattering medical debt a common thing we tolerate in this country, given every other Western country has managed to make it a rarity? But, to your assumptions - maybe and she gave birth prematurely and ended up being seen by a hospital who were out of network and her insurance didn't cover it. Or even went to an in-network hospital, but was seen by doctors who were out of network, as frequently can happen, especially in emergencies when you can't personally vet the doctor is in network for you before you see them. Certainly, something unexpected happened (maybe even the pregnancy itself! Something to look forward to with the Supreme Court set to overturn Roe v Wade), and insurance wasn't there. Why is that acceptable in this country?
Fortunately as an engineer, shelling out $4k a year on top of my basically "free" health insurance through my employer is more of a nuisance than something I lose sleep over. That said, people in this country need better healthcare. Doing this will unsaddle startups and businesses from having to provide it directly. Healthcare is something I would pay more taxes for, but above all I command the government to spend in ways that BENEFIT the American people not just corporate donors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entirety of the US economy is tuned to create debt; healthcare is just one example of it.
Well, yeah -- once you've squeeezed all the money out of poor people, how else are you supposed to squeeze even harder?
But this immediately appears as "unfair" even if predatory lending is a huge problem.
Meanwhile those who already have some money wouldn't be affected by it much, for example, a law requiring all credit cards that charge interest on balances to be secured ones (where if you have a $1k credit line you must have $1k cash/cash equivalent in the bank).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Further, neither side (seems to) accept incremental change and loves making the perfect the enemy of the good -- especially, imo, the left -- so they get nothing and complain about it.
> 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…
You don't know their whole story, stop judging people from your high horse.
I'm pretty sure that's on purpose.
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.
The healthcare sector is still quite profitable despite the debt, slow payments, and defaults. What is their motivation to change?