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Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

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Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#191

Post by bombcar »

secabeen wrote: post #104
kube-system wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This also ties into that commonly statistic that 60+% of bankruptcies are caused by medical bills. The study is more complicated than that, and it's not the best summary: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2009/jun/11/chris-dodd...

This is exactly the kind of thing I'm getting at - absolutely 100% of bankruptcies are caused by debt; perhaps 60% of them also have medical debt somewhere in there, but that may be a distraction (after all, once you're on the path to bankruptcy why bother trying to make medical payments, they're not going to repossess your lung but they very well may repossess your house).

The US has a major debt problem and the solution at some point is going to be curtailing just how much debt you can accumulate with just a signature.

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#192

Post by josephd79 »

It's ridiculous in the year 2022 we still have people making a decision to not seek medical treatment of any kind because they are afraid it will bankrupt their family, they won't be able to pay their rent or mortgage on time, they might have to go without food, take out loans or borrow money that puts them in even more debt causing more health issues. I'm not sure what the solution is but I feel like there's got to be a better way.

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#193

Post by electriccatblan »

corrral wrote: post #179
peteradio wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how they consider my family who receives bogus bills that are being mishandled by insurance or the hospital or both.

2/3 childbirths we missed one (tiny, in both cases) medical bill and it ended up in collections. We were getting like 3-5 letters per provider per visit, and many visits resulted in bills from multiple providers. "NOT A BILL" (so why the fuck are you sending it to me?) same thing again from insurance for some reason, incorrect bills we had to fight, insurance refusing to pay on things they should so that drags out fo…

My wife and I have good insurance (like $200 out of pocket for surgery good) and I still hate going to the doctor because I know I'm going to get stuck with an involuntary side hustle as a medical billing clerk if I want the benefits we're entitled to to actually be honored. Our insurance paid maybe ~6k in charges one time, then 6 months later retroactively denied the claims and billed us for them. There's just no repose ever at any time, and you have to deal with a system that is always stacked against you.

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#194

Post by p0lp0t »

justinzollars wrote: post #140

I see any suggestion to the contrary of Socialized medicine being downvoted. Honest question. How do you propose to expand healthcare with 130% Debt to GDP and 8.9% inflation? It seems we are broke and there is a demand from the HN community to spend more? Feels like hitting the accelerator as one drives off a cliff and invokes memories of Thelma & Louise

No post body was provided.

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#196

Post by maxerickson »

oceanplexian wrote: post #177
nimbius wrote: post #97

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...

I don't know why people see this as a good thing. Healthcare is expensive for precisely the reason that people skip out on paying their debt. Now it's harder to collect so what's the result? Costs are going to go up to subsidize the increased cost of collection.

Non payment is a moderate expense, at least according to hospitals themselves: https://www.aha.org/fact-sheets/2020-01-06-fact-sheet-uncomp...

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#197

Post by rayiner »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #24
rayiner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blame Democrats for the college educated urban-dominated coalition they’ve deliberately chosen. I recall some activist types talking a few years ago about whether pro life Dems like Manchin should be kicked out of the party. Though it’s the House not the Senate, Dems just lost a longtime majority-Hispanic seat in south Texas: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/14/texas-special-electi... . To give you an idea of the…

The Dems might have had 60 seats in name only, but even that was for a few months (Jul 2009 to Jan 2010). More importantly, a couple Democrats like Lieberman do not tow the party line, and frequently vote like Repubs, so I would not say Democrats ever had 60 seats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_Senate_elec... > Democrats held at least 57 seats as a result of the election. When the new senators were…

They had 60 votes to get Obamacare enacted, which was a historic achievement. Obviously your coalition won’t agree on everything and you have to keep the marginal votes on board. That’s just how politics works. My point is that there is a more potent democratic coalition out there even within the framework of the Senate system. To the contrary, the Senate system long benefited Democrats because it favors working class rural areas over moneyed industries (finance, tech, etc.) concentrated on the coasts.

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#198

Post by stephen_g »

justinzollars wrote: post #140

I see any suggestion to the contrary of Socialized medicine being downvoted. Honest question. How do you propose to expand healthcare with 130% Debt to GDP and 8.9% inflation? It seems we are broke and there is a demand from the HN community to spend more? Feels like hitting the accelerator as one drives off a cliff and invokes memories of Thelma & Louise

We have a hybrid system here in Australia where there are tax benefits for having private health insurance but we also have a high quality public system. The public system actually comes out consistently as being more efficient than the private one, so the cost to society is less.

The rebates for private health insurance (to convince people to take out private insurance to “take pressure off the public system) have actually made things worse, for most people it’s subsidised by 30% by the Government (and you avoid an extra health levy), but over the last decade or two, the premiums have just gone up significantly and the amount of things covered has been dropping. It would have been better to just put that money into the public system (which is a bit overstretched due to underfunding). So mostly the subsidy has just gone into profits for insurers. It’s hard to get people to take out the private insurance without it and tax offset, but as I said before, since the public system is more efficient, the cost to society would be less without subsidising private insurance.

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#199

Post by josephd79 »

otikik wrote: post #184

I like that the article shows how this affects regular people pretty much randomly. One thing I missed on the article was a section about "how did we get here" (including things like Hospitals not disclosing prices for their treatments and forcing people to sign papers under duress). And a section about "who benefits from all this suffering" would complete it.

making it insanely difficult to track services on invoices they send you. I had a 3 night stay a 2 years ago and received bills from 5 different 'companies'. I even paid one that I was incorrectly billed for and had to jump through hoops to get the money back.

Re: Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

#200

Post by corrral »

electriccatblan wrote: post #193
corrral wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2/3 childbirths we missed one (tiny, in both cases) medical bill and it ended up in collections. We were getting like 3-5 letters per provider per visit, and many visits resulted in bills from multiple providers. "NOT A BILL" (so why the fuck are you sending it to me?) same thing again from insurance for some reason, incorrect bills we had to fight, insurance refusing to pay on things they should so that drags out fo…

My wife and I have good insurance (like $200 out of pocket for surgery good) and I still hate going to the doctor because I know I'm going to get stuck with an involuntary side hustle as a medical billing clerk if I want the benefits we're entitled to to actually be honored. Our insurance paid maybe ~6k in charges one time, then 6 months later retroactively denied the claims and billed us for them. There's just no re…

No joke. If we'd been compensated at any kind of reasonable rate (not even our day-job rates) for time spent dealing with billing and insurance crap, it would've covered a good chunk of our (substantial) bills.
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