211–220 of 381 posts
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?
> 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…
From both the context and the picture it's clear she's not actually, you know, retiring. The amount in someone's retirement account is meaningless unless you know their age and their income. Yeah, $10k isn't a lot if you're in your 60s and living a lifestyle that costs 6+ figures a year; it's a lot if you're making $30k a year and are in your 20s, and quite understandable if in your 30s at that income level. Three jo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you make millions, it's unlikely your finances could survive an ICU admission.
If you're not incredibly rich, you're just temporarily holding all your savings & retirement accounts for the hospitals and nursing homes that'll eventually take all of it. And then some.
It should not be this way though because mostly the wealthy take advantage of protecting their assets as it requires some money.
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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…
The smaller hospitals in general have been better but it's so obviously a giant clusterfuck.
I can't even imagine how someone without partner support (who the hell wants to deal with hospital fuckery post-partum) does it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Maybe what they are asking is how someone making an average of 115k, who is also in healthcare doesn’t have better health coverage and still decides to have a kid.
So it raises the question of what kind of shitty coverage she had that was able to do this, or if she just had no coverage at all for some reason, which as far I understand, is supposed to be illegal after PPACA (you can always buy from the exchanges and they can't say no).
America has socialized healthcare with a hundred extra steps and implemented in the most inefficient way possible so that everyone comes out worse. Hospitals aren't allowed to deny care (obviously). They will bill people outrageous amounts and know that they will only ever see a fraction of it. So prices for people who do pay are raised considerably to make up for it. People don't get early preventive care due to cos…
Hospitals that do not accept Medicare can run a 24 hour, high level of service department and deny care all they want.
There's no requirement to provide non-stabilizing care.
What depresses me the most about this situation is the callous, unempathetic disregard a significant portion of the population has for everyone not like them. "Just get a good paying job with health insurance" is not and should not be the basis for a health care policy. Americans are profoundly selfish and that's getting harder and harder to ignore. Many will defend such practices in the name of "freedom". "Freedom"…
> What depresses me the most about this situation is the callous, unempathetic disregard a significant portion of the population has for everyone not like them. "Just get a good paying job with health insurance" is not and should not be the basis for a health care policy. The problem is this is a straw-man argument. We can agree that healthcare costs are too high, and have empathy for people who are being screwed ove…
And that's the problem.
Insulin as just one example is spectacularly expensive in the US [2] for absolutely no good reason and the only way this is allowed to happen is that the Federal government has been successfully lobbied to not negotiate pricing AND to disallow the importation of the exact same medication from other countries.
[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/he...
[2]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-i...
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> not them being actual no-bullshit criminals Thou shalt never assume malice so sayeth lord Hanlon (brought to you by Carl's jr.)
I truly don't think everyone involved could be making so many mistakes in their own favor if it weren't the result of policies tuned to ensure that happens.
Penalties need to be attached to misbilling; it needs to be made effectively illegal and allow others to help collect the penalties, then an industry of scummy lawyers will appear to help customers reduce their bills at the expense of the hospitals.
And they'd deserve it.
What depresses me the most about this situation is the callous, unempathetic disregard a significant portion of the population has for everyone not like them. "Just get a good paying job with health insurance" is not and should not be the basis for a health care policy. Americans are profoundly selfish and that's getting harder and harder to ignore. Many will defend such practices in the name of "freedom". "Freedom"…
> What depresses me the most about this situation is the callous, unempathetic disregard a significant portion of the population has for everyone not like them. "Just get a good paying job with health insurance" is not and should not be the basis for a health care policy. The problem is this is a straw-man argument. We can agree that healthcare costs are too high, and have empathy for people who are being screwed ove…
I would love to see some evidence that US policy has caused the skyrocketing medical bills.
US already spends THE MOST tax money on healthcare even though it doesn't offer healthcare like ALL the other 1st world nations.
None of these metrics will change the political stance our one majority party took. They have shut their eyes and ears and are hell bent on preserving the interests of the lobbying companies and fetishizing “free market competition”. I can bet a sizeable amount of money that nothing will change in the next 50yrs even. Today there is still a rule that a hospital cannot say no to a patient, I strongly believe that is o…
I make this comment in a lot of threads, but if democrats wanted to fix this problem, they would write legislation for it and try to get it passed. Instead, all we get (from both parties) are massive 1000+ page bills that include a bunch of completely unrelated stuff. Why haven't democrats produce a 10 page bill with a tl;dr of "medical debt is hereby abolished"? Stop pretending the clowns pretending to be politician…