Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 381 posts

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

#221

Post by bombcar »

giantg2 wrote: post #133
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.

Yep. I'm dealing with a situation where speech therapy as rehab from a surgery is covered by by plan. But the hospital just submitted the claim with some general code. The insurance says they need the therapist to change the billing code. They won't allow us or the surgeon to submit anything to prove it should be covered. We have to wait for the inept therapist to change the code. All the while thousands in bills han…

And rarely, if ever, can you get the insurance company to admit what the secret billing code is before you have the procedure done. You have to hear it in whispered conversations from those in the know.

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

#222

Post by culopatin »

ziddoap wrote: post #165
culopatin wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The American Dream. Must make 115k+ (what is that, 2x or 3x the average American?) and pay out the ass for coverage just so you can have the privilege of having a kid without being judged by random people on the internet.

I’ve made much less than 115k for most of my working life and I never had such shitty coverage. I don’t agree that having twins or whatever should be 80k, don’t get me wrong. But if you’re in healthcare and make enough to have a decent plan and choose not to, and on top of that you decide to have kid/s, you know what you’re getting into.

At 38k a year I had a max out of pocket of 7k. It can be done.

It’s as if I opened a web server in my home with all the ports open, a password that is “changeme” and then complained that someone else should’ve been protecting me.

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

#223

Post by egberts1 »

starik36 wrote: post #206
zikduruqe wrote: post #195

Not my family. We filed for bankruptcy, so screw the whole medical industry. Honestly, it wasn't bad and within 18 months bought a new car, new house and started life over again.

Doesn't the bankruptcy stick around on the credit report for 7 years?

Yep but if you add a note for the reason of bankruptcy into your credit application, the credit provider would still take that into consideration and STILL charge you a higher interest rate.

Depending on the absolved medical debt (being discharged by your bankruptcy), and its would-be crushing monthly payments, the higher interest rate of your new (mortgage/credit) credit lines and its monthly payments are often less than the impact by (then dissolved) medical payments therefore your living standard would still improve after such medical-related bankruptcy.

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

#224

Post by antisthenes »

coffeefirst wrote: post #150

By the way, if you'd actually like to do something about this that benefits real people right now, RIP Medical Debt (mentioned in the article and has good ratings) buys debt at 1% of its face value and immediately forgives it. https://ripmedicaldebt.org

How can I submit my debt?

Or is it kind of a site that buys debt that the hospital has 0% chance of collecting anyway?

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

#225

Post by otikik »

alephnan wrote: post #131
paxys wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative isn't denying care. It is providing the same care without having people get into debt, which every other developed country (and a lot of undeveloped countries) in the world manages to do.

> which every other developed country (and a lot of undeveloped countries) in the world manages to do. Where doctors also make much more modest salaries

> Where doctors also make much more modest salaries

I would say that they are "less high", but not "modest", given that the cost of life is also lower.

Also you have to factor in that they don't have to sell their house if they get cancer.

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

#226

Post by [deleted] »

chaps wrote: post #176
notch656a wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1000 is $2 / day for les than 2 years (if you can do math unlike commenter below, that's including nearly 20% APR). I'm sorry but even the poor in america can come up with some way to make $14 in a week, if nothing else by picking up some cans. I live in a city where a segment of impoverished people come up with ways to spend $20+ a day in fentanyl, and they don't seem to have much trouble coming up with that even w…

You're taking one person's experience, who has mild medical expenses and applying their situation to loads of poor people as if their experience exemplifies the experiences of millions. Frankly, that's disgusting and while I don't wish you awful medical debt, it sounds like you could stand to be humbled by some. Think of bigger medical expenses over the same period -- 10k. That's 20/day. 100k -- 200/day. Now add ACA…

[deleted]

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

#227

Post by dekhn »

avgDev wrote: post #209
killjoywashere wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you make millions, it's unlikely your finances could survive an ICU admission.

Uncle was in ICU for 2 week before his death with multiple organ failure. His stay was more than $350k. Basically the hospital took the house he worked his whole life for.

Was your uncle qualified for medicare? We recently had several members need end of life care and they didn't have to pay any of the hospital bills. Many bills we did receive, we called the charging company and they were waived immediately "oh I guess we made a $100K mistake" or "medicare already reimbursed us, that was just a courtesy notice."

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

#228

Post by colpabar »

notacoward wrote: post #220
colpabar wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Last time I proposed this same thing in a blog comment section (Lawyers, Guns, and Money) a couple of people said "but filibuster" and the rest went straight to an absolute firehose of middle-school-level verbal abuse. I've had similar reactions from other self-proclaimed progressives. Nonetheless I stand by the idea. These big omnibus bills give every single opponent (and some "mavericks" a.k.a. turncoats in one's o…

It just seems like it'd be such a huge win from a PR angle, even if the bills fail. You could literally post screenshots of the bills in their entirety on twitter showing how simple they are (student debt is abolished, college is free, medicine is free, etc) and just say "here is what we tried to do for you, and here are the people who said no."

I think the most productive change we could make to our government right now would be to set a page limit on new legislation. But this might produce legislation that actually helps normal people, which is why it'll never happen.

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

#230

Post by p0lp0t »

bombcar wrote: post #110
sirtimbly wrote: post #77

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.

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN