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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

#271

Post by silicon2401 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #269
silicon2401 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's terrifying. The healthcare issue with the US is what seriously makes me want to live in Europe, at least to try it. The thought of your whole life falling apart just because you need medical care is horrible. I'm living the double-software-engineer-income, no kids life with my partner, and even then I think a major medical issue would be life changing. As a risk-averse person, the US feels like a place to get…

It's not like you can get whatever, whenever medical care in Europe. Whether private or public, the entity that's paying the bills will be making decisions on what procedures are or are not "necessary" and how much they will pay. My uncle in Denmark had cancer, and they basically put him in a hospice-type facility to die, because anything else would have not been justified due to his age, the cost, and the low probab…

> In the USA, he or his family would likely have demanded aggressive surgery and/or chemo or radiation

In the US, if you can't afford it, medical care basically isn't even an option. If you have a lot of money, then you're set. In Europe if you don't have much money, you at least have some options, and if you have a lot of money, you can still go to the US. Or if you're open to $100k's of debt, you could've easily gone to the US for treatment, too. Your scenario just proves my point that the situation is way better in europe

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

#272

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

hedora wrote: post #238
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #114

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.

No, the problem is that the actions of the federal government aren't even correlated to public opinion any more. When Obamacare was passed, 70% of the population wanted Medicare for all instead: https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/412545-70-... In 2020, 54% supported single payer health care: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/29/increasing-... overage/ I can't find any post-covid polls, but…

I literally linked those two polls just yesterday, hah [0]. Did you see my comment, or did you just happen to do a similar search and get those results?

As I mention in my other comment, I speculate the possibility that people think "Single payer" and "Medicare For All" are different things [1] and so report a different opinion on each, similar to how the ACA was viewed MUCH more favorably than ObamaCare despite one being the nickname for the other.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31755822

[1] ACKSHUALLY, single-payer doesn't HAVE to be simply expanding Medicare to everyone. It could be done in some other way, but the core idea of the government paying for everyone's healthcare is still the same.

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

#273

Post by notch656a »

monkey_monkey wrote: post #151
notch656a wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then people go into debt to pay the tax to pay the other guy's medical debt.

I'm not entirely sure you understand how taxes work.

Yes because no one is in debt as a result of making insufficient income after tax deductions, and no one owes tax debt.

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

#274

Post by notch656a »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #173
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…

14 per week might be the difference between eating ok and not eating.

You can eat "ok" on $2 a day?

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

#275

Post by [deleted] »

corrral wrote: post #205
peteradio wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#276

Post by LinuxBender »

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

I agree and have always felt all of this is the wrong debate. The focus should be on fixing the root cause of most medical issues. "An ounce of prevention...." yada yada... Just Type-2 diabetes alone will bankrupt the US by 2040 or sooner according to the CDC as reported in an interview on Joe Rogan. [1] There are a myriad of other CDC studies that show us going bankrupt sooner regardless of who pays for medical issues. I have no idea where all this money will come from short of conquering some other countries. For me personally, I will just focus on proactive measures. Here [2][3] are a couple of the reports.

As a side note I am about to go feed Thelma and Louise. Ill pet them and say hi for you.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LTWJOi3bCo [video] [joes t-shirt nsfw, minimize browser]

[2] - https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p0718-diabetes-repor...

[3] - https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/41/5/917/36518

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

#277

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

colpabar wrote: post #182
yalogin wrote: post #161

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…

Short, 10-page bills, don't exist because Legalese needs to exist because otherwise people find every loophole in any perceived ambiguity in the wording.

Like, imagine a mom seeing her kid jumping on the bed, and the kid says "I'm not jumping, I'm hopping. The difference is ..." and so the parent tells them to stop hopping and leaves. They come back later and the kid is sitting down, but bouncing up and down.

Eventually, the parent says something like "You may not jump, leap, spring, bounce, hop, dance, or otherwise engage in an oscillating vertical motion using the mattress of the bed as leverage or propellant."

Bam. That's legalese, and is the reason laws are 1,000 pages long. Except in this case, the parent has left open the loophole of allowing the kid to jump from their dresser onto the bed.

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

#278

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

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.

Every time these stories appear on reddit, there's a flood of non-Americans appalled at the idea.

They just don't understand the FREEDOM that high health care costs provide! /s

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

#279

Post by JaimeThompson »

notch656a wrote: post #274
JaimeThompson wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

14 per week might be the difference between eating ok and not eating.

You can eat "ok" on $2 a day?

Yes if you are careful, but that isn't what I said. You are assuming that the base spent on food is 0 + 2 when that wasn't what I said.

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

#280

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

DavidPeiffer wrote: post #239
silicon2401 wrote: post #229

If you have insurance with an out of pocket max, how is it possible to end up paying for more than that?

Sometimes services are rendered which insurance does not deem required, and then refuses to pay for, and some items are simply not covered at all. For example, insulin may be covered by insurance, but needles and syringes are not. On top of that, it's basically impossible to anticipate the cost ahead of time for many procedures. One person I know was quoted $2,000 to $30,000 for a portion of a surgery that is not cov…

> Sometimes services are rendered which insurance does not deem required, and then refuses to pay for

This shouldn't be legal.

Do insurance companies even employ actual medical doctors that are educated, trained, and experienced in health care so that they're qualified to make these calls?

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