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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

#311

Post by notch656a »

chaps wrote: post #284
notch656a wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You're taking one person's experience, who has mild medical "You" being the parent OPs who I responded to who introduced the nation of $1000, which happens to be above the median for my state and most states shown in the article? Remember I'm RESPONDING to the $1000 comment, not introducing the figure. But maybe they said something about the $1000 you agreed about, so you went with the disingenuous approach of only…

I'm really not sure how a median of $1000 is supposed to make your point any better.

I'm not sure how throwing around a $100k figure is supposed to make your point any better. If it's worth considering the 100k case of the minority it's worth considering the half of person's in these states for whom the debt is under $1k.

My intention was never to show that someone with $100k of medical debt could get out of it as easily as the majority with far less.

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

#312

Post by JaimeThompson »

notch656a wrote: post #309
JaimeThompson wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are multiple meals per day if one has to skip some of them to make ends meat then they are "not eating" those meals. It's a bit more complicated than you are making it out to be, it would not hurt to remember you are talking about fellow human beings and not just numbers in a spreadsheet. As for inexpensive ways to eat please see https://old.reddit.com/r/EatCheapAndHealthy/

Got it, the typical person can browse reddit, come up with an "ok" diet for $2 day, saving them $3+ a day vs what even the typical working class person spends on food. And simultaneously you believe it is achievable to save this $3+ per day eating following your reddit suggestion while somehow not being able to use $2 of those $3+ to pay your medical bills?

Do you find that being this uncharitable is an effective way to communicate with others?

You haven't actually been poor like that in the US. That isn't a question, it is a statement. I have as have others I know so yes even a few dollars per day can make/break the budget.

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

#313

Post by notch656a »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #312
notch656a wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got it, the typical person can browse reddit, come up with an "ok" diet for $2 day, saving them $3+ a day vs what even the typical working class person spends on food. And simultaneously you believe it is achievable to save this $3+ per day eating following your reddit suggestion while somehow not being able to use $2 of those $3+ to pay your medical bills?

Do you find that being this uncharitable is an effective way to communicate with others? You haven't actually been poor like that in the US. That isn't a question, it is a statement. I have as have others I know so yes even a few dollars per day can make/break the budget.

>You haven't actually been poor like that in the US. That isn't a question, it is a statement. I have as have others I know so yes even a few dollars per day can make/break the budget.

I don't know how poor you have been or are. And you don't know how poor I have been either. I'm not going to play oppression olympics with you. I have been homeless, sleeping in ditches and parks before, living off of minimum wage day labor. Even back then, if I needed $2 I simply worked an extra 15 minutes moving drywall at construction sites or whatever. Those who can't work may end up buying snacks with their foodstamp card and hawking them to high schoolers walking to school or something (as I see many homeless do near my house). There are very few people who aren't already covered by medicaid/medicare who are incapable of coming up with $2 / day somehow, and if they are they are the extreme case. Again even _drug addicts_ in my neighborhood, while high out of their minds, somehow manage to come up with $20/day for their fentanyl habit and that doesn't even cover the rest of their necessities.

And as an aside, I'm not buying the argument that being broke somehow makes you more of an expert on how to budget. The poor in this country are notoriously victims of sub-par education which sadly leaves many of them poorly situated to navigate managing their own economic future. If I want budgeting advice I'd much rather ask say a guy who started his own restaurant vs some random broke person on the street.

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

#314

Post by Amezarak »

nradov wrote: post #268
pocketero-dan wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proposed colossal change: a common practice of paying for healthcare out of pocket, instead of through healthcare insurance. Yes, this sounds unreasonable right now because prices are so high. But bear with me for a second. Most healthcare in the US is paid through insurance. Insurance creates moral hazard. Insured patients generally don't even need to know the prices of what they're buying, much less negotiate those…

High deductible health plans are widely available and members pay for most routine care out of pocket (often via an HSA). However in practice this does little to hold down costs. Most patients aren't able to do effective price comparisons, and can't really switch providers just to save a few dollars. https://www.healthcare.gov/high-deductible-health-plan/hdhp-... There's pretty much a free open market for cosmetic me…

Not only are HDHPs widely available, they are widely used! I've seen numbers to where a third to half of all private-industry health insurance coverage is under a high deductible health plan.

These people, me being one of them, are extremely cost-conscious, believe me. It doesn't help for basically the reasons you mention.

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

#315

Post by nottorp »

blendergeek wrote: post #10
nottorp wrote: post #6

I would read it but i can only agree to tracking.

Try this link. https://text.npr.org/1104679219

But NPR tried their damnedest to hide it from me. A while ago you could reject tracking and get the text only version of the article. Today I only saw "agree" and "see how we use cookies". No official pointer to the text site.

So no, they can keep their article.

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

#316

Post by suture »

lesuorac wrote: post #302
suture wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Republicans abandoned people who are in favor of abortion. Republicans abandoned liberal Republicans like Bill Weld. Every party abandons people. Democrats consistently hold majority views on a wide range of policy issues and consistently have more votes in national elections. Gerrymandering so that urban centers lose their voting power and other election rigging techniques is what is holding back Democratic policies…

> Gerrymandering so that urban centers lose their voting power and other election rigging techniques is what is holding back Democratic policies. I mean gerrymandering doesn't help but the Democrats aren't one cohesive unit otherwise they'd have no issue doing stuff right now. Sure people claim they only have 50+1 in the senate so they can be filibustered but they can just remove the filibuster with 50+1 and then do…

Republicans were never going to get rid of ACA; it’s their plan after all. Republicans were never going to build a wall. These were just talking points. What Republican lawmakers are great at is being united in thwarting Democratic policies and doing what it takes to enhance their own power. Republican lawmakers are much more united when it comes to core principles:

1. Thwart Democrats

2. Oppose abortion

3. Tax cuts

4. Cut/freeze non defense spending

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

#317

Post by newsclues »

SoftTalker wrote: post #264
newsclues wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People live in tents because 100% of their income goes to opiates. They can’t make more money and save it, because their needs will always exceed their income short of massive windfalls

Yes, if you are living in a tent and are addicted to opiates, I doubt that "medical debt" would be anything that even registers on your radar. You'll get emergency medical care as needed at the nearest public ER, and since you don't have an address they probably won't even bother to try to send you a bill.

I’m in Canada and there is no medical debt but homeless addict encampments in many cities.

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

#318

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

notch656a wrote: post #285
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "why are people expecting doctors to work for free?" argument is such a bad faith take. You know damn well that nobody is expecting doctors to work without pay. I refuse to believe someone could actually believe such an idiotic argument is being made. So why act like it is?

Ah I see, doctors aren't supposed to work for free, just other taxpayers (who most likely make far less than a doctor) working for free to pay the (much higher salary) to cover someone elses expenses. Got it.

My tax money goes to schools that I don't send children to.

My tax money goes to building roads that I won't drive on.

My tax money goes to police dealing with crimes I'm not a victim of.

Do you consider EVERYTHING funded by tax payers to be the result of people "work for free to cover someone else's expenses"?

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

#319

Post by a9h74j »

noelsusman wrote: post #305
dathmar wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is one of many reasons why hospitals charge so much. Medical debt is extremely difficult to actually collect because refusing to pay has basically no consequences. Hospitals have to eat those costs and make up for it by squeezing patients who do pay for as much as possible. I did the same thing with an ER bill I couldn't afford a while back. I just never paid it and suffered virtually no consequences.

I have heard of hospital insiders giving precisely such advice: Don't even start to pay or they will hound you as if you can.

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

#320

Post by a9h74j »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #277
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…

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. Eventua…

As if you are reading diffs over hundreds of files, applied in one go.
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