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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

#331

Post by defterGoose »

sirtimbly wrote: post #146
bombcar wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entirety of the US economy is tuned to create debt; healthcare is just one example of it.

Yes. Debt is the entire story of the American economy, from top to bottom, it's not inherently evil. It's useful for creating new wealth. But of course it gets misused also.

I don't think anyone is arguing that debt can't be another tool in the toolbox, but when you consider that the debt/equity ratio has risen considerably since the second half of the 20th century, you start to get the sense that this is somewhat "centrally" planned.

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

#332

Post by SigmundA »

notch656a wrote: post #322
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

I'm opposed to tax funded police, roads, and schools. If you want to create a roads charity, by all mean I'm fine with that. Sometimes tax payers are funding their own expense, sometimes not. What I take issue with is being involuntarily compelled to pay someone else's expense at gunpoint.

Nobody is forcing you to pay at gunpoint, you are free to leave at any time and no longer pay. Paying taxes is no different than mortgage or rent, either pay it or get out. You don't fully own the property you live on even if it's paid off, it is the soil of the country you live in, if you want your own soil fight for your own sovereign territory and keep it through force without any help, good luck.

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

#333

Post by rayiner »

buffington wrote: post #324
MomoXenosaga wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Americans are smarter than that. In my country doctors don't give a shit about who you are or how much money you have. They do triage. You can be a millionaire yet have to wait 3 months for a new hip because there is someone with more urgent medical needs. It is pure unadultared fact based medicine to allocate scarce resources instead of market forces that turns you into a drone. Universal healthcare is beati…

I'm trying to understand what point you're trying to make here. Are you saying America's system is better or worse than that of your country? I'm in America, and I have fantastic health insurance (by American standards) and waited over a year for a hip replacement surgery. Even with insurance, I paid almost $10,000 for the surgery. Without insurance it would have cost well over $100k. I suspect that in any other coun…

Why do you assume you would have gotten authorized for a hip replacement at all? Many elective qualify of life surgeries aren’t covered in European health care systems.

Look, there is no free lunch. The UK NHS has strict standards of “cost effectiveness” that would shock Americans: https://www.nice.org.uk/media/default/guidance/lgb10-briefin.... 20-30,000 pounds per quality adjusted life year. American end of life care can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for a year or two of extra life and American insurance companies will pay it without blinking. A friend of the family was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six months to live. She received treatment costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and lived almost two years. In European systems she would have been sent into hospice.

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

#335

Post by missedthecue »

heavyset_go wrote: post #308
corrral wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. They absolutely can. They just can't refuse care if you're actively dying or your condition's quickly deteriorating (they have to "stabilize" you). This makes the ER loophole, such as it is, usel…

This is an important distinction. Nobody is getting free chemo or radiation therapy, treatment for chronic illness or anything like. For example, diabetics are not going to get a supply of insulin from the ER, especially if they can't pay, and someone with cancer isn't going to get treatment, either. Plenty of people die in the US from the inability to afford the medical care they need to live. If you're brought into…

"Nobody is getting free chemo or radiation therapy, treatment for chronic illness or anything like"

Sure you can. In the US, you cannot be denied chemo or other treatments. You will be billed after the fact, and it's going to be a ton of money, but it's not as if they have security escort you out just because you don't have an insurance card. That simply doesn't happen. You'll get care, and if you don't qualify for aid programs or indigent care schemes (of which there are many), you'll probably file for bankruptcy and have the slate wiped clean.

By law, nonprofit hospitals must provide charity care to needy patients. 57% of US hospitals are non-profit. Only 24% are for-profit. (The rest are government run)

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

#336

Post by colechristensen »

I have a bunch of medical debt but not really, just waiting for treatment to be “finished” and someone else’s car insurance to foot the bill.

I have debt collectors calling me which i ignore now because me describing the situation and them “putting a note in my file” has zero effect on how often they contact me.

In the end I’ll owe $0 it will just take time to settle.

But there is something coming close to $10k of “debt” out there with my name on it.

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

#337

Post by selimthegrim »

rayiner wrote: post #301
suture wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are very much wrong in your assessments. Closing hundreds of polling locations absolutely affects voting outcomes and number of voters. That isn’t a big lie. It is a provable fact. There is no point in discussing this topic with someone who refuses to acknowledge indisputable facts. You are completely wrong on your assessment regarding Gerrymandering. You clearly don’t understand how total national vote total has…

> Closing hundreds of polling locations absolutely affects voting outcomes and number of voters. That isn’t a big lie. It is a provable fact. It doesn't meaningfully affect turnout in the same way Voter ID doesn't affect turnout: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/21/18230009/v... . Both parties are lying about the impacts of voting rules on turnout. > You clearly don’t understand how total national vote…

Manchin is not doing yeoman's work when he throws hissy fits over his name on a WH press release about something he'd already done (negotiated with Biden)

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

#338

Post by suture »

acheron wrote: post #326
suture wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The country and politics of the nation have shifted. The divide is rural/urban now. The cities have the vast majority of the wealth but not the accompanying representation. The rural areas of the country are overwhelmingly conservative and increasingly white nationalist in sentiment. What the state of things 50 years ago was is no longer relevant.

Approximately nobody is “white nationalist”. Believing nonsense like that is not helping you.

The election of Donald Trump was clearly a white nationalist backlash. This is obvious and it was an enabling event for more extreme elements of white nationalism. One only needs to look at the rhetoric used to see this. Don’t confuse “white nationalist” with “white supremecist” (though the latter is a subset of the former).

The underpinnings of white nationalism have been around for a while but really came to the fore in 2016. The desire to keep “our America” and other catch phrases are indicative.

EDIT: Having white, nationalist sentiments or leanings is not necessarily bad or wrong. It’s quite natural for a majority population to have such sentiments when their status as a majority gets threatened. The demographics and gender power structure of the nation is noticeably changing and having a backlash against that change is common.

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

#339

Post by elhudy »

rayiner wrote: post #333
buffington wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to understand what point you're trying to make here. Are you saying America's system is better or worse than that of your country? I'm in America, and I have fantastic health insurance (by American standards) and waited over a year for a hip replacement surgery. Even with insurance, I paid almost $10,000 for the surgery. Without insurance it would have cost well over $100k. I suspect that in any other coun…

Why do you assume you would have gotten authorized for a hip replacement at all? Many elective qualify of life surgeries aren’t covered in European health care systems. Look, there is no free lunch. The UK NHS has strict standards of “cost effectiveness” that would shock Americans: https://www.nice.org.uk/media/default/guidance/lgb10-briefin... . 20-30,000 pounds per quality adjusted life year. American end of life c…

> A friend of the family was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six months to live. She received treatment costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and lived almost two years. In European systems she would have been sent into hospice

I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted, this seems factual.

It’s also the part of the problem that’s never discussed - the big cancerous whale in the room. Culturally, Americans can’t accept that sometimes people are going to die, and let it happen. 2 years of chemo and carT treatments with neurological damage, organ damage, chemo brain, the list goes on, isn’t worth it for most people. But they don’t even realize that until they’re almost gone.

Taking a holistic look at the health of the patient and running costa / benefit on quality of life vs treatment are two ways that the uk controls costa really well. As far as I’m aware it’s the same with obese people. There are limits on their reimbursement amounts for certain things and they need to buy extra insurance to cover that (someone from the uk correct me if I’m wrong?)

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

#340

Post by elhudy »

burmer wrote: post #297
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…

hm, interesting. Even better: potentially, instead of negotiating prices one on one, we could form some sort of large collective enterprise that was beholden to us so that it could negotiate prices on our behalf. I'd bet if there was such an group that represented a large enough % of us, we could get some pretty good deals. Now, what would we call it...

MDSave?
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