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Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

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Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#11

Post by dsfyu404ed »

elzbardico wrote: post #7

What is incredibly amazing is how much health care costs in the US. Government expenditures Per Capita are over twice of the nations like Canada, UK, Australia, and Japan. And most of this for medicare, for which only a fraction of the population is eligible. And yet, this is not enough, and people need private health insurance. Then you look at the prices of common medications, and most of them (mind you, a lot of t…

Everything bad anyone ever said about the Big Dig applies to healthcare.

It's a giant feeding trough for the subsidized industries. They get rich. The people who make the feeding trough run get power and influence. Taxpayers get poor results per dollar to the detriment of all the other things society could have spent that money doing. And idiots who are hoodwinked by the veneer of plausible deniability defend the system.

Either massively socialize it or massively deregulate it, I don't care which. Neither can be worse than what we have.

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#12

Post by biftek »

rojobuffalo wrote: post #3

I hope this isn't off-topic but I really like this text-only version of npr.org. I use Brave Browser and it has "reader mode" which does something similar, but it looks better when a site is designed with text-only in mind.

NYTimes used to have a similar mobile subdomain you could browse on desktop too, it was great. It wasn't strictly text only but made reading the content a much nicer experience.

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#13

Post by i_am_proteus »

rojobuffalo wrote: post #3

I hope this isn't off-topic but I really like this text-only version of npr.org. I use Brave Browser and it has "reader mode" which does something similar, but it looks better when a site is designed with text-only in mind.

If you are an enjoyer of CNN's content, there is also https://lite.cnn.com/

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#14

Post by unbalancedevh »

This "cashing in" isn't really anything new or different from what we expect elsewhere.

If it costs money to get healthcare, and there's value in being able to delay paying for it, then it makes sense that there will be interest. It also makes sense that the amount of interest scales with the risk. If a hospital did all of their own bookkeeping and debt collection, I would expect it to converge to the same kinds of policies and costs that a separate debt collection agency has.

The unfortunate result is that the people with less ability to pay (i.e., higher risk) end up paying more, as with anything else. That's the real problem. But as long as it costs money, and there's a time/risk value to money, I don't see it getting fixed.

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#15

Post by lotsofpulp »

svnt wrote: post #6

If you are bragging about your margins while the alternative for your customers is death or a major chronic health issue, it no longer matters if it is malice or incompetence. It is structurally and functionally evil.

How about people opting to choose non healthcare careers due to better pay to quality of life at work ratios?

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#16

Post by Loudergood »

willcipriano wrote: post #9
elzbardico wrote: post #7

What is incredibly amazing is how much health care costs in the US. Government expenditures Per Capita are over twice of the nations like Canada, UK, Australia, and Japan. And most of this for medicare, for which only a fraction of the population is eligible. And yet, this is not enough, and people need private health insurance. Then you look at the prices of common medications, and most of them (mind you, a lot of t…

Medicine is the most regulated and subsidized industry in the US. This is theft by regulatory capture[0]. Globalism is magically not applied to medicine, simply stopping being protectionist on prescription drugs would save consumers billions of dollars a year, it's easy, it's obvious and no politician will ever do it. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Not no politician. https://khn.org/news/article/drug-imports-canada-senate-sand...

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#17

Post by cvccvroomvroom »

Anecdotal example: I was in a coffee shop in Redding CA. There was a lady with a nasal infusion pump tube in her nose. I struck up a conversation with her. It turns out she had Stage IV cancer and was about to go before a bankruptcy magistrate to fight to keep her clothes, housing, and vehicle. Her creditors were the doctors and hospitals who were going after her while she was still alive.

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#18

Post by Arrath »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #15
svnt wrote: post #6

If you are bragging about your margins while the alternative for your customers is death or a major chronic health issue, it no longer matters if it is malice or incompetence. It is structurally and functionally evil.

How about people opting to choose non healthcare careers due to better pay to quality of life at work ratios?

All the more power to individuals opting not to work within a cruel framework and take their labor elsewhere?

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#19

Post by sokoloff »

elzbardico wrote: post #7

What is incredibly amazing is how much health care costs in the US. Government expenditures Per Capita are over twice of the nations like Canada, UK, Australia, and Japan. And most of this for medicare, for which only a fraction of the population is eligible. And yet, this is not enough, and people need private health insurance. Then you look at the prices of common medications, and most of them (mind you, a lot of t…

> most of this for medicare, for which only a fraction of the population is eligible.

The fraction of the population that is eligible for Medicare skews much, much older than the overall population and so is exactly the population that I'd expect to be more costly.

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#20

Post by [deleted] »

dan_quixote wrote: post #5
jleyank wrote: post #2

Healthcare feels like something that should be a regulated monopoly if not provided by the government. Profiting off the misfortune of others seems a bit dirty.

I'd say it's cruel . Paying interest on some medical procedure because you (and likely almost everyone else) cannot afford the eye-watering cost? What else do we need to convince people that this is not sustainable? Maybe a collapse in this medical loan market? One has to assume the major players (hospitals, insurance, etc) have firewalled themselves from this system.

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