I really don't understand why the US doesn't have a grown up healthcare system. Do you just not see how much better healthcare is in the rest of the developed world?
Corporate regulatory capture.
She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money
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Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money
#32I really don't understand why the US doesn't have a grown up healthcare system. Do you just not see how much better healthcare is in the rest of the developed world?
I love my quality of care in the US. My insurance is quite reasonable compared to what my increased tax burden might look like overseas. I can’t imagine living in a nation that would make me wait months for something like an MRI, I love living in a nation where I can get an MRI for myself and my dog in the same day. I also enjoy living in a nation that doesn’t suggest I kill myself over trivial situations and backlog…
> I love my quality of care in the US. My insurance is quite reasonable
Does it matter to you that 27.6 million of your countrymen have no insurance? [1]
Does it matter to you that 66.5% of all bankruptcies are due to medical bills [2] and that Almost 1 in 5 adults with health care debt either lose their homes or declare bankruptcy ? [2]
Do you simply not care that the people in your community and society struggle to get the bare minimum?
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2023/...
[2] https://www.retireguide.com/retirement-planning/risks/medica...
Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money
#33The mistake was paying anything. If you paid anything on it, it then becomes collectable.
Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money
#34Imagine if they passed a common sense requirement that is you want any payment it needs to be a single bill, day of service, plain language.
I was thinking we should use the proposition system here in CA to get this through- who wouldn't vote for it.
Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not donations. It’s the fact that the largest employer in nearly every congressional district is a healthcare system. Heard this from a guy who worked on the ACA.
I never really thought about it, but you could effectively use sick people to import money into your desolate community. In the same way that tourists bring tourists dollars, sick people bring government dollars.
There are some poorer countries, which do specialize in excellent health care for economic reasons.
Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money
#36To the hospital systems and insurance companies, the confusion is a feature, not a bug. They assume most patients and their families will just knuckle under and pay what they're told they owe. Since the health care sector is one of the largest political donors, elected officials have little incentive to fix anything, so they nibble at the edges and call it reform.
It’s not donations. It’s the fact that the largest employer in nearly every congressional district is a healthcare system. Heard this from a guy who worked on the ACA.
Even beyond employment, healthcare represents a ridiculous 18% of the US GDP these days.
Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love my quality of care in the US. My insurance is quite reasonable compared to what my increased tax burden might look like overseas. I can’t imagine living in a nation that would make me wait months for something like an MRI, I love living in a nation where I can get an MRI for myself and my dog in the same day. I also enjoy living in a nation that doesn’t suggest I kill myself over trivial situations and backlog…
> I love living in a nation where I can get an MRI for myself and my dog in the same day You love living in a nation where millions of people can't afford basic healthcare for themselves but your dog can get an MRI same day.
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Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money
#38The US "healthcare system" is a criminal organization. And the US government is in on that con. The USA is such a farce, it's impossible to grasp the totality of it all.
Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money
#39I really don't understand why the US doesn't have a grown up healthcare system. Do you just not see how much better healthcare is in the rest of the developed world?
The problem in the US is that each of the parties wants to solve it in a different way, so neither has broad enough political support to easily pass, but both of them have strong opposition from a different constituency.
The Democrats keep proposing some kind of single payer system, but without addressing any of the causes of the existing high prices (because that would gore the ox of all those healthcare providers, who have a lot of political power), so in practice the result would be to move the absurdly high cost fully onto the taxpayer, but they can't get through a tax increase that high. There are also some aspects of the US heathcare system (certainly not the price) that people do like, and their proposals would tend to make those parts worse.
The Republicans are mostly content to do nothing, but their main proposal when they have one is to push things like price transparency and regulatory reform. Those proposals have a lot of potential, but they would come entirely out of the margins of the aforementioned healthcare providers, so they can't get any meaningful support from across the aisle or even within their own party. Which is why they're mostly content to do nothing.
It also doesn't help that most of the reform efforts have been attempts to do the first one, which doesn't reduce the cost, but consumes activism resources to promote a proposal that either doesn't work or doesn't pass.
Re: She paid husband's hospital bill. A year after his death, they wanted more money
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love my quality of care in the US. My insurance is quite reasonable compared to what my increased tax burden might look like overseas. I can’t imagine living in a nation that would make me wait months for something like an MRI, I love living in a nation where I can get an MRI for myself and my dog in the same day. I also enjoy living in a nation that doesn’t suggest I kill myself over trivial situations and backlog…
> I love my quality of care in the US. My insurance is quite reasonable Does it matter to you that 27.6 million of your countrymen have no insurance? [1] Does it matter to you that 66.5% of all bankruptcies are due to medical bills [2] and that Almost 1 in 5 adults with health care debt either lose their homes or declare bankruptcy ? [2] Do you simply not care that the people in your community and society struggle to…
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