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42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

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Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#171

Post by chris_va »

teekert wrote: post #143
kbos87 wrote: post #118

I recently watched a family member go through this. A few things that were sobering to see: - Three weeks in she was buried in paperwork. One chemo treatment would turn into 4-5 invoices from different subcontractors at a single hospital, some covered by her insurance, others not covered. Her insurer denied claims arbitrarily and made her go through a bunch of invasive and unnecessary procedures to prove her illness.…

For someone living in the Netherlands this sounds truly savage and heart breaking. I really, really wouldn't want to live in the US.

To play devil's advocate, looking at 5-year survival rates by country, you'd be 15-20% more likely to survive in the US after you contract cancer than in the Netherlands. YMMV.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#172

Post by FabHK »

rayiner wrote: post #135
FabHK wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What strikes me as disingenuous about your posture is this: You are basically arguing that the insurers are introducing lifetime caps (making life much worse for the affected individuals, basically nullifying the whole point of insurance) not out of concern for their profit margin, but out of the goodness of their hearts to keep the premiums low for the paying public. That strikes me as unlikely. Of course, if you do…

> not out of concern for their profit margin, but out of the goodness of their hearts to keep the premiums low for the paying public. Lowering premiums allows insurers to win customers away from competing insurers. It's e.g. why HP sells business laptops with awful LCD panels. It's not because HP makes fat profits on each laptop (their margins are razor thin). It's because the lower price allows them to take sales aw…

I appreciate the informative reply.

> Lowering premiums allows insurers to win customers away from competing insurers.

Absolutely. That's what leads to competition with insurance plans that are superficially more attractive ("hey, cheaper premiums"), while basically nullifying the benefits of insurance (by making you and your family broke when things turn bad - and then you die).

The alternate system doesn't need to optimise for "optics" & sales, but can optimise eg for QALYs.

Of course neither system can overcome the fundamental issue that you can't pay for unlimited treatment for all. But quite evidently, the US system leads to harrowing quandaries for many ill people and their families, worse overall health outcomes, higher overall costs, and richer health insurance CEOs than what's done in all other developed countries; and I still don't understand why you appear to defend it.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#173

Post by 738472527784 »

expertentipp wrote: post #97
ttul wrote: post #27

* In the United States.

In most of the world, even in poorer EU states, these super advanced and expensive treatments are not available and people simply die without getting a chance. Occassionaly one hears in media about some crowdfunding campaing for „unique treatment in the US”.

Citation needed.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#174

Post by [deleted] »

Pharmakon wrote: post #4

Sometimes I’m just amazed that people haven’t risen up in bloody revolt yet. Recently my mother had a flare-up up radiation-induced pneumonitis and the PPO insurance she pays $14,000 annually wouldn’t approve a single unit of Advair. It took a week of talking to doctors and insurance drones to figure out that they were pushing her to an alternative that cost them $100 less. If I woke up tomorrow and people were burni…

[deleted]

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#175

Post by woofyman »

gerbilly wrote: post #153
toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would healthcare-centric revolt look like? You would need to apply pressure to specific congressional representatives, who support a specific ideology and don't believe in universal healthcare (A Crowdpac campaign has funded close to $4 million dollars to challenge Susan Collins when she's up for reelection due to her supreme court vote; that most likely won't scale). I could of course see rouge elements of such…

> What would healthcare-centric revolt look like? Everybody refusing to pay their hospital bills en masse maybe?

Make Congress buy their own health insurance.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#176

Post by chimeracoder »

FabHK wrote: post #172
rayiner wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not out of concern for their profit margin, but out of the goodness of their hearts to keep the premiums low for the paying public. Lowering premiums allows insurers to win customers away from competing insurers. It's e.g. why HP sells business laptops with awful LCD panels. It's not because HP makes fat profits on each laptop (their margins are razor thin). It's because the lower price allows them to take sales aw…

I appreciate the informative reply. > Lowering premiums allows insurers to win customers away from competing insurers. Absolutely. That's what leads to competition with insurance plans that are superficially more attractive ("hey, cheaper premiums"), while basically nullifying the benefits of insurance (by making you and your family broke when things turn bad - and then you die). The alternate system doesn't need to…

> But quite evidently, the US system leads to harrowing quandaries for many ill people and their families, worse overall health outcomes, higher overall costs, and richer health insurance CEOs than what's done in all other developed countries; and I still don't understand why you appear to defend it.

We're specifically talking about cancer treatment in this thread, where the data is pretty clear: the US has dramatically better survival rates for cancer in the US, and the gap is even wider for forms of cancer which are considered highly treatable.

Yes, people in the US pay a lot for cancer treatment, but the overall outcomes are not worse.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#177

Post by _mitch »

chris_va wrote: post #171
teekert wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone living in the Netherlands this sounds truly savage and heart breaking. I really, really wouldn't want to live in the US.

To play devil's advocate, looking at 5-year survival rates by country, you'd be 15-20% more likely to survive in the US after you contract cancer than in the Netherlands. YMMV.

Do you have a source for that claim?

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#178

Post by woofyman »

so_tired wrote: post #49

I am sympathetic. From HN stories, the US health care situations seems abysmal. BUT, i want to make 3 counter points, if only for the sake of discussion. a. Cancer for many is a terminal disease. There are always some very very expensive and experimental or marginal treatments. If u have money, and are going to die, and decide to spend all you can to squeeze an extra year of life , i am very sympathetic but even the…

>only in the US could a new $60K car be described as "a low cost model"

Only wealthy people consider 60k a low cost vehicle.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#179

Post by bluGill »

sangnoir wrote: post #140
njarboe wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every European health care system, I believe, has some way of limiting the amount of care provided to people. It is just not so out in the open as a dollar cap on what people can get in a lifetime. Not every possible, super-expensive procedure is approved to be available to people through the public healthcare system. (Would love to hear of a country that has "universal health care" that does not limit what procedure…

> If you have a cancer and can afford to employ a small research team for a few million a year, your chances them finding a custom way to beat it is much better than just trying to select from the existing treatments already out there. Is there a public example of a rich person that 'beat' cancer this way?

Not really (that I know of). Andy Grove did spend a few months researching cancer before forcing his doctors to give him a new treatment that was showing better lab results than the traditional one, and the cure he got was probably better than the transnational one (less side effects). However from what I can tell the only thing he spent was his own time which means nothing a poor person couldn't do.

The option is open to anyone who is rich, and if you have an slow incurable cancer it is reasonable to try: you don't have anything to lose and it might work. Of course if your cancer is already curable focus on the existing cure. If the cancer is fast you don't have enough time to for research to produce results. At best it is a long shot, but it is what you have.

If you are young and healthy you actually have a better chance of your small donation making a difference. Just figure out what cancer you are at risk for and start regular donations to that research now. While your donation alone won't do much, the regular source of income helps those already doing the research keep going for the years required to get results. Your smaller donation along with others goes farther because time is a factor. The only problem is which: the cancer mom's mom had, the cancer dad's mom had, the cancer mom's brother had, the non-hereditary cancer both dad's brother and sister had, the cancer someone else in the family will get in two years?

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#180

Post by platz »

Bjorkbat wrote: post #138
kbos87 wrote: post #118

I recently watched a family member go through this. A few things that were sobering to see: - Three weeks in she was buried in paperwork. One chemo treatment would turn into 4-5 invoices from different subcontractors at a single hospital, some covered by her insurance, others not covered. Her insurer denied claims arbitrarily and made her go through a bunch of invasive and unnecessary procedures to prove her illness.…

I'm curious to find out what it would take for someone to create a service that counters some of these dark patterns. The abundance of companies using dark patterns in their subscriptions to prevent subscription cancellations has led to other companies offering services that allow you to manage your various subscriptions with ease and cancel subscriptions with even greater ease. I'm wondering what it would take to ap…

It's called medical tourism
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