Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by olddustytrail » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 5:03 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #180

swatcoder wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to wonder. You can read the poll and results methodology yourself. The answer is two clicks from the article, both links above the fold on their respective page. If you’re being genuine in your curiosity, it would improve the discussion here if you shared what answer you find.

> The survey was designed to reach adults who currently have health care debt or have had health care debt in the last five years . In order to do this, the probability panel sample included an oversample of panel members with annual household incomes less than $30,000, individuals with current or past health care debt (n=641) were included in the sample. In addition, 52 adults with past or current health care debt w…

> So they intentionally targeted people with debt, so the "63% percent of respondents" is not able to

No, that's not how it works. You oversample a group you are interested in and then weight it.

To be honest, you don't know enough about statistics to evaluate this. You should either learn more or accept the conclusions of those who know more.

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

#232

Post by kube-system » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 5:07 PM UTC

antisthenes wrote: post #224

coffeefirst wrote: post #150

By the way, if you'd actually like to do something about this that benefits real people right now, RIP Medical Debt (mentioned in the article and has good ratings) buys debt at 1% of its face value and immediately forgives it. https://ripmedicaldebt.org

How can I submit my debt? Or is it kind of a site that buys debt that the hospital has 0% chance of collecting anyway?

"Buying debt" is analogous to "debt sent to collections"

So yes, the latter.

Basically, that site helps people to not get phone calls about bills they were never going to pay.

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

#233

Post by avgDev » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 5:07 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #227

avgDev wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uncle was in ICU for 2 week before his death with multiple organ failure. His stay was more than $350k. Basically the hospital took the house he worked his whole life for.

Was your uncle qualified for medicare? We recently had several members need end of life care and they didn't have to pay any of the hospital bills. Many bills we did receive, we called the charging company and they were waived immediately "oh I guess we made a $100K mistake" or "medicare already reimbursed us, that was just a courtesy notice."

Honestly, I am not sure. I wasn't well versed in personal finance/healthcare/money back then. He destroyed his family and his wife left him. His kids don't really want to discuss that period of their life at all, so we never talk about it.

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

#234

Post by willcipriano » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

coffeefirst wrote: post #150

By the way, if you'd actually like to do something about this that benefits real people right now, RIP Medical Debt (mentioned in the article and has good ratings) buys debt at 1% of its face value and immediately forgives it. https://ripmedicaldebt.org

Old medical debt (the kind you get for 1%) doesn't have a big impact on credit scores and don't they owe income tax on the forgiven debt?

I wouldn't pay income tax on something like half million dollars for a slightly better chance to be able to take out a loan at what will be 10% or so soon.

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

#235

Post by justinzollars » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #166

justinzollars wrote: post #140

I see any suggestion to the contrary of Socialized medicine being downvoted. Honest question. How do you propose to expand healthcare with 130% Debt to GDP and 8.9% inflation? It seems we are broke and there is a demand from the HN community to spend more? Feels like hitting the accelerator as one drives off a cliff and invokes memories of Thelma & Louise

We pay nearly double for our privatized monstrosity, compared to the most expensive socialized systems. Such savings! So cheap! Very efficient! Can the treasury possibly bear the expense of spending less than double? ------ Yeah, a transition is going to be an expensive shitshow and now is not a good time, but just about any other time in the last decade was a good time and in a year or two it will be a decent time a…

Politics aside, money puts a cap on everything: wars, social services, etc.

The issue at hand is to take something the public spends nothing on, that the government gets for "free" and to put that on the public balance sheet - a huge cost. I guess we could balance that out with a tax, but who would like that? And even if we were to raise taxes - it wouldn't help our balance sheet since we already spend 30% more than we take in. Looking at the balance sheet as it stands today, we can't even afford what we currently spend. And inflation is on the rise.

I just don't see it ever happening. Save a collapse and total reset of the current monetary system.

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

#236

Post by hedora » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 5:13 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #203

America has socialized healthcare with a hundred extra steps and implemented in the most inefficient way possible so that everyone comes out worse. 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. People don't get early preventive care due to cos…

Also, something like 20-33% of health care dollars go to claim submission/processing at the doctor/hospital and the insurance company. Those people do nothing but argue with each other

There's a highly rated HMO around here. Their costs are significantly lower than regular insurance, and they seem to pass some of that on to customers in the form of health care.

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

#237

Post by hedora » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

otikik wrote: post #211

SoftTalker wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The healthcare sector is still quite profitable despite the debt, slow payments, and defaults. What is their motivation to change?

Joseph-Ignace Guillotin invented something that would motivate them.

Yeah, but they're ridiculoisly overpriced, and regulatory capture around medical devices means new entrants' devices will never be approved by the FDA.

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

#238

Post by hedora » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 5:22 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #114

david_l_lin wrote: post #87

Just watched John Q (2002) last night, and can't believe that despite all the attention it gets, nothing has changed at all. Can't say I'm surprised though.

Basically the way things work in the US is that even if you can get an overwhelming majority of people to agree that something is a problem, you will never get them to agree on a solution. In this instance, the two proposed solutions are: make healthcare the government's responsibility like many countries that don't have this problem, or do nothing because that solution isn't perfect.

No, the problem is that the actions of the federal government aren't even correlated to public opinion any more.

When Obamacare was passed, 70% of the population wanted Medicare for all instead:

https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/412545-70-...

In 2020, 54% supported single payer health care:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/29/increasing-... overage/

I can't find any post-covid polls, but states are currently trying to step in and implement it locally. Don't hold your breath.

Edit: the medicare for all poll was under trump

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

#239

Post by DavidPeiffer » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 5:24 PM UTC

silicon2401 wrote: post #229

If you have insurance with an out of pocket max, how is it possible to end up paying for more than that?

Sometimes services are rendered which insurance does not deem required, and then refuses to pay for, and some items are simply not covered at all. For example, insulin may be covered by insurance, but needles and syringes are not.

On top of that, it's basically impossible to anticipate the cost ahead of time for many procedures. One person I know was quoted $2,000 to $30,000 for a portion of a surgery that is not covered by insurance, depending on exactly what needed to be done. How do you even plan for that? At one end, it's like buying ~2 new refrigerators of pain, and the other end is a brand new, top of the line Chevy Bolt.

For many people, hitting max out of pocket is simply not possible without debt. It's common to see 3-5k MOOP, but taking a modest standard of living on an average salary, it's an incredible amount of time to make up for it.

E.g. $5,000 household income (60k annual) * $800 rent

* $1,000 childcare

* $250 gas

* $200 utilities

* $500 groceries

* $500 income taxes

* $250 student loan payments

* $100 car insurance

$1,400 leftover, but there have been no incidental expenses, $800 is probably lower than you could find a 2 bedroom apartment in Iowa, and I'm assuming they own their car outright. Once you hit January 1, your deductible and max out of pocket reset, so you could be like a friend of mine and get MRI's on December 31 and January 1 while staying in the hospital for a couple days on either end. They had to pay their full max out twice because of the timing in the year when they got sick.

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

#240

Post by ishjoh » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 5:26 PM UTC

jioujoijoijoi wrote: post #57

thomasjudge wrote: post #46

Unfortunately a majority of voters in this country reject single-payer coverage on the grounds that it is "socialist"

Nothing is outlawing liberal states from doing it.

Drs and other high earners in the states that introduce socialized health care will leave immediately as the state institutes price controls. There is a reason so many Drs trained in Canada immigrate to the US.