I remember when we bought a house 8 years ago (seems like a lifetime now) talking to the mortgage broker and he basically said they straight-up ignore medical debt because everyone has it and nobody would ever get a loan if it was considered. It’s utterly insane to me how the wealthiest nation in the world can’t keep its citizens healthy and out of debt.
They can, but the current system is far more profitable.
the wealthiest nation in the world can’t keep its citizens healthy and out of debt.
But it can. The wealthiest nation in the world per capita is Luxembourg; then Switzerland. I think Norway finishes the top three. Excellent medical systems.
CUBA’s consolidated single-payer healthcare system beats the US’s #30 rank. And does it far, far cheaper. https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/best-healthcare-in-the-world/
As Jeff Daniels says in the first act of the first episode of Newsroom, " Yosemite?"
Won’t someone PLEASE think of the shareholders?!
yes they do it cheaper because people aren’t afraid of going to the doctor and getting a $500 bill because the doctor’s assistant that was there for 10 minutes is out of network
In Switzerland healthcare, is not bad but expensive. Insurance is mandatory and the same fee for every income. I pay about 12-16% of my gross income for the health of my family. Oh, and this is with the hospitals (and other things) highly subsidized with tax money. Health costs are problematic for the middle class.
That’s lucky of you. Many do take it into account.
What’s nuts is that the majority of people declaring bankruptcy because of medical debt have insurance.
The credit agencies do this, too. Medical debt is either not counted against your credit score or is weighted so little it won’t affect much.
It makes perfect sense, because it’s not an accurate depiction of your credit seeking habits. It is debt that you did not choose to take on.
oh this guy is nearly dead lets take him to money-bags medical
The US healthcare system is a for profit death cult ran by racketeers
The US healthcare systemAmerica is a for profit death cult ran by racketeersFTFY
How dare you be critical of it you commie! /s
deleted by creator
All rights are won through violence
“America has Health Control and Guncare”
It always has. IIRC the biggest reason for bankruptcy in the US has been medical bills, for a while. Our greed driven system is garbage.
Michael Moore made a whole damn documentary about it in 2007, 16 fucking years ago.
Nothing has changed.
They eliminated pre-existing conditions and maximum lifetime payments for health insurance, so that’s not nothing.
But they failed to pass a public option which means health insurance companies have a captive audience for their rent-seeking.
And the Democrats still just talk about getting people affordable “coverage” and not affordable “care.”
And hospitals are still understaffed and mental health care has six month waiting lists.
Mental health care is also often just excluded from coverage. My current job is the first time in my life I’ve had insurance that would cover therapy rather than be like “Look, we gave you one 60 minute session with our free crisis line, what more do you want? If you really need it, it’s only $450 a session if it’s that important.”
I had to call thirteen different therapy offices before I found one that could take me before summer.
Of course, my health insurance website showed them all as “Accepting New Patients”
Maybe there was an asterisk and really tiny font stating “Eventually”.
We have a single wait-list if none are available. They email you when there’s an opening at a PCP in the area, and you can veto or lemon-law two offers before you have to go around again.
Where I live, all care has a six month wait list. I started a new job with new insurance back in April, still haven’t been able to get in anywhere to see a new PCP. My dentist canceled an appointment on me last week and rescheduled it for February.
People say socialized medicine leads to long wait times to see doctors. Well, I’m not seeing them now anyway, so at least it’s less or of my pocket.
deleted by creator
And the Democrats still just talk about getting people affordable “coverage” and not affordable “care.”
You want to review how the Republicans actually convinced people, especially in the poorest regions who’d benefit the most from a system of improved coverage and reduced cost, that it was a bad thing.
Democrats can’t shoot for affordable care; they’re trying to get coverage in the door, at least.
Yes, I am aware that our government is broken and unable to do anything reasonable.
deleted by creator
And the Democrats still just talk about getting people affordable “coverage” and not affordable “care.”
The charitable interpretation is that they’re talking about getting the government to pay for healthcare and they don’t want to make it sound like medical professionals would all become government employees.
deleted by creator
Because that would be a lot less popular. A lot of Americans are terrified of the scenario because they’re afraid of change in general, and they’re afraid the result would be run even worse than the system we have now, because they think governments are inherently less competent than private companies.
I’m not talking about brainwashed Republicans; I mean centrist Dems whose support is absolutely vital for a Dem politician in almost any congressional district.
deleted by creator
No you fucking moron. That’s my parents you’re talking about.
Michael more was FED UP 16 years ago. It’s always been broken
deleted by creator
Not just the biggest, the biggest by far. Two thirds of bankruptcies are due to medical debt.
deleted by creator
At times I wonder if medically assisted suicides are frowned upon due to not being able to further drain the money out of patients and their extended credit lines.
They’re also frowned upon because it’s pretty cruel to tell someone “well, you could just die” because they can’t afford medical treatments or a place to live.
deleted by creator
Not on topic but I recently listened to the Rush Limbaugh episodes of “Behind the Bastards”. I didn’t think I could dislike Rush more than I already did but I found out he was worse than I thought.
Nobody needs to tell us that. We already know.
I’d rather rhave the option than not even ha e autonomy over my own life.
You don’t have to wonder any longer. You’ve figured it out. Take the morality out of many political decisions and you have the right answer. Abortions? – nobody gives a shit about those children. It’s a convenient cover so they don’t have to say “Mothers are killing the thing that we will enslave and drain later on in the economy!” Everyone says that they care about the child until it’s born – they don’t even care before that point. And the lack of care/suffering/poverty of the child afterwards is the point of exploitation. So the system is working as intended. They need more workers, they need to siphon every ounce of production out of those workers.
Abortions? – nobody gives a shit about those children. It’s a convenient cover so they don’t have to say “Mothers are killing the thing that we will enslave and drain later on in the economy!"
What sort of purpose does it serve to force a woman to carry a pregnancy to term when the fetus has a Fatal fetal abnormality?
What sort of purpose does it serve to force a woman to carry a pregnancy
One sterile woman is a good exchange for 10 babies born in poverty who will join the Army.
The policy creates orphans more than it creates a population boom. And eventually people do find ways to prevent/stop pregnancies they’re just more dangerous and you see small bump in births then they go down as women die. With more women dying on their 3rd or 4th child then you get more kids who are ophaned.
The strategic problem is nobody wants orphans so what happens? They get abused or fend for themselves and become unstable. Ain’t many of them going to join the army.
None of those details matter. More meat for the grinder is all they care about.
It amazes me how people went to work sick as if it was normal. Of courses some bosses were assholes and “wouldn’t let you go home” or “needed you at work”. Sure boss let me sneeze in my hand before I shake everybody else’s hand.
Now these days woah big scary covid. If you’re not feeling good please stay home. We should’ve been staying home like 30 yrs ago,
Literally all my coworkers still come to work sick despite having sick leave. Gets everyone else sick.
You say that like we got anything out of covid. Or anyone learned anything about why sick days are needed
deleted by creator
I wonder if it’s a case of empathy being forced on some people, like when a Republican is suddenly LGBT tolerant because one of their own kids came out. But in this case it’s the feeling of worrying about their health or that of a loved one.
Whatever the cause, it’s still a positive change. I’m sure many of us who already saw the sense in staying home will now err on the side of caution a little more often.
Stop paying medical bills. A debt strike would be easier than a general strike.
Well part of it 8s not going to hurt your credit score anymore:
https://www.cnbc.com/select/medical-debt-credit-report/
Any bills under $500 in collections won’t be going against your score. Debts larger than that in collections have to be there for at least a year to be on your credit score and disappear once they are paid.
We could fix all this shit by having the cheaper Medicare for All solution.
Aetna pulled out of my county for five months. I ended up in a ICU for three days, which is about a $50,000 bill.
So now I’m on the hook for an $8,000 out of network deductible.
Fuck U.S. health insurance.
My wife had to go to the ER a few years ago. The hospital we thought we were going to was in network. Unfortunately the ER is a separate entity that was not in network. That was a nice $1000 bill.
So I’m trying to follow the misery in this thread, but I don’t know what “in network” means. Is there some sort of intranet that hospitals and insurance companies use to bill each other? I don’t get it.
Kind of. Insurance companies make deals with healthcare providers to give better rates on procedures than the book price. The book price is the price that the care provider “officially” charges. Usually it is some bullshit number they pull straight out of their ass. If you do not have insurance, they will charge you that made up book price. But you can call them up and negotiate with them because they want some payment and they realize most people cannot pull $50k out of their rectum.
So back to insurance…they negotiate with certain care providers in the region they operate. Those are in network and get better rates. Ones outside of that network get worse rates and insurance generally does not cover most of the cost…unless you have hit your out of pocket maximum for the year. The out of pocket maximum is when you have spent so much out of pocket on things like co-pays and out of network costs that insurance will now start covering 100% of the medical bills.
Not confusing or fucked up at all, right? It gets more complicated because there are also deductibles. That one is similar to out of pocket maximum but insurance does not pay 100%, generally closer to 80%. Your deductible goes toward the out of pocket maximum.
Before Obama, insurance companies also had maximum lifetime benefits. Basically if you were costing them too much for shit like a heart transplant, they’d tell you to fuck off after they already paid out $500k or whatever number they chose.
They could also deny coverage for a pre-existing condition. Generally you would be fine for that one if you had continual coverage but not necessarily. So if that heart transplant person wanted to switch insurance because he had a new job, they could see that he had a transplant previously and decide to not cover them. That one is a bit personal to me because my wife and her mother had a similar issue. My wife had a liver transplant when she was young. My mother-in-law did not ever try to switch jobs because she was afraid that a new insurance would not cover my wife. Dialing in the proper dosage for a growing kid so their liver does not get rejected takes a lot of doctor visits and would have been very costly.
That is nuts. And so complicated! Healthcare here is far from perfect (and getting worse all the time!) but at least it’s not that. How hard of a concept is it that if you’re unwell, you just go to any hospital and get treatment? Good to know that I’d just straight up die in the states though.
Larger companies have teams dedicated to negotiating with the insurance companies and answering insurance questions for employees. All that additional complexity means about 19% of the US GDP goes towards healthcare costs compared with most developed countries spending 10-12%. Even libertarian groups have shown that socialized insurance through extending Medicare to everyone would be cheaper than what we currently do and it would cover everyone (including dental) and there would be no out of network garbage. Several Democratic presidential candidates initially pushed for that at the start of their campaign only to back down from it later on in the race leaving only Sanders pushing for it.
As for straight up dying? Thousands each year die because of lack of insurance. I’m guessing several thousand more die even with insurance because they can’t afford the out of pocket maximum or their insurance declines covering a necessary procedure. I recall one woman who was attacked by a bear and her first thought while being attacked was how she would afford the medical bill if she made it through. And she was right to be worried. Her insurance denied most of her coverage and only paid 20% of her $300k worth of bills.
$500 is nothing. My son fell and hit his head and had a small seizure from the fall… took him to the ER, ct scan, medical exam, anti nausea medication, costed $750 out if pocket AFTER insurance. It was like a $3k medical bill before insurance. For like 2 hours at the ER and a scan… it’s ridiculous.
I’ve been seeing this headline for more than twenty years.
Another 20 years and people might be fed up enough to do something about it.
Mostly they just get sick and die.
How convenient.
I see we’re waiting for the “cancer patients start going into insurance companies with boomboom vests” phase of the crisis
That hits close to home
Yet COVID vaccinations are down…
And “essential workers” are right back to being expected to work while sick…
This is fine.
Nothing changed for “essential workers”. The only reprieve they received was guaranteed time off if they contracted Covid. We still had sick people working, they were the wrong kind of sick.
Got my free COVID shot and my free flu shot 90metres away at the pharmacy. Strolled in, they pulled up my info on pharmanet, all good, let’s do it. Out in 5.
can’t get sick if you can’t afford the diagnosis.
The next obvious evolutionary step.
You Joke, that but that was literally the approach of TFG when it came to covid testing.
I’m American. When I get cancer I plan to have one or two good months and kill myself.
We are so baffled in Europe about how a country that preaches human rights around the world revels in denying its own people one of the most fundamental human rights. Truly mind boggling.
Yeah but have you ever tried to live with only 3 homes instead of 4 or 5? It’s a lot to ask of our dear job creators!
/s
$
Ehrlichman: “Edgar Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit. And the reason that he can … the reason he can do it … I had Edgar Kaiser come in … talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because …”
President Nixon: [Unclear.]
Ehrlichman: “… the less care they give them, the more money they make.”
President Nixon: “Fine.” [Unclear.]
deleted by creator
I view medicine in the US similar to video piracy. If you are going to make access expensive and difficult to obtain, then I have no issue with stealing it. Medical debt is handled differently than other types of debt. IANAL, but I have no qualms with running up a 700k medical debt for life saving treatment then bouncing on the bill.
That’s actually what a lot of people do.
Plenty of medical bills simply go unpaid.
Just go to the hospitals office and tell em to give you the real bill first
Hey I just a had a thought. We should have a vote on student loan debt. If you vote against a blanket clearing of the debt you automatically go on a list of people who can’t declare bankruptcy due to medical debt.
What about us who worked hard AF to pay off their off student loans early?
This was 5 years ago, not 15 or 20. I’m not being petulant or a child
“I had it terrible, so everyone should have it terrible!”
What about those of us that had to starve? You should starve, too!
Obviously we should have been smarter and just committed ppp fraud like the others!
Well that’s different. That one is OK to forgive because…
Well, what about ya? How about you look at the whole system and learn how unsustainable it is? How about you understand that those just finishing the process are in a much worse position than most of those that just finished paying their loans were when they first graduated (and it wasn’t great when you first graduated either).
Well, what about you?
Note: I just finished paying off my student debt in Oct.
Sorry, but taxpayers shouldn’t be bailing out your poor financial decisions. You took out the loans, you can pay them back.
Taxpayers bail out poor financial decisions all the time, I see no reason to stop right before one that would actually help people.
why is this advice only heeded when people are asked to bail out non-billionaires? Feels like we stopped doing that shit over 80 years ago. This cosplay free market shit is so delusional.
We’re constantly bailing out and subsidizing megacorps, but when asked to invest even the tiniest fraction of that spending into education people all pretend that’s not how our economy works. Poor economic decisions that lose trillions of dollars are made all the time but people act like college students are the only ones that should pay for them.
When some idiot buys a government subsidized 80k SUV and cries about gas prices being too high we bail out that dumbass constantly, even buy him a stupid road to drive it on. But college students, well we cant subsidize their luxurious bullshit because jeff bezos’ profit margin won’t go up right away.
Everyone I know has some kind of medical debt. Even my doctor said he ignores his medical bills, who doesn’t. What can you do, when you need medical help and insurance won’t pay for it. Personally I feel that if someone is chronically ill with a debilitating illness, the most humane thing we can do is allow them the choice of assisted suicide.
I think we should do the “Soylent Green” thing. Remember that movie? When someone is too sick, old, or just tired of life, they have the choice of going into a state-run facility where they go into a bed and slowly assisted into death - and their body is used to make more food for other people. I mean, why not - protein is protein and why not solve hunger and pain at the same time.
Personally I feel that if someone is chronically ill with a debilitating illness, the most humane thing we can do is allow them the choice of assisted suicide.
I think the most humane thing to do would be to treat them with the best care we as a society can provide without forcing them into massive debt.
Well sure, if you want to be all humane and LOGICAL about it. (rolls eyes). That would be the best option if it is available - but I’ve seen many patients forced to endure horrible protracted processes of dying without the means to afford any better outcome (and there are some who even the best treatments just can’t help).
The most logical thing would be to eat the rich.
Yes but there’s so much fat to trim away. I think we should give all people a chance to be “at the table.” I mean what’s wrong with human meat? Ounce per ounce it’s more nutritious than the same amount of chicken or beef. Ask the survivors of the Andes’ plane wreck.
We’d have to cook it to the texture of shoe-leather, to make sure to kill whatever yuck that might be in them.
That said, something isn’t right with my body; I’m not tolerating meat well, lately. Considering vegan but not sure how to get plenty of protein, and I do love dairy, which is still less expensive than almond/oat milk (which I like well enough).
We could grind them up and turn them into biodiesel!
Then we pollute the air more. I’m pretty sure there is zero use for billionaires and multimillionaires. Deprogramming and re-education, probably by putting them in crap pay service industry positions, slum dwellings and taking away their toys, including internet and television, and probably telephones that dial more than emergency services.
Tax them first, proportional to gross income.
(You know, like America in the '40s . Do they know that’s one of the few Greats America was, and thus one of the few things they can Make it Again?)
Even like in the fifties would be great!
where they go into a bed and slowly assisted into death
Nah. I’ll take quick and painless. Which also gets into that protein thing. Even today, in a round about way, we all end up eventually as someone else’s food. So may as well take a few middlemen out of the equation and just puree people into McChicken filler.
Well I’d probably take the quick and painless route if I had to make a choice.
But in the movie, it’s entirely painless and the patient gets to watch a cool movie with beautiful music as they are slowly ushered into the “other world.” I think that idea of it being painless and kind of beautiful would make it a lot less dire of an experience (though I like the idea of 25 cent Suicide Booths - there’s something about the silliness of having to use a quarter to make it work - just another bit of randomness that makes the necessity of suicide booths more appealing).
