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Absolutely. Creating a better safety net WOULD really help innovation -- being terrified of not having health insurance is a huge barrier to joining startups fo

• palish 17y ago
  What a strange fear -- being afraid of not having health insurance. I haven't had a "real job" or health insurance for about a year now, and I don't care at all. If something bad happens to me, I'll put the bill on my credit cards. I doubt anything will happen though. I'm young, healthy, and don't get into car accidents by being stupid. Statistics are on my side here, and I feel completely comfortable living without health insurance for awhile. Unless you have some kind of condition, is there any situation in which the fear of not having health insurance is actually justifiable? I mean, if you want to avoid paying off a huge hospital bill over time, then ok... but come on, if you're starting a startup, gambling a 0.001% chance (or whatever) that you might have to pay 4-5k off over a few years seems like an insanely good bet. Also, I heard from a friend (who is very probably wrong about this) that you don't actually have to pay off a hospital bill. It won't count against your credit score. Is this true? I would never do something like that, but... if not paying the bill doesn't count against your credit score, then I can see why people might not pay it.
  • jorgem 17y ago
    >> Unless you have some kind of condition Apparently, a lot of people do... otherwise the nation wouldn't spend such a large percentage of the GDP on medical care. Be thankful you're not old, yet.
    • prodigal_erik 17y ago
      Yeah, some kind of condition? I'm made out of meat, doesn't that count?
  • timr 17y ago
    "Also, I heard from a friend (who is very probably wrong about this) that you don't actually have to pay off a hospital bill. It won't count against your credit score. Is this true? I would never do something like that, but... if not paying the bill doesn't count against your credit score, then I can see why people might not pay it." Your friend is wrong. Google "medical bankruptcy".
  • potatolicious 17y ago
    I'm 23, healthy, and took a bad spill a few weeks ago. Nothing too serious, but it did require some stitching. Total bill? $1553. This is a very significant sum for people with regular, consistent income. For someone subsisting on ramen to launch their next great idea, this is crippling. Also, I highly doubt the credit score thing is true.
  • noonespecial 17y ago
    I'm older, have children, and have been in two car accidents (one very serious) because someone else was being stupid (and uninsured). Having treatment refused to my children because they are not insured (or not insured enough) is quite frankly terrifying. The system standing between me and medical machines and professionals is damn near random and I find it terrifying. Enough that I've had serious pause when striking out on my own. Not everyone who starts startups (or other business) is 23 and single.
  • abstractbill 17y ago
    If you don't even have major medical, you're gambling with an almost unlimited downside. And it's not just you who will pick up the tab if you lose. If you have a serious enough accident, you'll become one of the people who are causing healthcare costs to rise for everyone else.
  • IsaacSchlueter 17y ago
    It does affect your credit, in some cases, even IF an insurance company steps in (or fails to). I got in a car accident in 2000, other driver at fault. Their insurance company agreed to pay the medical bill. I didn't realize until 3 years later, when the collection agency tracked me down, that they never did. That crap finally fell off just a few years ago, but cost me who knows how much in added interest rates over the years. Not having health insurance is pretty stupid, even if you're healthy, young, broke, and in college. If you're starting a company, it's just completely irresponsible.
    • ryanwaggoner 17y ago
      I don't think your conclusion follows from your story.
  • pbrown 17y ago
    I take exception to most of this statement. My story: At 25 years old, I took every penny I had in savings (about $300k) and started a company. I "created" 7 well-paying jobs. I put every single penny I had into my company. I had "major medical" insurance, which I paid about $600 a month for. Two years later, we were doing about 2 million a year. Still, I poured every penny I had into the company "creating" additional good-paying jobs. Then I had a stroke. Yes, at 27. Because the doctors could not find a "reason" for my stroke, the insurance company paid a grand total of $2700, mostly for the ambulance and the care I received in said ambulance. I was left with a bill of $67,000. Yes 3 zeros. Because of how long I was in the hospital and recovering, and because my business was based on relationships with my clients, the business faltered, and I eventually shut it down. I am now paying off every cent of what I owed on the business, as well as that $67k in medical bills. Moral of the story: don't think you're invincible because you're young, or because you don't have a pre-existing condition. Also, I can absolutely assure you that medical debt DOES affect your credit. Here's the crazy part. I'd do it all again in a heartbeat, and I will.
    • lief79 17y ago
      I'm assuming you did not have group insurance at some point so it was deemed preexisting? Otherwise, how did they get out of paying for it?
  • deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
    • pbrown 17y ago
      I hope you don't think I was ridiculing you. Believe it or not, I actually upmodded your original post because provided an alternative point of view. I may disagree with it, but it takes two sides to have a decent conversation.
    • noonespecial 17y ago
      I see plenty of disagreement, but not a great deal of ridicule. It sounded like you were insinuating that fears people do have of being without health insurance are unfounded. This was not a popular opinion. It happens. I got a -20 once before the -4 limit was imposed and I'm still not quite sure why it was such a hot button. We're an opinionated bunch and we like to play rough when it comes to reason and insight, but from what I can tell, its always done in a spirit of camaraderie and respect. If you want to see public ridicule in action, take a gander at 4chan.
      • palish 17y ago
        You're right. I'm not quite sure why I felt so strongly negative just then. I think it's because capping downvoting to -4 is still too low. I really wish downvoting was capped at 0. That way, comments still get filtered to the bottom, but people who get downvoted (and spent ~20 minutes writing the comment) don't feel like they just wasted their time for no reason at all. Seeing my (interesting, if inflammatory) comment at -4 when a ridiculing reply was at 5 just set me off.
    • abstractbill 17y ago
      Your comment was unfortunately not just wrong, it was dangerously wrong. I'd just hate for anyone to read it and think "he's got a point", sorry. "I joined 2 days after HN was first opened publicly, and was in the top 10 for a few months a while ago (a year or so), to give you an idea of how times have changed on HN." Looks like I joined the same day you did, and I think I was also in the top 10 for a while. I don't think us not being in the top 10 any more is evidence of "times changing" on HN (other than the fact that the community has grown a lot and so it's progressively harder to stay in the top-N).
  • davidw 17y ago
    At 21, I had a 'spontaneous pneumothorax', or collapsed lung, which was not due to any sort of accident or trauma, but 'just happened'. I was in good shape, going for regular bike rides, didn't (don't) smoke or do drugs, and was generally very fit and healthy. Luckily insurance covered it, but I think the total bill for the week in the hospital and operation was something like $20,000, and it took me a few months to really get back into the swing of things.
  • sethg 17y ago
    Last summer, my aunt was crossing the street in NYC and was hit by a cyclist. She landed on her head and ended up spending days in a coma, weeks in a hospital ward, months in physical therapy, and a six-figure medical bill. Fortunately, she had insurance. (If she didn’t, would she have received all that physical therapy, or would she have been discharged as soon as she was capable of walking out of the hospital under her own power, even if she was incapable of getting a job or caring for her children?)
• ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  Creating a better safety net WOULD really help innovation This seems remarkably unsupported. I don't think of Europe as being very innovative, despite their impressive social safety net. And I think of Asia as being very innovative and entrepreneurial, despite their lack of much of a safety net. Hmmm... The reality of a great safety net is that someone has to pay for it. Who is that?
  • IsaacSchlueter 17y ago
    As much as we spend on medical care that doesn't make us healthier, we spend more on wars that don't make us safer. I'm a bit of a die-hard let-the-bozos-starve sort of wack-job libertarian. So, what's a bigger infringement of rights? Take hundreds of billions of dollars from US citizens, and spend it enforcing arbitrary rules on a populace that doesn't have representation or a vote? Or take billions from US citizens and spend it patching up said citizens when they fall down or get sick? I hate taxes. Really, I do, as much as anyone you'll ever meet. And I hope that the market could someday solve this problem more efficiently. But I also think that killing people is a lot more evil than healing people. I voted for Ron Paul largely because he was the only candidate who said outright that he would shut down all unwanted military bases in his first year. Dismantle the military empire, and you've got money for medical care. Additionally, adding a base level of safety net could be a disruptive force that allows smaller and more agile companies (ie, in the 1-10 employee range) to get more done with less overhead, which is exactly the sort of thing that needs to happen if stuff like this is going to be solved cleverly. Come on, we're hackers, right? Think about it. This is a complex problem with a ton of moving parts, and that's kind of what we do, isn't it? So, apply the same maxims that serve you so well in dealing with software: Measure before you optimize. Solve the big problems first. Patch the in-production product, and THEN design its replacement. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
    • ryanwaggoner 17y ago
      As much as we spend on medical care that doesn't make us healthier, we spend more on wars that don't make us safer. A bit of a false dichotomy, don't you think? I agree with most of the rest of your post, though I think that the primary effect of increasing the safety net will be moral hazard issues, not people jumping to do a startup now that they have a safety net. People who do startups are incredibly rare, and somehow I doubt that's because of any safety net issues.