5 ms·

>The whole situation seems like a melt-down ready to happen. How will it melt down, won't they just become infirm or die?

by hnaccy 8y ago

drspacemonkey 8y ago
My guess is that it would be more like "get sick, don't seek healthcare until it's an emergency, go to emergency room, rack up many thousands of dollars in medical debt, be unable to pay it back, linger for a while, then die".
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
smileysteve 8y ago
Skyrocketing bankruptcy rates and losses of generational wealth. Potentially causing the next recession. Or, we modify the system, the whole health insurance industry and hospital industry causes a recession.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Skyrocketing bankruptcy rates and losses of generational wealth. The people who can't afford insurance aren't the people that have substantial generational wealth to lose, generally.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- mlindner 8y ago
  You know we didn't have this problem back in the early 1900s. It would be helpful if regulation didn't completely eliminate the ability of unions to pool together funds and create their own mini-insurance collectives. Regulation killed that by forcing all doctors to be licensed, a very expensive process that limits the supply of doctors and nurses.
  - mcguire 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Brinkley?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Brinkley?wprov=sfla1
  - smileysteve 8y ago
    > You know we didn't have this problem back in the early 1900s. 1900s... so, the X-Ray machine had just been invented. Antibiotics, Radiation, Chemotherapy, laparoscopy, endoscopy, the mri, titanium, stainless steel. Medicine was in a relative infancy and outcomes were much, much worse.
vertexFarm 8y ago
That has a very bad impact on the economy. When lots of people (it's a systemic problem, it's going to be LOTS of people) who are a part of this society start to become infirm, die out prematurely, leave the workforce, undergo radical drops in productivity, or merely become financially crippled from dealing with normal healthcare costs--that will send ripples through the economy. Our style of healthcare is a ludicrous expense for us all. It's a lot bigger than just the sticker price. It's not just their own problem. They won't simply die and get out of the way of the more fortunate.
michaelkschmidt 8y ago
At a certain price point (% of income), people stop buying insurance. You can buy a lot of healthcare services for $20K a year. To your point, the meltdown is more on the insurance side. The normal, every day providers will just charge patients directly. The issue is the people who get "left behind"--ones who have large numbers of issues. All our insurance money right now goes to provide for them. If insurance collapses, what happens to them?
- ryandrake 8y ago
  > You can buy a lot of healthcare services for $20K a year. You must be joking. In the US, that $20k would barely cover a pregnancy. I’m about to blow $10k on a few dental bridges. It’s insanity.
  - souprock 8y ago
    It's about $2000 to $4000 for a non-hospital midwife with an assistant, toward the higher end of that range for at-home and toward the lower end for the midwife's office.
    - ryandrake 8y ago
      ...if you have great insurance or live in a very, very cheap area. Our family was out of pocket over $10k with “standard mediocre” tech company health insurance. A UCSF study found that California women giving birth were charged from $3,296 to $37,227 for an uncomplicated vaginal delivery, depending on which hospital they visited. For a C-section, women were billed between $8,312 and nearly $71,000. 1: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/01/111071/how-much-does-it-cost-have-baby-hospital https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/01/111071/how-much-does-it-co...
      - souprock 8y ago
        No, that is the bare price. Insurance drops it more. For a recent baby, my price went from about $3500 down to about $1000 due to insurance, though we had to prepay more and we're still trying to get back some of the difference. Back when I had better insurance and lived in an expensive location, the full cost was covered by insurance. I've never heard of it being over $5000. I can imagine that an at-home birth in San Francisco might be that bad or worse, since the midwife needs to deal with the cost of living. The problem here is "depending on which hospital they visited". There is no need to involve a hospital (full of exotic infections) for a normal bodily function. That is why your cost is so high.

>The whole situation seems like a melt-down ready to happen. How will it melt down, won't they just become infirm or die?

by hnaccy 8y ago

>The whole situation seems like a melt-down ready to happen. How will it melt down, won't they just become infirm or die?

drspacemonkey 8y ago

My guess is that it would be more like "get sick, don't seek healthcare until it's an emergency, go to emergency room, rack up many thousands of dollars in medical debt, be unable to pay it back, linger for a while, then die".

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

smileysteve 8y ago

Skyrocketing bankruptcy rates and losses of generational wealth. Potentially causing the next recession. Or, we modify the system, the whole health insurance industry and hospital industry causes a recession.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Skyrocketing bankruptcy rates and losses of generational wealth. The people who can't afford insurance aren't the people that have substantial generational wealth to lose, generally.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
mlindner 8y ago
You know we didn't have this problem back in the early 1900s. It would be helpful if regulation didn't completely eliminate the ability of unions to pool together funds and create their own mini-insurance collectives. Regulation killed that by forcing all doctors to be licensed, a very expensive process that limits the supply of doctors and nurses.
- mcguire 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Brinkley?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Brinkley?wprov=sfla1
- smileysteve 8y ago
  > You know we didn't have this problem back in the early 1900s. 1900s... so, the X-Ray machine had just been invented. Antibiotics, Radiation, Chemotherapy, laparoscopy, endoscopy, the mri, titanium, stainless steel. Medicine was in a relative infancy and outcomes were much, much worse.

vertexFarm 8y ago

That has a very bad impact on the economy. When lots of people (it's a systemic problem, it's going to be LOTS of people) who are a part of this society start to become infirm, die out prematurely, leave the workforce, undergo radical drops in productivity, or merely become financially crippled from dealing with normal healthcare costs--that will send ripples through the economy. Our style of healthcare is a ludicrous expense for us all. It's a lot bigger than just the sticker price. It's not just their own problem. They won't simply die and get out of the way of the more fortunate.

michaelkschmidt 8y ago

At a certain price point (% of income), people stop buying insurance. You can buy a lot of healthcare services for $20K a year. To your point, the meltdown is more on the insurance side. The normal, every day providers will just charge patients directly. The issue is the people who get "left behind"--ones who have large numbers of issues. All our insurance money right now goes to provide for them. If insurance collapses, what happens to them?

ryandrake 8y ago
> You can buy a lot of healthcare services for $20K a year. You must be joking. In the US, that $20k would barely cover a pregnancy. I’m about to blow $10k on a few dental bridges. It’s insanity.
- souprock 8y ago
  It's about $2000 to $4000 for a non-hospital midwife with an assistant, toward the higher end of that range for at-home and toward the lower end for the midwife's office.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    ...if you have great insurance or live in a very, very cheap area. Our family was out of pocket over $10k with “standard mediocre” tech company health insurance. A UCSF study found that California women giving birth were charged from $3,296 to $37,227 for an uncomplicated vaginal delivery, depending on which hospital they visited. For a C-section, women were billed between $8,312 and nearly $71,000. 1: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/01/111071/how-much-does-it-cost-have-baby-hospital https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/01/111071/how-much-does-it-co...
    - souprock 8y ago
      No, that is the bare price. Insurance drops it more. For a recent baby, my price went from about $3500 down to about $1000 due to insurance, though we had to prepay more and we're still trying to get back some of the difference. Back when I had better insurance and lived in an expensive location, the full cost was covered by insurance. I've never heard of it being over $5000. I can imagine that an at-home birth in San Francisco might be that bad or worse, since the midwife needs to deal with the cost of living. The problem here is "depending on which hospital they visited". There is no need to involve a hospital (full of exotic infections) for a normal bodily function. That is why your cost is so high.