14 ms·
Half of Americans fear a health-related bankruptcy
- sudosysgen 6y agoThis is not good for any demand-driven economy.
- mrweasel 6y agoIt's honestly a little weird, America health insurance can't be driven by demand. If it where, it would be cheaper. Why is it that the providers and insurance companies isn't trying to undercut each other on price? I know very little about US health insurance, but I can only assume that it's not truly a capitalist system, something else most be at play, driving the prices up.
- macintux 6y agoThere’s absolutely no transparency, which makes it hard for an informed consumer to make decisions based on price. And frankly picking a health care provider based on price feels scary: do you really want the cheapest LASIK procedure around, e.g.
- cyberlurker 6y agoThere isn’t just one cause but here are two I know of: Health insurance companies leave markets where there is competition. When an emergency happens, suddenly you don’t care which hospital you go to, you just want to live/make the pain stop. (Or your family makes that decision)
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoOne reason is that the supply of doctors is artificially limited by the AMA to keep their income up.
- notacoward 6y agoYep. I've been thinking about retiring, and almost certainly would have already if not for the twin spectres of private health-insurance cost vs. unreimbursed medical expense risk. And I'm one of the lucky ones, with healthy savings and no significant medical issues. If it feels like Scylla and Charybdis for me, how terrifying must it be for those less fortunate?
- adrianN 6y agoHave you considered retiring in a different country?
- notacoward 6y agoAbsolutely.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoAustralia is very easy to emigrate to as a technology professional and has a relatively good universal healthcare system. EDIT: @robotbeat: Yes, but I have lost my confidence in the US Congress and the electorate. Until that confidence is restored (Medicare For All is passed), I have to make plans to live in a functioning nation, as a single healthcare event can wipe you out entirely. I would rather pay more taxes (yes! I like taxes, with them I buy civilization) and take my wealth to where sanity prevails (and like minded citizens vote for representatives who vote in their electorate's interest, instead of against them). @wintermutestwin: https://techwireasia.com/2019/08/australia-decides-to-keep-tech-visa-program-after-12-month-pilot/ https://techwireasia.com/2019/08/australia-decides-to-keep-t... https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/visas-for-innovation/global-talent-scheme https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/v...
- Robotbeat 6y agoWon’t you be eligible for Medicare once reaching retirement age anyway? To me, M4A is about everyone BUT retirees. Just lower the eligibility age to zero.
- Taek 6y agoNo price transparency, no ability to choose between doctors, your job decides your insurance. There is no room for a market to function in our health system. With no ability for consumers to move around or even see the differences between different providers, prices will naturally go up, and there will be no pressure to improve care.
- teucris 6y agoI haven’t done a ton of research - do you know of any big healthcare bills have been proposed that resolve these issues?
- pm90 6y agoMedicare for all
- rolobio 6y agoI do not want my health insurance provided by the people that gave us the VA. Look at how "the best of us" are treated by the government when they're no longer needed. How will they treat me who never served them?
- ceejayoz 6y ago> I do not want my health insurance provided by the people that gave us the VA. I mean, those same folks give us Medicare, which is both quite popular with the public and gets better marks on results, cost, and efficiency than private healthcare. I see no evidence my insurance company cares about me any more than the VA cares about its patients. Does the VA have problems? Absolutely. Is "give up and give it to for-profit corporations" likely to fix that? Nope.
- refurb 6y agoI’m not sure being private is the issue. Medicare Part D (pharmacy) is entirely run by private insurers, Medicare just funds it. And Medicare Part C is a private insurer option, where again, Medicare just funds premiums. It’s how the system is set up that’s the issue, not whether it’s managed by the government or a private insurer.
- pgstits 6y agoGod bless the USA
- kaesar14 6y agoGod Bless America! Land of the rich, home of the sick and poor.
- jupp0r 6y agoLet's just hope that all these people get out and vote this November. This is a fixable problem.
- blackflame7000 6y agoNeither of the candidates are going to fix this problem
- jupp0r 6y agoThere is more than the presidency on the ballot.
- kaesar14 6y agoWhat could you possibly vote for on the ballot to fix this.
- abootstrapper 6y agoYou could vote for reps that believe in universal healthcare or at least support ACA. Those reps will overwhelmingly be democrats. So vote D down the ballet.
- tedmcory77 6y agoEvery health event is literally a blank check to multiple unknown providers. There's nothing to stop them from charging whatever they want.
- Clubber 6y agoThis is absolutely correct. In fact, most of their master price list is artificially inflated as a negotiating point with insurance companies. If you are unable to negotiate before your care, you get the hospital's mater price list price. The worst part is most medical care is inelastic, meaning you don't really get to pick and choose, like in an emergency.
- jschwartzi 6y agoYeah this is 95% of what my fiance and I talked about when deciding whether we wanted to have a baby. It wasn't about paying for the kid's schooling or where we were going to live. It literally boiled down to whether we were willing to potentially wipe out our entire savings and go into debt to have a child. And when she quit her job earlier this year it was mainly because we didn't want her to get sick and hospitalized because then I would get sick and hospitalized, and that would completely erase our savings. Thank god her previous employer had good medical insurance so we could do COBRA. Now we just have to have a kid within 18 months of her separation date. The insurance system in the US is completely broken because it doesn't actually insure you against catestrophic costs.
- aidenn0 6y agoYeah, health insurance in the US is kind of the opposite of insurance. It covers every-day expenses more-or-less but effectively will not cover unexpected large expenses (because the insurance companies will put the full force of their legal resources into not paying large claims).
- duxup 6y agoThat greatly depends on the type of insurance / plan (or at least it did...). Cheaper plans absolutely apply to what you describe, or at least did a while ago, other plans do not. Even knowing can be hard. But your description is way too general.
- aidenn0 6y agoAll 4 employer provided health insurance programs I've used worked that way, though only the last two were post ACA.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoThat’s not true at all. Other than ACA mandated well visits and vaccines, insurance forces you to pay for everyday expenses via deductibles and copays until you reach your out of pocket maximum. And then insurance will take over for large expenses. And by and large, they do pay for the largest expenses, such as medications for anemia and cancer treatment and NICU situation.
- axaxs 6y agoThis is ridiculous. I'm what most here would consider pretty conservative, but even I have trouble understanding the arguments against universal healthcare. Do that many people exist that really vote against it? Please don't point at ACA, that was nothing close to it.
- ryneandal 6y agoDisinformation campaigns.
- jupp0r 6y agoACA has one important aspect of it, which is the universal coverage mandate. Plenty of people have voted against that. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
- pm90 6y agoIt polls favorably but the GOP won’t vote for it, likely because of ideological (Govt is bad!) and financial (insurance industry lobby) reasons.
- aynsof 6y agoIt seems to me that the former is a convenient excuse for the latter.
- axaxs 6y agoI still remember when Trump was campaigning in 2016, someone asked him about health care (I don't care to look up the specifics). He replied pretty vague that he wasn't going to let people just die. The audience boo'd. I still can't believe it. Most Republicans I know aren't even steadfast against it. It really feels like the lobbyist/business people/politicians are trying to paint a different picture than reality. Edit for clarity - This wasn't a rally, but a small event of 'suits' in the audience. Perhaps a debate?
- mmcnl 6y agoWhat is Biden wins the election? Democrat Senate + House + POTUS would make UHC actually within reach, no?
- 101008 6y agoFor those not in USA, can someone summarize? I know (from reading online) that if you go a hospital, the bill can be scary. But what happens when companies offer health insurace with a position? That means it covers everything? Just a %? It depends on the topic (for example, hearth related sickes are covered, not more cosmetics ones)? Who are the people who is becoming profitable with this? Doctors? Companies? Are doctors allowed to open their own offices and have high prices? From the outisde everything seem so confusing!
- mayneack 6y agoIn theory you can predict the total cost for things covered by insurance, but there are many layers of complex bureaucracy involved and the insurance company is actively trying to get you to fall through a crack and end up on the hook for a real bill. The insurance company also is practically the arbiter of whether or not you did it correctly. The best example, is that you can go in for a surgery or something at a covered hospital for a covered procedure, but you can be surprised because some doctor assigned to you isn't in your network. Sometimes this happens after you're already under knocked out for the surgery, so you can't practically consult your complex policy at the time.
- dr-detroit 6y agoThis is one of those things they should teach in highschool. You pay $200/person premiums and you have to go to WAR with these clowns over the phone to get them to cover things when they owe you.
- phkahler 6y agoThat has created an entire industry called "medical billing" where the job is to submit claims properly so as not to be rejected. To be fair, fraud is probably a thing from every angle so having some process to prevent that makes some sense. But for patients with serious problems or families of those that just died, battling bureaucracy over large sums of money can be brutal.
- mmcnl 6y agoHow can your example even be legal?
- bgun 6y agoPerhaps "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" doesn't carry the same meaning when no better life awaits. The exodus will happen slowly, then suddenly.
- bitxbit 6y agoThis is what elite libertarians wanted.
- duxup 6y agoIt's so sad. When I changed jobs doing so / not had a lot of considerations to do with keeping / getting health insurance. I feel like people would feel so much more flexible not having that tied to employment.
- war1025 6y ago> I feel like people would feel so much more flexible not having that tied to employment. This should be a bi-partisan issue since both sides claim to love "small business." Health insurance is unaffordable for any small business and prevents many from striking out on their own. It's also a hidden expense that many never realize they have. If you looked at my "out of my bank account" spending, I could spend probably 5-10 years unemployed and be fine. Add in the extra $20-30k/yr for health insurance premiums and that drops down to maybe two years if I was lucky.
- duxup 6y agoAnd you'd hope businesses would be happy to be out of that game too....
- Pfhreak 6y agoIn another thread, I was told that $19k was enough for an American, and that someone making $60k was just interested in making money. That if the median income wasn't enough, then we "have bigger problems as a country". And yet here we are.
- duxup 6y agoYou should go ask that person in the other thread.
- dr-detroit 6y ago80K/household in the midwest minimum if you live on one of the coasts you're on the inside of the gated communities or youre a peasant
- yawz 6y agoThis country is the land of contradictions (and I'm saying this as a resident). More than half of the Americans are not happy with the state of the healthcare, but more than half of the Americans are not happy to contribute to a better healthcare system. Go figure!
- cyberlurker 6y agoIf you are privileged with a good job and good coverage, it’s far better to be in the system we have now. Your chances of incurring huge costs are relatively low and you’re saving tens of thousands of dollars by not paying to benefit others. Also if you need to get a specific treatment you don’t need to go through a government bureaucracy, you just pay for the treatment or insurance might cover part of it. Of course there are significant downsides if you aren’t privileged or if you care about other people. If you have a kid that is born with diabetes for example it can be a huge unnecessary cost, but that’s probably due to drug pricing in America which is a whole other topic. My point is it isn’t fair to say that the current system is universally bad for everyone. But I personally think we would all be better off as a society if everyone had access to good medical care without the risk of financial ruin.
- matthewmacleod 6y agoYour chances of incurring huge costs are relatively low and you’re saving tens of thousands of dollars by not paying to benefit others. Is this actually true though? It seems that the chance of encountering huge expenses are non-negligible, and that you wouldn’t actually save any appreciable amount of money. Also if you need to get a specific treatment you don’t need to go through a government bureaucracy, you just pay for the treatment or insurance might cover part of it. Using the UK as an example, obtaining necessary treatment involves no “government bureaucracy”. It just involves that treatment being deemed medically necessary and then provided. No messing around with insurance and hospital billing departments. Of course, you are still free to pay private providers for services, or indeed to take out private medical insurance.
- tehwebguy 6y agoYeah but that’s barely the tip of the iceberg. People are afraid of having a major, expensive surgery or treatment and that’s a valid fear but what about the years you spend hitting (or almost hitting) your deductible just trying to find out what’s wrong with you?
- kaesar14 6y agoNot sure how much factual basis I have to back this up, but from my observations, the insurance system the US has was created by accident, but is absolutely maintained on purpose. Keeping health insurance tied to employment was a nice benefit for when insurance wasn't universal in many other countries, and healthcare wasn't nearly as expensive (as it wasn't as good as it is now). Now, keeping it tied to employment keeps people working, in service to large corporations that can afford insurance and less likely to take risks like working at upstart companies that could challenge established market players, or protest and try to make change in a broken political system. It's all pretty nefarious.
- mjayhn 6y agoI was laid off, I've got a $500/mo prescription that keeps me out of a dark pit and gives me the ability to even work, I either pay that or pay $850/mo for COBRA to extend my healthcare. Or, what, medicaid? I'll probably be employed by the time that goes through. Six week wait to see a $250/hr cash-only psych. Telehealth "loosened" red tape for everyone BUT people with mood disorders. I still need to go in person for an appointment to get the medication I need. This is bad. I'm super privileged even being unemployed right now. I have savings. I feel for the people who can't afford any of this right now who are going through serious things. If I come down with COVID I'll be bankrupted forever I'd imagine.
- Bubbadoo 6y agoHealth insurance in the United States' for-profit healthcare complex is a nightmare. Besides the fact the premiums are onerous, it is the health insurance carriers that evaluate if and how much insurance will cover an expenditure, usually after a copay and possibly coinsurance has been paid. To say nothing of ever-growing deductible limits. On top of that, the Trump Administration is working overtime to purge what little insurance benefits are provided via Obamacare (in it's quest to eliminate any legacy of the Obama Administration). Unfortunately, the GOP is woefully short on replacement ideas. One does get the idea--in the true spirit of the Republican Party--the replacement will consist of costly, high-deductible health insurance that will include many exclusions from its coverage. All this begs the question: quality of life in the US, especially for the middle class, is crashing compared to our friends in other industrialized nations. Why middle class especially? Because the middle class is most likely to have an employer-sponsored plan that has deductibles and exclusions. In fact, most of those carrying employer sponsored health insurance never really know how much of the bill insurance will cover. Poor and indigent people, in many states, can still obtain health care without insurance and many states have funds just for this so the bill is paid by the tax payers in one form or another. And since the healthcare complex is an aggressive lobby in Washington, this situation is not likely to change. Not under Biden, certainly not under Trump. And to those Democrats who say millions of people who have employer-sponsored health insurance love their coverage and don't want to give it up, I say poppycock! I don't know anyone, outside of public union members, who really like their coverage, employer-furnished or not. Year-to-year premium increases with less coverage over time effects this group more than any other.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago> Besides the fact the premiums are onerous, it is the health insurance carriers that evaluate if and how much insurance will cover an expenditure, usually after a copay and possibly coinsurance has been paid. This is not true. ACA requires health insurance companies to pay for all healthcare expenses after reaching one’s out of pocket maximum. And they have some discretion to call out fraud, but insurance companies have to by and large follow medical procedure guidelines. They don’t have to cover experimental treatments, but if they are denying appropriate healthcare, they would get nailed by various government agencies.
- perfectstorm 6y agoHaving my health insurance tied to my employer terrifies me. Fortunately i have good insurance through my employer but what if i lose my job? I still can't fathom how having a universal healthcare is a political issue. It should be a basic human right. Even poorer developing nations have started recognizing it and making healthcare free.
- brundolf 6y agoFor those who are concerned about this problem and can afford to help, this is a charity that buys up medical debt for pennies and forgives it: https://ripmedicaldebt.org/ https://ripmedicaldebt.org/ It's obviously a band-aid for a deeply broken system, but it can un-ruin real people's lives in the immediate-term.
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoI don’t. Already had one! I had full coverage and got sent to a hospital that wasn’t contracted with my insurance company. 4 days in the hospital for a bike accident with 6 broken bones and surgery cost hit me back with $100k in out of network hospital bills. I don’t know if this is still the case, but in 2006, San Francisco General Hospital (now the Zuckerberg themed hospital) was the only level 1 head trauma hospital in the city. I had head trauma and was forced to go there. I asked them if they took my insurance. They said yes. What they meant is they’d bill my insurance and hit me with anything insurance wouldn’t cover. That ended up putting me into a spiral of depression that took years to recover from, on top of the physical recovery. What a shit show.
- ryandrake 6y agoYea, one lesson I also learned the hard way is to stop asking doctors if they "take my insurance". They all will gladly take your insurance, meaning they take the insurance card and laugh at you while knowing that none of what they bill will actually be covered. Don't ask the doctor anything. Ask your insurance company whether the doctor in question is in-network. This of course assumes you are conscious, and can do such due diligence.
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoYup. 100% correct.
- nmca 6y agoThis is extraordinarily dystopian.
- EForEndeavour 6y agoThis reads like something straight out of a William Gibson novel. How much longer can Americans tolerate this ever-worsening shitshow of a system before something gives? What will that look like?
- Kagerjay 6y agoso insurance didn't cover anything? You had a $100k bill that you ultimately had to pay for? that sucks man
- AsyncAwait 6y agoAnd only Americans. Every other developed, even developing, nation has a superior, if not perfect, solution.
- dbbk 6y agoAs a European, this is just one of many reasons why I would never fathom moving to America. Your quality of life would be just way below what you can get almost anywhere else in the industrialised world.
- kkwteh 6y agoThis is a big reason why I rejected my green card offer and moved to France.
- costcopizza 6y agoI wish we could cut as many of the PBMs, claims, and overall middlemen out of this damn system. Health insurance costs would be significantly lower if it was as direct as possible, as transparent as possible, and the end user had a say.
- parsimo2010 6y agoMore between the lines: Half of Americans know they're under-insured and haven't done/can't do anything about it. A deeper cut is that some Americans are just rolling the dice, they could afford better insurance but choose not to, even though after they got hit with a huge bill they would probably say something like, "in hindsight I probably should have paid the higher premiums for better coverage and could have taken a vacation to Missouri instead of Europe." But there are also a lot of Americans that may not be able to afford higher premiums, even if they were better at budgeting. And then politicians pick and choose which group of people they use as examples when talking about the healthcare system, depending on their goals/party. The truth is that both of the previously mentioned groups exist and get screwed if they have an emergency. It's a easier to say "tough luck" to the first group that was rolling the dice, but I would love to see actual change in the healthcare system. I did my dissertation research using insurance claims data, so I've seen the actual amount of money that's changing hands and it's ridiculous. Even if normal people were able to get the negotiated rates that the insurance companies get, most families could not afford a surgery and week long hospital stay. I don't know exactly what the solution is, but I think one of the main roadblocks is that there are some people making a bunch of money and they are quite happy with the way everything works right now.
- bigdubs 6y agoRelated to this is the cost of care in the United States versus the outcomes is completely out of band of the rest of the world. So not only are you trying to budget for expensive healthcare, that expensive healthcare doesn't get you better outcomes on average anyway.
- 43920 6y ago> I did my dissertation research using insurance claims data Is your research published publicly anywhere?
- parsimo2010 6y agoIt is currently embargoed and the raw data will never be released because of HIPAA. I didn't focus on the costs, so even when my dissertation is published next year the costs won't be discussed. It's just one of those things that I couldn't help but write a quick query because the information was present. There were a few extreme cases where a person had over 10,000 claim lines in a single year at a cost of millions of dollars. And insurance actually paid, because I only saw adjudicated claims. But a more typical person has a dozen or so claims costing maybe a thousand dollars in a year. There are also people that go years without a single medical encounter, but as soon as they need treatment for something it tends to be an expensive year. The issue I see is that most people probably don't have good enough savings habits to be able to afford basic healthcare if they don't have their premiums on autopay or pulled out of their paycheck before they have a chance to spend it. So although most people could save $1k in a year, insurance is like a savings account that you have to make deposits to and can bail you out if you really need more.
- baron816 6y agoFree markets do a really good job of allocating resources most of the time. People are generally very good about making decisions about what clothes to buy, what food to eat, what house to live in, etc. There are some exceptions there, but its easy to design market incentives to guide them to better choices. Heath care really doesn’t work with free markets though. People just aren’t able to make good decisions when it comes to health care, and profit focused business are able to exploit that, which results in horrible outcomes. It’s not hard for a lay person to assess the advantages and disadvantages of different cell phones sold from different retailers and from different providers, but how can people assess the pros and cons of different cancer treatments from different doctors at different hospitals? The complexity of biology and medical treatment is much much greater than anything people have to deal with in their normal lives. Decisions are almost impossible to make. Also consider that allocated resources based on a price/demand relationship doesn’t really work. Right now, health care companies focus on developing treatments for conditions that mostly afflict the rich, rather than treatments that could help the most people. It would not be hard for a medical board to make decisions about where research and treatment priorities are. We have lots of good data on how people are getting sick and how they get better. Lastly, if you get sick for no fault of your own, whose burden should that be? That burden should be spread across society as a whole.
- afarrell 6y agoAs a US->UK immigrant, I really appreciate the degree to which free-at-point-of-care encapsulates complexity. Unencapsulated complexity imposes real stress on: - Hospital administrators, who then hire more colleagues and pay their salaries[1] - Government agencies trying to implement a new law...or even determine which agency is responsible for pieces of that law[2] - Patients trying to access medications[3], who then might go without care or go to the ER. There is inherent complexity in healthcare because bodies are complex. It is stressful enough dealing with a medical condition itself. Dealing with the incidental complexity of insurance on top of that is... bad. When there is new attempt to reform US healthcare, can we also get Prof John K. Osterhout in the room where it happens? [1] https://time.com/5759972/health-care-administrative-costs/ https://time.com/5759972/health-care-administrative-costs/ [2] https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/the-failed-launch-of-www-healthcare-gov/ https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/the-failed... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKUdadCsuRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKUdadCsuRE
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- andrewl 6y agoBill Moyers has a good segment on this subject: Profits Before Patients http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/profile.html http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/profile.html
- say_it_as_it_is 6y agoThe other half who reported not fearing health-related bankruptcy work in government and now have better health benefits than those in the private sector. They don't see anything wrong with the healthcare system because it hasn't affected them.
- tboyd47 6y agoCOVID-19 made this much worse, but the current system is too complicated. It took me years to learn how to navigate it and it's probably going to change dramatically again very soon. Most ACA plans are a ripoff if you're not getting a subsidy. Who can save $9,000 in a year for a deductible while paying $1,000 a month in premiums? Nobody I know. It's well-known that hospitals jack up their prices. It's a crooked system. Good luck fixing that with a magic wand from Washington. But- it seems to me that the underlying problem is the epidemic of chronic illness. Chronic illness is crippling this country. We're spending so much because we're actually all sick. I'd like to know, what's making us sick?
- chrisjarvis 6y agohttps://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html >The prevalence of obesity was 42.4% in 2017~2018 This is one chronic illness (mostly unique to America in the developed world) that makes socialized health care very expensive.
- tboyd47 6y agoObesity sadly is only one of many... Attention-Deficit Disorder (ADHD) Arthritis Asthma Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Auto-immune disorders Developmental/Learning Disorders Cancer Cardiovascular problems Cerebral Palsy Cystic fibrosis Diabetes Epilepsy Food allergies Respiratory allergies Sickle cell anemia Spina bifida
- sacred_numbers 6y agoAccording to that link the medical cost of obesity is $147 billion. Healthcare spending in the US is around 3.3 trillion. Obesity is a problem, but it is not the main driver of medical costs. Also, we are already paying for the healthcare of obese people through insurance premiums and taxes. Proper socialized health care would incentivize and allow for more preventative treatment for obesity-related problems.
- tickerticker 6y agoAnother poll said that 67% of Americans could not scrape $2,000 together to cover an emergency expense.
- utf_8x 6y agoA "socialist" public healthcare system could never work! Well... Unless you're in Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom or many other countries...
- solutron 6y agoNot to sound conspiratorial, but the politicians that put these mechanisms in place know exactly what they're doing and this is a tool to keep the masses compliant and afraid of taking collective action against the overlord ruling class. Decoupling healthcare from employers, and making health care affordable are a direct threat to the entrenched status quo.
- thatmathguy 6y agoSeeing that the potential presidential candidate whose platform was mostly centred around healthcare did not advance to a full candidature implies that either the survey was not representative or the fear is outweighed by other political worries.
- bfrog 6y agoThe other 48-49% are just cluelessly oblivious to what reality is. One person getting sick in the family is all it takes.
- _huayra_ 6y agoI really wish apologists for the current US healthcare system could actually agree that it's nothing like their vaunted "free market apples" example of capitalism. If anything, actual competition, within some limitations to avoid monopolies capturing key markets (insulin anyone?) could do wonders: If I want an apple, I see a price, think "yep sounds good" and pay it. If the apple is rotten and I return it only to have the vendor say "sorry sucker!", I take my money elsewhere. If I get in a bad accident, I am in no decision to make decisions about where to get care; I may not even be conscious. Moreover, I am orders of magnitude more knowledgeable about what apples I like and what they ought to cost than I am about what medical procedures I need. Delegating those decisions ought to be a sacred act enshrined in law, the Hippocratic oath, and relatively high pay for medical professionals (that job is hard). So long as the US has the right to emergency care for anyone, taxpayers will continue shouldering that bill when folks can't pay. I get being for "personal liberty and freedom", but paying for Unemployed Uncle Fred's blood pressure medication is a far cheaper prospect than his massive heart attack. I'm so glad I moved out of there to a sane country that, although it doesn't have single-payer, has a heavily regulated free market and no crazy medical bankruptcies.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- golemiprague 6y agoAnd yet, many people have to pay this or that and always worried about it, just the fact that you could be one of those 10% who get stress is already stressing. The cost of a good insurance is double or triple of what people are paying in other countries from taxes and you don't have the same peace of mind. Not to mention the overall cost for the government for Medicare and Medicaid which is way higher than most other developed countries. It is a bit like communism, everybody knows that the system is not good, everybody knows that there are much better systems but Americans still insist to continue with this dysfunctional system
- surfmike 6y agoEven insurance doesn’t protect against this. Case in point: family member battling cancer had over $50K in costs not covered by insurance. Not to mention costs that they had to pay initially until the insurance company accepted the claim. (They usually had a few back and forth a where the insurance co would initially refuse to pay)
- ectqmbe 6y agoWas going to post this in response to a comment stating that COBRA is affordable and when you can't you qualify for medicaid, but it was deleted. Here's some uncomfortable facts: In truth, most can't afford COBRA and many of the most COVID hard-hit industries don't even have that option because they were never offered employer-based healthcare to begin with A lot of Conservative|Libertarian folks will tell you: "The current system works and when it fails there are social protections to help people." This is simply a nice fantasy perpetuated by those that have never had to rely on the American social safety net. In truth, our social safety net has never been that strong and has been weakened by ~60 years of conservative-led entitlement cuts while we have expanded military spending and corporate welfare. Most workers who've lost their job cannot afford an additional $20k/year for COBRA while not being employed (see quote from EPI below). In fact, it's much worse than that: 50% of Americans struggle to confront an unexpected $400 expense. (https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2018-report-economic-well-being-us-households-201905.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2018-repor...) Check these statements from the director of the Economic Policy Institute: (https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/13/cobra-health-insurance-covid-19-jobs/ https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/13/cobra-health-insuranc...) """ EPI (Economic Policy Institute) research director Josh Bivens said that fewer than half of all workers receive health insurance from their employer, and COVID-19 has hit the hardest among workers with low pay and meager benefits. “Job losses so far in this crisis have been pretty concentrated in sectors like accommodations and restaurants that don’t tend to offer employer-provided health insurance,” he said. Workers who get their health insurance through their employers can keep it. Under a provision of federal benefits law called COBRA, most employees who lose or leave a job can remain on their employer’s health plan for at least 18 months. But it isn’t cheap. “Very few people sign up for COBRA,” said Matthew Rae, associate director of the Health Care Marketplace project at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “And the reason is, it’s unbelievably expensive. The worker’s got to pay the full cost, so you end up paying — for a family of four — somewhere north, on average, of $20,000 a year.” """ The gap from "affording cobra" to "no assets and no income" which is the basic requirement for medicaid is pretty far. States use the federal poverty guideline which has been kept too low for years due to politics to determine eligibility. For a single person that's $12,490 and for a family of four that's $25,750. Where in the US are either of those a livable wage? Do any of those places have reasonable access to work and social services? In fact, I'm actually surprised that only half of American's fear this. I'd surmise that those who don't are either unaware of the potential for the looming crisis or otherwise fatalistic.
- refurb 6y agoAs someone with good insurance through my employer I've seen first hand the incredible hassle the US system is. It really stood out when I was traveling with my kid they needed a hospital stay. This was in SE Asia and at a private, international hospital. My kid stayed in a private room, all meals included (including for family) for 3 days. I was a little nervous about the cost, but knew it wasn't going to be more than a few thousand dollars and my insurance would cover some. The final bill? $600. A one-page, itemized bill with things like "antibiotic tablet - $0.50; 72 hr hospital room stay w/ nurse - $350". Of course the cost is going to be much lower in a developing country, but damn, it was refreshing to see such a smooth process and clear price transparency. Ignoring the insurance side for a moment - just knowing what things cost would be a massive step up for the US system.
- kgin 6y agoI have the cheapest ACA / Obamacare bronze-level plan available to me in my area. It costs $500 monthly (no subsidies if you make more than 45k a year) and has a $7000 deductible. It provides zero coverage (except life/limb emergency) outside of my metro area. This isn’t working for me but I have no other options.