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You're quite lucky that you could afford that hospital trip. In the US, it would typically go like "My doctor made some tests and he said that it doesn't look

You're quite lucky that you could afford that hospital trip. In the US, it would typically go like "My doctor made some tests and he said that it doesn't look like a heart attack but something is wrong with one of the lines on my ECG. He asked me if its ok to call the ambulance for doing more checks at the hospital. I said no, I can't afford that. So I died four weeks later." This isn't an exaggeration. Many people live paycheck to paycheck and can't afford the thousands of dollars a hospital trip would entail.

pbhjpbhj 12y ago
It's a partial truth though, right? There is a system for emergency healthcare for those without even medical insurance, isn't there? Also, wouldn't you "just" get treated, rack up a bill and then go to prison for non-payment - guess that might be worse than dying?
- hueving 12y ago
  >It's a partial truth though, right? There is a system for emergency healthcare for those without even medical insurance, isn't there? yes >Also, wouldn't you "just" get treated, rack up a bill and then go to prison for non-payment - guess that might be worse than dying? yes, but you don't go to prison. the only entity you can go to prison for not paying is the government. instead you will go through bankruptcy, in which all of your assets will be taken and your wages will be garnished for some period of time.
- JshWright 12y ago
  You would absolutely be treated. That's a requirement the federal government makes of any hospital that receives medicare/medicaid payment (if you're interested in learning more, google 'EMTALA'). You will also absolutely get a bill, which could be quite large, and could be sent to collections, and could destroy your credit history. While those last three aren't certain, they're common enough that they should give you pause to think...
  - aganders3 12y ago
    Note that EMTALA only requires hospitals to give you stabilizing treatment.
- schnable 12y ago
  You would go to the hospital, get treated and, if you couldn't pay the bills, declare medical bankruptcy. It sucks, but not it's not people dying in the streets or going to debtor's prison either.
- sk5t 12y ago
  The US doesn't have debtor's prison. One would simply have a potentially staggering amount of debt with which to deal.
  - gregd 12y ago
    You say this as if being in debt and unable to make the payments, is no big deal. Getting calls from aggressive debt collectors at work, at home, on my cell, even to relatives and coworkers, is a form of "debtor's prison". When I asked for breakdowns of the debt itself, which I'm allowed to do under the FDCPA, I rarely got a breakdown of the total debt. One company responded to my request by serving me papers and filing a lawsuit. When I hired a lawyer to intervene and respond to the lawsuit, they dropped the lawsuit a couple of days before the date. So the constant harassment, threats and stressors of being in over your head, is a kind of debtor's prison.
    - 300bps 12y ago
      Getting calls from aggressive debt collectors at work, at home, on my cell, even to relatives and coworkers, is a form of "debtor's prison" Well, have I got great news for you! There is this thing called the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Here it is: http://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/rules/rulemaking-regulatory-reform-proceedings/fair-debt-collection-practices-act-text http://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/rules/rulemaking-regulatory-r... Want to stop calls to your work, at home, on your cell and even to your relatives and coworkers? Send them one registered letter telling them to stop calling you. Instantly gone. Why? Because every single call they make to you about this debt after that one letter means they owe you $1,000 in statutory damages. When you sue them they even have to pay your attorney's fees so there are a million attorneys willing to take these cases for contingency! Here's a quick write-up of what you can do for the harassment you described: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-can-you-do-if-debt-collector-violates-the-fdcpa.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-can-you-do-if-de... Frankly, if you've been living in a "debtor's prison" like you've described, I'm assuming you haven't lifted a single finger to get out of it because this information is widely known in the U.S.
      - 12y ago
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  There is, but people only use it in emergency situations. Getting someone to the emergency room usually takes at least 10 minutes, so if the artery clogs 100%, it often results in death. The key factor in the above scenario was the exploratory treatment to figure out what was wrong, and discover the 99% clogged artery. Such treatment is possible in the US, but it will definitely rack up a huge bill if you decide to pursue it. You won't go to prison for nonpayment, but it's possible you'll lose your assets. And if your dependents need those assets, like a house, it's easy to make the "wrong" choice of avoiding treatment unless doctors know exactly what the problem is. Health insurance is ostensibly for this type of situation, but in reality if you're going to the hospital because "There's something wrong with me but nobody knows what," then the fear of insurance companies not covering it is very real. I don't know if they're legally allowed not to cover it in that scenario, but people have been screwed so often by insurance companies that the default decision making calculus is usually to assume the insurance company won't pay for anything. This all assumes that you're someone with a relatively standard job and life. If you're lucky enough to have good health insurance and a fair amount of savings, then none of this applies, of course, since you can just get treatment in the same way as the parent commenter.
- wpietri 12y ago
  A reasonable person knowing that they would die without treatment would surely take the enormous debt. But the problem is that "feeling some pain in your chest" is a long way from knowing that death is certain. And if your habit is to avoid going to the doctor because you know the bills could ruin your life, then your default will be "I'm fine!" As the OP made clear, getting to the hospital quickly can be the difference between life and death. I just did a quick Google search, and a reasonable estimate puts the number of deaths from not having insurance in the same ballpark as gun deaths or car deaths: http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/january/make_that_22000_uni.php http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/january/make_that_22000_uni.ph...
  - VLM 12y ago
    "A reasonable person knowing that they would die without treatment would surely take the enormous debt." Single guy detected. Nothing wrong with that, just saying. Its a balance, lifelong economic death penalty for the three of them, vs they get to hang around with me for a couple decades... in the homeless shelter. And that's assuming treatment means a cure. Most of the time, especially when the Drs are "mystified", all treatment means is the survivors are much poorer. Currently I have great insurance, although that'll end soon enough, making these kind of balance decisions interesting in the future.
    - wpietri 12y ago
      Excellent point. I hadn't thought about that.
  - JohnBooty 12y ago
    > A reasonable person knowing that they would die without treatment would surely take the enormous debt. If there's nobody depending on you? Yes, you're right. But suppose your family is depending on you. If you die, they get a decent life insurance payment. If you live but rack up crippling debt, maybe they lose the house and the cars and now nobody can pay for the kids' education. Choice gets a little murkier then.
  - clavalle 12y ago
    In many cases you don't know. You have a suspicion. It is probably nothing. Nope, it was something. Don't underestimate the human capacity for denial. On top of that you have interesting incentives that you get to think about with your doctor: are they recommending this treatment to make more money?
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  I have cyclothymia and panic attacks, and these issues were worst at 25-27. At that time, I worked for a startup and had no insurance. (Now I have shitty insurance, but that's a world better than none.) Of course, panic attacks are brilliant and creative in their ability to throw weird symptoms (phantom smells were my "favorite") and every time, I'd worry about the (small) chance that "this time" it was a physical health problem, which I couldn't afford to have. I still have a brutal (and, objectively, unreasonable) fear of hospitals. It's not so bad that I wouldn't go if I needed to, but even if it's to visit someone who's fine, it takes serious chemical assistance. I can take on a cross-country plane ride without klonopin (hell, most "normal" people in the professional world can't do that, these days; granted, that has more to do with yuppies being pussies than a real anxiety condition, though) and doctor's offices are fine, but hospitals... fuck. Too many horrible memories. There are some great individual doctors and nurses, for sure, but our mean-spirited, psychotic medical/insurance system taps into this deep-seated fear that humans have of being abandoned. Abandonment is a more vicious fear than death, for most of us. Death (when it comes peacefully; granted, that's not as common as we'd like to believe) is either nonexistence or something that's probably very interesting. To answer your question, you can go to the ER and get treatment without insurance, but that's not going to get you preventative heart surgery or cancer treatment. If you get cancer, you can't walk into an ER and demand chemo. For plenty of Americans with cancer, their first medical attention is when the fucking thing throws a clot or causes organ failure and it's past too late. You won't go to prison for non-payment, but you will get a huge bill, because while insurance companies are good at negotiating medical bills, you can't. If you can't pay it (and U.S. medical bills can easily top $10,000 for a routine ER visit) then you can be taken to court, have a judgment against you, and end up with your credit destroyed (there's nothing on your credit report to say that the cause of your debt or bankruptcy is a black-swan medical event, or even medical at all) and your wages garnished. It's not like these horror stories are common, but they certainly happen and most Americans know someone who's been involved in one. It's not like 25-year-olds dying on the street due to our bad medical system is a common event, but it is a terrible system that ruins lives on a fairly regular basis. The sword of Damocles hangs over all of us. Even with insurance, it's easy to get fucked. Michael Moore's Sicko (whatever you think of him, that documentary was incredibly well-researched and important) was about people who had insurance.
pdabbadabba 12y ago
This is an exaggeration, and it's an unfortunate one, since it distracts from the truth of what you're saying. As many have pointed out, a person who chose to be taken to the hospital would be taken to the hospital and treated whether they could pay for it or not. The result of this would be a serious amount of debt, but likely could be paid down with a monthly payment. The worst case scenario is bankruptcy, which sucks (though it sucks much less if you're already poor and have no credit to destroy). Best case scenario, is that you make a lot of sacrifices, cope with making the monthly payments for many years, and eventually become debt free again. Like I said: best case scenario. I think that anyone would agree, though, that either outcome is far better than dying young. (Also note that none of these scenarios includes going to prison for failure to pay your debts. There is no such thing in the U.S. legal system, except for certain debts owed to the U.S. government, and even this situation is rare and typically involves willful failure to pay, not mere inability. Private debts are just that: private.) The real problem is that people in the U.S. are forced to make this sort of choice -- i.e., the choice between healthcare and basic material comfort. An ancillary problem is that people believe the myths that you're perpetuating -- if they think they won't be treated, or that they will go to jail if they don't pay, they may avoid treatment and die, essentially, only out of ignorance. This wouldn't be their fault. This would be the fault of a healthcare system that sends all the wrong signals, and secondarily the fault of the people who spread half truths about the healthcare system to score political points. (And I say this as an ObamaCare supporting, lifelong democrat.)
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  Which part is an exaggeration? The death? Hardly. It usually takes some time to get someone to an emergency room, so if their heart fully clogs, the outcome is often death. Or that people will usually forego seeking treatment because they can't afford to rack up huge bills? Again, not really an exaggeration. If you have a house that you live in with your spouse and child, then you need that house, and people will often make decisions with the best chance of preserving it. If you go bankrupt, you can lose your house except in some specific circumstances (http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/lose-home-file-chapter-7-bankruptcy.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/lose-home-file-chapte...). It's easy to forget, as programmers, that most people don't enjoy the same benefits we do. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck with little savings and children.
joshdance 12y ago
He is in the US? UNC Chapel Hill hospital?
- mindcrime 12y ago
  Yes.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
davidw 12y ago
Couldn't this whole thread just be about wishing 'mindcrime' a speedy recovery and healthy future, rather than wading into politics?
- selmnoo 12y ago
  Not really a reasonable expectation, unfortunately. To discuss stories of "I know this other person who also similarly fell sick" and "The current system is so bad if you get into trouble, X,Y, and Z should be different for better results" is very much a part of the coping and mourning process. And of course we wish mindcrime a speedy recovery.
- DEinspanjer 12y ago
  Fair enough. @mindcrime -- I am so happy to hear that you got fast treatment and that you seem to be doing alright. I hope that you bounce back quickly and that you are able to look back on this as a brief dip in an otherwise rich and rewarding life.
runewell 12y ago
My mother was a nurse for 20 years. She was extremely good at her job and worked in the ICU unit of Vanderbilt Hospital. One day she had a severe headache at home and once it subsided she sent me an email detailing five possible causes. Every item on the list was trivial except the fifth item which said "small aneurysm bleed". I, along with the rest of the family, asked her to go to the hospital but she refused because she did not want to burden the family with a $5,000+ CAT scan and hefty doctor expenses over what she insisted was a just an overreaction to a bad migraine. I assumed, because she was such a good nurse, that she knew best. I ended up moving near her soon after and had the privilege of spending many days with her and my brothers as a family until I received a phone call one night telling me she was rushed to the hospital. When I arrived at the hospital a clerk attempted to block my way to fill out insurance paperwork, I rushed by her and headed to the ICU. When I arrived to the ICU I was told the aneurysm had applied too much pressure to her brain, the doctor said there was no chance of recovery. Even in death she still helped others, her organs saved two other individuals that day. In my home upon my desk I have a photo of my mother and I, a print out of her email, an award she received for being one of the first volunteer nurses to arrive in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, and a big pile of bills (ambulance ride, doctor examination, bed and care costs, etc). Yes, I would agree, most people do not go to the hospital in the USA unless they are 100% positive it is required. This prevents many early visits to the doctor. People will often wait until the very last moment to get help.
- mailshanx 12y ago
  How fucked up is that? I teared a little as i read your story. I can't imagine a mother not getting help for the sake of a measly 5000$. What kind of a society is the US if it lets its people die because they can't cough up a $ 5k medical fee? I had a very visceral reaction as i read your story. May your mother rest in peace. tears in my eyes
pjlegato 12y ago
About 16%[1][2] of Americans don't have health insurance. While the situation you describe is tragic and too common, it is a gross exaggeration to say it's "typical." Someone unfamiliar with the United States would read what you wrote and assume that this is the usual situation, when in fact it is relatively rare. Should something be done to help that 16%? Yes, of course. Is it common? No. [1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/168248/uninsured-rate-lowest-2008.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/168248/uninsured-rate-lowest-2008... [2] http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p60-250.pdf http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication...
- geographomics 12y ago
  That's a peculiar interpretation of 16%. Something that is true for 1 in every 6 people surely isn't a rare event.
  - pjlegato 12y ago
    I said it is "relatively rare"; it is definitely not "typical," as the original poster wrote.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  It is often typical for those with health insurance. Back in 2009, 75% of the families bankrupted by medical bills in the US had health insurance. http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/04/us-healthcare-bankruptcy-idUSTRE5530Y020090604 http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/04/us-healthcare-bank...
  - pjlegato 12y ago
    This does not tell us that it's "typical" for those with health insurance in any sense. It tells us only that bankrupcies of insured people are often caused by health bills. This does not imply the inverse, that insured people's health bills often cause bankruptcies. This is reasoning backwards: you are starting with the conclusion you'd like to see (that bankruptcy is typical for people with health insurance), then trying to adapt the evidence to fit that conclusion. Let's try it the other way around, looking at the data first, and then drawing conclusions: There were about 1 million non-business bankruptcies in the US in 2013[1]. Reuters says that 60% of them were caused by health bills, and of those, 75% had insurance. Taking the bankruptcy and the Reuters figures at face value, this gives us about (1m * 60%) = 600,000 bankruptcies due to medical bills in the US annually; and of those, (600k * 75%)=450k had health insurance. Going by the earlier Census.gov figure that 16% of Americans are uninsured, and a US population of about 316 million[2], this means that about 265 million Americans have health insurance. We can then calculate that of those American who have health insurance, only 0.17% (450k/265m) wind up in bankruptcy due to medical bills; in other words, 99.83% of Americans with health insurance do not wind up in bankruptcy. I think we can thus safely say that it is definitely not typical for an American with health insurance to wind up in bankruptcy due to health bills. It does happen, but it's very rare. [1] http://news.uscourts.gov/bankruptcy-filings-drop-12-percent-fiscal-year-2013 http://news.uscourts.gov/bankruptcy-filings-drop-12-percent-... [2] http://www.census.gov/popclock/ http://www.census.gov/popclock/

pbhjpbhj 12y ago

It's a partial truth though, right? There is a system for emergency healthcare for those without even medical insurance, isn't there? Also, wouldn't you "just" get treated, rack up a bill and then go to prison for non-payment - guess that might be worse than dying?

hueving 12y ago
>It's a partial truth though, right? There is a system for emergency healthcare for those without even medical insurance, isn't there? yes >Also, wouldn't you "just" get treated, rack up a bill and then go to prison for non-payment - guess that might be worse than dying? yes, but you don't go to prison. the only entity you can go to prison for not paying is the government. instead you will go through bankruptcy, in which all of your assets will be taken and your wages will be garnished for some period of time.
JshWright 12y ago
You would absolutely be treated. That's a requirement the federal government makes of any hospital that receives medicare/medicaid payment (if you're interested in learning more, google 'EMTALA'). You will also absolutely get a bill, which could be quite large, and could be sent to collections, and could destroy your credit history. While those last three aren't certain, they're common enough that they should give you pause to think...
- aganders3 12y ago
  Note that EMTALA only requires hospitals to give you stabilizing treatment.
schnable 12y ago
You would go to the hospital, get treated and, if you couldn't pay the bills, declare medical bankruptcy. It sucks, but not it's not people dying in the streets or going to debtor's prison either.
sk5t 12y ago
The US doesn't have debtor's prison. One would simply have a potentially staggering amount of debt with which to deal.
- gregd 12y ago
  You say this as if being in debt and unable to make the payments, is no big deal. Getting calls from aggressive debt collectors at work, at home, on my cell, even to relatives and coworkers, is a form of "debtor's prison". When I asked for breakdowns of the debt itself, which I'm allowed to do under the FDCPA, I rarely got a breakdown of the total debt. One company responded to my request by serving me papers and filing a lawsuit. When I hired a lawyer to intervene and respond to the lawsuit, they dropped the lawsuit a couple of days before the date. So the constant harassment, threats and stressors of being in over your head, is a kind of debtor's prison.
  - 300bps 12y ago
    Getting calls from aggressive debt collectors at work, at home, on my cell, even to relatives and coworkers, is a form of "debtor's prison" Well, have I got great news for you! There is this thing called the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Here it is: http://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/rules/rulemaking-regulatory-reform-proceedings/fair-debt-collection-practices-act-text http://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/rules/rulemaking-regulatory-r... Want to stop calls to your work, at home, on your cell and even to your relatives and coworkers? Send them one registered letter telling them to stop calling you. Instantly gone. Why? Because every single call they make to you about this debt after that one letter means they owe you $1,000 in statutory damages. When you sue them they even have to pay your attorney's fees so there are a million attorneys willing to take these cases for contingency! Here's a quick write-up of what you can do for the harassment you described: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-can-you-do-if-debt-collector-violates-the-fdcpa.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-can-you-do-if-de... Frankly, if you've been living in a "debtor's prison" like you've described, I'm assuming you haven't lifted a single finger to get out of it because this information is widely known in the U.S.
    - 12y ago
sillysaurus3 12y ago
There is, but people only use it in emergency situations. Getting someone to the emergency room usually takes at least 10 minutes, so if the artery clogs 100%, it often results in death. The key factor in the above scenario was the exploratory treatment to figure out what was wrong, and discover the 99% clogged artery. Such treatment is possible in the US, but it will definitely rack up a huge bill if you decide to pursue it. You won't go to prison for nonpayment, but it's possible you'll lose your assets. And if your dependents need those assets, like a house, it's easy to make the "wrong" choice of avoiding treatment unless doctors know exactly what the problem is. Health insurance is ostensibly for this type of situation, but in reality if you're going to the hospital because "There's something wrong with me but nobody knows what," then the fear of insurance companies not covering it is very real. I don't know if they're legally allowed not to cover it in that scenario, but people have been screwed so often by insurance companies that the default decision making calculus is usually to assume the insurance company won't pay for anything. This all assumes that you're someone with a relatively standard job and life. If you're lucky enough to have good health insurance and a fair amount of savings, then none of this applies, of course, since you can just get treatment in the same way as the parent commenter.
wpietri 12y ago
A reasonable person knowing that they would die without treatment would surely take the enormous debt. But the problem is that "feeling some pain in your chest" is a long way from knowing that death is certain. And if your habit is to avoid going to the doctor because you know the bills could ruin your life, then your default will be "I'm fine!" As the OP made clear, getting to the hospital quickly can be the difference between life and death. I just did a quick Google search, and a reasonable estimate puts the number of deaths from not having insurance in the same ballpark as gun deaths or car deaths: http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/january/make_that_22000_uni.php http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/january/make_that_22000_uni.ph...
- VLM 12y ago
  "A reasonable person knowing that they would die without treatment would surely take the enormous debt." Single guy detected. Nothing wrong with that, just saying. Its a balance, lifelong economic death penalty for the three of them, vs they get to hang around with me for a couple decades... in the homeless shelter. And that's assuming treatment means a cure. Most of the time, especially when the Drs are "mystified", all treatment means is the survivors are much poorer. Currently I have great insurance, although that'll end soon enough, making these kind of balance decisions interesting in the future.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    Excellent point. I hadn't thought about that.
- JohnBooty 12y ago
  > A reasonable person knowing that they would die without treatment would surely take the enormous debt. If there's nobody depending on you? Yes, you're right. But suppose your family is depending on you. If you die, they get a decent life insurance payment. If you live but rack up crippling debt, maybe they lose the house and the cars and now nobody can pay for the kids' education. Choice gets a little murkier then.
- clavalle 12y ago
  In many cases you don't know. You have a suspicion. It is probably nothing. Nope, it was something. Don't underestimate the human capacity for denial. On top of that you have interesting incentives that you get to think about with your doctor: are they recommending this treatment to make more money?
michaelochurch 12y ago
I have cyclothymia and panic attacks, and these issues were worst at 25-27. At that time, I worked for a startup and had no insurance. (Now I have shitty insurance, but that's a world better than none.) Of course, panic attacks are brilliant and creative in their ability to throw weird symptoms (phantom smells were my "favorite") and every time, I'd worry about the (small) chance that "this time" it was a physical health problem, which I couldn't afford to have. I still have a brutal (and, objectively, unreasonable) fear of hospitals. It's not so bad that I wouldn't go if I needed to, but even if it's to visit someone who's fine, it takes serious chemical assistance. I can take on a cross-country plane ride without klonopin (hell, most "normal" people in the professional world can't do that, these days; granted, that has more to do with yuppies being pussies than a real anxiety condition, though) and doctor's offices are fine, but hospitals... fuck. Too many horrible memories. There are some great individual doctors and nurses, for sure, but our mean-spirited, psychotic medical/insurance system taps into this deep-seated fear that humans have of being abandoned. Abandonment is a more vicious fear than death, for most of us. Death (when it comes peacefully; granted, that's not as common as we'd like to believe) is either nonexistence or something that's probably very interesting. To answer your question, you can go to the ER and get treatment without insurance, but that's not going to get you preventative heart surgery or cancer treatment. If you get cancer, you can't walk into an ER and demand chemo. For plenty of Americans with cancer, their first medical attention is when the fucking thing throws a clot or causes organ failure and it's past too late. You won't go to prison for non-payment, but you will get a huge bill, because while insurance companies are good at negotiating medical bills, you can't. If you can't pay it (and U.S. medical bills can easily top $10,000 for a routine ER visit) then you can be taken to court, have a judgment against you, and end up with your credit destroyed (there's nothing on your credit report to say that the cause of your debt or bankruptcy is a black-swan medical event, or even medical at all) and your wages garnished. It's not like these horror stories are common, but they certainly happen and most Americans know someone who's been involved in one. It's not like 25-year-olds dying on the street due to our bad medical system is a common event, but it is a terrible system that ruins lives on a fairly regular basis. The sword of Damocles hangs over all of us. Even with insurance, it's easy to get fucked. Michael Moore's Sicko (whatever you think of him, that documentary was incredibly well-researched and important) was about people who had insurance.

pdabbadabba 12y ago

This is an exaggeration, and it's an unfortunate one, since it distracts from the truth of what you're saying. As many have pointed out, a person who chose to be taken to the hospital would be taken to the hospital and treated whether they could pay for it or not. The result of this would be a serious amount of debt, but likely could be paid down with a monthly payment. The worst case scenario is bankruptcy, which sucks (though it sucks much less if you're already poor and have no credit to destroy). Best case scenario, is that you make a lot of sacrifices, cope with making the monthly payments for many years, and eventually become debt free again. Like I said: best case scenario. I think that anyone would agree, though, that either outcome is far better than dying young. (Also note that none of these scenarios includes going to prison for failure to pay your debts. There is no such thing in the U.S. legal system, except for certain debts owed to the U.S. government, and even this situation is rare and typically involves willful failure to pay, not mere inability. Private debts are just that: private.) The real problem is that people in the U.S. are forced to make this sort of choice -- i.e., the choice between healthcare and basic material comfort. An ancillary problem is that people believe the myths that you're perpetuating -- if they think they won't be treated, or that they will go to jail if they don't pay, they may avoid treatment and die, essentially, only out of ignorance. This wouldn't be their fault. This would be the fault of a healthcare system that sends all the wrong signals, and secondarily the fault of the people who spread half truths about the healthcare system to score political points. (And I say this as an ObamaCare supporting, lifelong democrat.)

sillysaurus3 12y ago
Which part is an exaggeration? The death? Hardly. It usually takes some time to get someone to an emergency room, so if their heart fully clogs, the outcome is often death. Or that people will usually forego seeking treatment because they can't afford to rack up huge bills? Again, not really an exaggeration. If you have a house that you live in with your spouse and child, then you need that house, and people will often make decisions with the best chance of preserving it. If you go bankrupt, you can lose your house except in some specific circumstances (http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/lose-home-file-chapter-7-bankruptcy.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/lose-home-file-chapte...). It's easy to forget, as programmers, that most people don't enjoy the same benefits we do. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck with little savings and children.

joshdance 12y ago

He is in the US? UNC Chapel Hill hospital?

mindcrime 12y ago
Yes.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

davidw 12y ago

Couldn't this whole thread just be about wishing 'mindcrime' a speedy recovery and healthy future, rather than wading into politics?

selmnoo 12y ago
Not really a reasonable expectation, unfortunately. To discuss stories of "I know this other person who also similarly fell sick" and "The current system is so bad if you get into trouble, X,Y, and Z should be different for better results" is very much a part of the coping and mourning process. And of course we wish mindcrime a speedy recovery.
DEinspanjer 12y ago
Fair enough. @mindcrime -- I am so happy to hear that you got fast treatment and that you seem to be doing alright. I hope that you bounce back quickly and that you are able to look back on this as a brief dip in an otherwise rich and rewarding life.

runewell 12y ago

My mother was a nurse for 20 years. She was extremely good at her job and worked in the ICU unit of Vanderbilt Hospital. One day she had a severe headache at home and once it subsided she sent me an email detailing five possible causes. Every item on the list was trivial except the fifth item which said "small aneurysm bleed". I, along with the rest of the family, asked her to go to the hospital but she refused because she did not want to burden the family with a $5,000+ CAT scan and hefty doctor expenses over what she insisted was a just an overreaction to a bad migraine. I assumed, because she was such a good nurse, that she knew best. I ended up moving near her soon after and had the privilege of spending many days with her and my brothers as a family until I received a phone call one night telling me she was rushed to the hospital. When I arrived at the hospital a clerk attempted to block my way to fill out insurance paperwork, I rushed by her and headed to the ICU. When I arrived to the ICU I was told the aneurysm had applied too much pressure to her brain, the doctor said there was no chance of recovery. Even in death she still helped others, her organs saved two other individuals that day. In my home upon my desk I have a photo of my mother and I, a print out of her email, an award she received for being one of the first volunteer nurses to arrive in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, and a big pile of bills (ambulance ride, doctor examination, bed and care costs, etc). Yes, I would agree, most people do not go to the hospital in the USA unless they are 100% positive it is required. This prevents many early visits to the doctor. People will often wait until the very last moment to get help.

mailshanx 12y ago
How fucked up is that? I teared a little as i read your story. I can't imagine a mother not getting help for the sake of a measly 5000$. What kind of a society is the US if it lets its people die because they can't cough up a $ 5k medical fee? I had a very visceral reaction as i read your story. May your mother rest in peace. tears in my eyes

pjlegato 12y ago

About 16%[1][2] of Americans don't have health insurance. While the situation you describe is tragic and too common, it is a gross exaggeration to say it's "typical." Someone unfamiliar with the United States would read what you wrote and assume that this is the usual situation, when in fact it is relatively rare. Should something be done to help that 16%? Yes, of course. Is it common? No. [1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/168248/uninsured-rate-lowest-2008.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/168248/uninsured-rate-lowest-2008... [2] http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p60-250.pdf http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication...

geographomics 12y ago
That's a peculiar interpretation of 16%. Something that is true for 1 in every 6 people surely isn't a rare event.
- pjlegato 12y ago
  I said it is "relatively rare"; it is definitely not "typical," as the original poster wrote.
lotsofmangos 12y ago
It is often typical for those with health insurance. Back in 2009, 75% of the families bankrupted by medical bills in the US had health insurance. http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/04/us-healthcare-bankruptcy-idUSTRE5530Y020090604 http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/04/us-healthcare-bank...
- pjlegato 12y ago
  This does not tell us that it's "typical" for those with health insurance in any sense. It tells us only that bankrupcies of insured people are often caused by health bills. This does not imply the inverse, that insured people's health bills often cause bankruptcies. This is reasoning backwards: you are starting with the conclusion you'd like to see (that bankruptcy is typical for people with health insurance), then trying to adapt the evidence to fit that conclusion. Let's try it the other way around, looking at the data first, and then drawing conclusions: There were about 1 million non-business bankruptcies in the US in 2013[1]. Reuters says that 60% of them were caused by health bills, and of those, 75% had insurance. Taking the bankruptcy and the Reuters figures at face value, this gives us about (1m * 60%) = 600,000 bankruptcies due to medical bills in the US annually; and of those, (600k * 75%)=450k had health insurance. Going by the earlier Census.gov figure that 16% of Americans are uninsured, and a US population of about 316 million[2], this means that about 265 million Americans have health insurance. We can then calculate that of those American who have health insurance, only 0.17% (450k/265m) wind up in bankruptcy due to medical bills; in other words, 99.83% of Americans with health insurance do not wind up in bankruptcy. I think we can thus safely say that it is definitely not typical for an American with health insurance to wind up in bankruptcy due to health bills. It does happen, but it's very rare. [1] http://news.uscourts.gov/bankruptcy-filings-drop-12-percent-fiscal-year-2013 http://news.uscourts.gov/bankruptcy-filings-drop-12-percent-... [2] http://www.census.gov/popclock/ http://www.census.gov/popclock/