There is no "lack of state provided health care" in the US.
Walk into a hospital - they're obligated to treat you. If you're poor, you can ignore the bills. (Or you can go to a public hospital and they likely won't bother if you fill out some forms first.)
Of course, better treatment costs money, but that's true everywhere.
Walk into a hospital - they're obligated to treat you. If you're poor, you can ignore the bills. (Or you can go to a public hospital and they likely won't bother if you fill out some forms first.)
This is simply incorrect. Hospitals are only obliged to treat emergencies. They will not treat anything else if they think you cannot pay them.
"Study Links Medical Costs and Personal Bankruptcy: Harvard researchers say 62% of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. in 2007 were caused by health problems -- and 78% of those filers had medical insurance."
I figured you would cite Warren. The media bought her "study" hook line and sinker, and there isn't much else to support this claim. (Seriously, if you don't believe me, try to find any replication of it.)
Her study is deeply flawed. The biggest problem is that it doesn't address causality or even correlation - for all we know, 62% of statistically similar people who did not go bankrupt also had a "major medical cause" of their non-bankruptcy. She doesn't address this at all.
Thanks for the links. I didn't realize Warren's affiliation with PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Program) or her study's loose definition of "medical bankruptcy" (e.g. people who filed for bankruptcy who paid more than $5000 out-of-pocket or lost two or more weeks of work for medical reasons, even if they did not claim "medical reasons" for their bankruptcy filing).
I don't have a study, but I have myself. Ancedotes don't equal statistics but I can see how it happens.
For me:
As of January 1, 2011. Happy, healthy, planning a couple ski trips.
As of January 18, 2011. Happy, healthy. $3,000 in medical debt.
It wasn't a really hard road to get from 0 to $3,000 in 3 weeks either. I currently work for one of the top 20 largest companies in the US. I have a United Healthcare PPO (the largest carrier in the country) and Delta Dental (also the largest dental carrier). So I don't work for some fly by night startup with an off brand insurance, this is blue-chip benefits at the most stable kind of job you can have.
I had previously scheduled my wisdom teeth to be removed, had them removed no problem. They paid 80%, I paid 20% plus the deductible. Total cost to me was $450 out of pocket. No big deal and expected.
Not a week later, couldn't breath, thought it was either an asthma attack or allergic reaction to something I just ate at a restaurent. Go to the hospital, its not either. After a cat-scan, x-ray, a couple hours with a GI and another doc I find out it is something completely different and previously unknown. Controllable, not a big deal, but the symptoms were quite scary.
Get the bill, $2,100. My insurance declines $1,900 worth of charges since it was an "illness" and they don't cover that in the ER unless you must stay overnight because they don't want people using the ER as their primary care physician (understandable). So apply my $500 deductible, and I'm on the hook for basically the whole thing. Call it $2,000. (this is pending appeal). Mind you, if they approved it they would have paid 90% and I would have paid my $500 deductible, so I should have sandbagged it and stayed overnight apparently (while running up twice the bill).
C) Had to get some additional dental surgery. After the last experience expected to pay 20%, but for whatever reason they only cover 50% (since it was damage to my gums from retainers as a child, which apparently is not their problem) and I'm on the hook for an additional $925.
Now, writing checks for $3,000 won't bankrupt me by any stretch. (mind you, I'm actually writing more like $4,000 but a bunch of it is fair and expected, the $3,000 is the amount above and beyond what I think I'm supposed to be paying). But it would for a lot of people. Even for me it sucks, I had planned to use that money for something more interesting than papering over the holes in my insurance policy.
I can completely understand how people end up in bankruptcy. In my opinion, if the plan says it will cover 80% and I have to cover 20%, with a deductible and a maximum out of pocket expense for me annually, then thats what should happen for non fraudulent charges. I went to the hospital for a good reason. All of the dental work has been recommended to me by a general dentist, seconded by an periodontist, and concurred by the oral surgeon who actually did it. None of this stuff is me running up unncessary bills. So I have the max out of pocket put aside in an account every year, and all of sudden my bills blow that by 4x because they are declining charges, and I'm sucking money out of my general emergency account, it sucks.
I can handle it, I'm glad I planned for emergencies and saved money and live within my means, but I can understand how this doesn't work for people living paycheck to paycheck and its not their fault. Not long ago I was getting by with the max out of pocket in an account, no emergency fund, and saying if shit happened I'd put it on my credit card while I pumped all my spare cash into paying down student loans. So I'm just lucky this is all happening Jan of 2011 and not Jan of 2010. And anytime you can make a statement like that, it is hard to blame the people where the dates didn't work out for them.
You "forget" that the folks who actually can't afford $3k are also the folks who get subsidized care AND who are bankruptcy proof.
> Even for me it sucks, I had planned to use that money for something more interesting than papering over the holes in my insurance policy.
The "holes" in your insurance policy were your choice, a choice that saved you money on that policy. If you'd made a different choice, that money wouldn't be in your pocket to spend on "something more interesting".
There is no free lunch. Health care costs money. Having the US govt pay for it doesn't make it cheaper.
I know that many of you think that govt healthcare in other countries works well. Do you really think that the US govt is likely to do as well?
It's true that medicare doesn't spend much money cutting a check, but the total expenses are another story. (The low-ball estimate of medicare fraud is an order of magnitude higher than the profit of health insurance companies.)
Oh, and you're more likely to win a dispute with a for-profit provider than you are with a US govt service.
I was responding to the statement "many of you think".
Whether that's reproducible in the US is an open question. But the fact that US citizens accept third-world level healthcare is baffling to me.
ps: I have first-hand experience with European healthcare, US healthcare and third world healthcare. I'd pick European first, third world second (depending on the country though) and US third, if I had to choose.
> But the fact that US citizens accept third-world level healthcare is baffling to me.
US healthcare, even the free stuff, is well above third-world level. The typical is very comparable.
Yes, the US life-expectancy stats aren't fantastic, but healthcare isn't the only variable. (Look at the disease cure rates - we do very well on cancer for example.)
Only one problem - your anecdote provides (very weak) evidence against Warren's conclusions.
You had a major medical cause but you didn't go bankrupt. Lots of people do. To properly estimate the number of medical bankruptcies, you need to do the following calculation:
# Medical bankruptcies = # of bankruptcies x [P(bankruptcy | medical cause) - P(bankruptcy | no medical cause)] x P(medical cause)
All Warren measured was P(medical cause | bankruptcy). Then she led a bunch of innumerate reporters to believe that P(medical cause | bankruptcy) x # of bankruptcies = # of medical bankruptcies.
Your anecdote cuts against Warren's conclusions [1] because it suggests we increase our estimate of P(no bankruptcy | medical cause) and thereby reduce our estimate of P(bankruptcy | medical cause).
[1] I'm not suggesting a single anecdote proves much of anything. I'm just pointing out the direction it's infinitesimal value points.
There is no "lack of state provided health care" in the US.
Walk into a hospital - they're obligated to treat you. If you're poor, you can ignore the bills. (Or you can go to a public hospital and they likely won't bother if you fill out some forms first.)
Of course, better treatment costs money, but that's true everywhere.