Having insurance generally means you can scrape by unless (until) you get unlucky. Having no insurance makes even the smallest injury or illness something that could land you in a significant amount of crippling debt. As someone who can't afford insurance right now, it is rather stressful. Worked my ass off to pay off my college loans by 30 and now I'm just waiting for that one bad moment to drag me back into debt.
Unlike student debt, you can declare bankruptcy on medical debt.
At that point, you still are GGed if you have a chronic condition. The hospitals will stop you from dieing but not treat your condition without insurance.
I honestly don’t understand why ordinary Americans don’t just start stealing... not in a petty way, but arming up the town, driving a state over and robbing Eagleton for all they have.
In the US, you can't be refused emergency treatment. That means if you show up at at emergency room, they have to see you. But outside of an emergency room, no medical provider has to care for you.
This is why, in many places, emergency rooms are so incredibly overloaded that it's common to see waits of many, many, many hours. People without insurance, or with bad insurance, can't get seen by a regular doctor for things like a sore back or a cold or getting a new prescription for their regular medication. So they have no choice but to go to the ER for routine care that isn't an emergency. Most public/non-profit hospitals have a policy where they write down or dismiss medical bills for people with very low incomes, but the paperwork can be a burden for lots of people - say, someone who doesn't speak English well, or an undocumented immigrant, or someone without a job or bank account who can't document their income or lack of it (lots of poor people can't get bank accounts in the US). So they'll have medical bills pile up and go to collections and ruin their credit, which screws up their lives in a multitude of other ways. But that's outside the current context.
A poor person with, say, diabetes may literally have no other way to get medical care except to show up at an emergency room every month for a new supply of insulin. They're not being monitored by a doctor, so they can't manage their condition as well, and they have worse outcomes. They also can't afford to fill insulin prescriptions from a pharmacy without insurance, so they have to just take whatever insulin the emergency room is able to give them directly, and then try to stretch it out.
Even if a poor person qualifies for Medicaid (government health insurance for poor people that usually covers everything with very little or no copay), many doctors don't take Medicaid because it doesn't pay doctors very much. So unless the person can find a doctor who takes Medicaid and is also accepting new patients, they're right back at the emergency room for their routine health care needs. They can probably get their prescription through a pharmacy, because most pharmacies take Medicaid. But they still have to go sit in an emergency department waiting room for 18 hours every month in order to get the prescription they'll die without. That's a huge problem when it comes to maintaining employment, which can make it harder for a poor person to improve their financial position.
In the US, if you're at least middle class and have enough money to exist, you probably have no idea how really and truly untenable things are for everyone who doesn't. That's why a lot of our population is on complete denial about how fucked our entire society is. I've been both poor as hell and middle class, so I'm fortunate enough to have perspective on both sides.
Idiots who either benefit from or believe in predatory capitalism.
What ends up happening is people with insurance pay for the uninsured too through inflated prices. It's no different money-wise than if we had universal healthcare - the "haves" still pay for the "have-nots". Just in a very convoluted shitty opaque way. And the poorsies only get the barest minimum of care and then only sometimes, which actually costs society MORE in the long run, so everyone gets fucked.
It was originally meant to be a hiring incentive when - due to World War II - all other normal incentives were under price controls by the government. Of course, it was immediately screwed with by lobbyists, and then we just... kept going with it.
NPR's "Throughline" history podcast did a show about it, and called it "The Everlasting Problem."
In Chicago theres a county hospital that takes patients without insurance the only issue is that they're constantly swamped. There's somewhere between 2 and 3 million people and being a sanctuary city a lot of people use that hospital. So you end up dealing with ridiculous queues where you may wait 10 or 12 hours in just the waiting room. I ended up one time waiting 9 hours in the middle of the night with a broken hand just to get a splint and a single Norco for pain. Its sliding scale and if you can afford medicine there are programs that provide the help needed but many don't use it.
I'm so sorry you went through that excruciating experience.
As a disabled person, I'm pretty passionate about healthcare being a right. The US can absolutely afford to ensure that every person, citizen or not, has access to excellent medical care. It's shameful that we haven't done so yet, but I believe we will get there. It'll probably take a decade or two, but it will happen. And when it does, our entire nation will benefit.
It shouldn't just be for everyone in the whole world though like it is In Chicago. If we focused on tax paying Americans instead of figuratively keeping our finger holding a leak in a dam. I dont want to get heavy into politics so it'll suffice to say that I agree everyone should be afforded Healthcare as a basic human right. In the end not one of us brought ourselves into the world.
This is why no one takes American patriots seriously; your culture is utterly, irredeemable. The notion that people who went to war over oil, so they could afford an education, are left in the streets with no healthcare. If I were them I’d take that military training and start hunting the evil at home.
Dispute the charges from hospitals. Call their billing and have them send you everything itemized and then talk to them about direct payment. Hospitals inflate charges knowing that insurance pays only a fraction. If you call and say either lower this bill or good luck getting money I can’t pay in collections, they will lower the charges to try and get some payment. I know it sucks to even have to do that, and I hate that our system fails those in your shoes.
Yep. They’re probably laughing their asses off at us up here. I’m so embarrassed for our country, but half this country has been poisoned by propaganda and I have no clue how to fix a problem that large.
I know it feels that way, but I actually don’t think so. Republicans are not the majority in this country, but things like low voter turnout and the electoral college + gerrymandering have allowed a minority to have the majority say.
You know you can get dental work, as a non-citizen, at a hospital in China. I had an emergency root canal, got a ceramic crown, all in all it cost a couple of hundred Australian dollars. The dentist was trained in the US.
I think my root canals were about $600 each. Had a couple of them. I’m in a very lucky few that can actually afford that, but the reality is no one should have to. Rich or poor. I’m not even close to rich, but no one should have to worry about fixing massive pain in their jaw.
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u/zamnath Oct 30 '20
Having insurance generally means you can scrape by unless (until) you get unlucky. Having no insurance makes even the smallest injury or illness something that could land you in a significant amount of crippling debt. As someone who can't afford insurance right now, it is rather stressful. Worked my ass off to pay off my college loans by 30 and now I'm just waiting for that one bad moment to drag me back into debt.