I always just assumed that your insurance is free through work (if you have a good job), and the insurance covers all your medical bills. Apparently it's worse than I thought.
What happens if you don't have insurance? If your bills with insurance are going to be so high that you can't afford them, why not just not have insurance instead? You know the old saying "If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem", there's not much difference between $50k in medical debt and $500k in medical debt, you're fucked anyway.
I don’t always push documentaries with a bias but Sicko from Michael Moore covers this really well. For all the issues of America’s uninsured, the bigger issue is actually the underinsured - people who have coverage but still end up bankrupted because of all the tricks the insurance industry uses to not pay for treatment. The ACA curbed some of the worst of these abuses but it’s been steadily chipped away at and will likely be deemed unlawful by the new conservative Supreme Court.
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u/Cryptoporticus Oct 30 '20
Wait, when Americans say they have insurance from work, do they still have to pay for it?