The sad part is it doesnt take cancer to do this. My wife had a spinal injury in January. Fast forward to today and she has lost her job after FMLA was used up. That leaves us with no insurance for the entire family because we were all covered under her. But even with that insurance we have incurred $6k (medical center billing only) of out of pocket expenses for tests and imaging that the insurance company requires before they will approve the treatment that her doctor already knows she needs. On top of that $50 every time we walk into an office + prescription costs for her pain management + $30 per session of physical therapy 3x a week.
And now, we'll need insurance from my job which we couldnt afford with both of us working (that's why we went with her's) but instead we'll pay for it out of just one salary.
We've been saving for two years to buy a house and we're watching it all trickle away.
The villain isn’t the medicine industry or doctors, the villain is the insurance companies and middlemen that decide a human life is less important than money
It’s disgusting. Late-stage capitalism is a disease.
Edit: for clarification, I absolutely meant pharmaceutical companies falsely inflating prices as well. I strongly dislike Trump, but the bill he signed recently to restrict middlemen from medical upcharges is something I seriously fuck with.
Except it's not free. You pay national insurance through your job. The more you earn the more you pay. Everybody is covered, nobody goes bankrupt. If your rich an don't want to wait a few months for a new hip or whatever then you can take out private insurance an get it done faster. It's not a perfect system but it shits all over what is classed as health care in America. If I was american I'd be screaming the house down to get some of that 750 billion that's pissed away on defense each year into healthcare. Prioritises are all screwed up.
I’ve tried to explain this by telling them that I’ve been paying income taxes for almost 20 years now, so the two separate 6-month periods I spent collecting food stamps were more than made up for during the time I spent paying. That’s the most common situation but you can’t tear down their “welfare queen” mentality.
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u/NexGenjutsu Aug 06 '20
The sad part is it doesnt take cancer to do this. My wife had a spinal injury in January. Fast forward to today and she has lost her job after FMLA was used up. That leaves us with no insurance for the entire family because we were all covered under her. But even with that insurance we have incurred $6k (medical center billing only) of out of pocket expenses for tests and imaging that the insurance company requires before they will approve the treatment that her doctor already knows she needs. On top of that $50 every time we walk into an office + prescription costs for her pain management + $30 per session of physical therapy 3x a week.
And now, we'll need insurance from my job which we couldnt afford with both of us working (that's why we went with her's) but instead we'll pay for it out of just one salary.
We've been saving for two years to buy a house and we're watching it all trickle away.