So I could not help but think after reading NanceGreggs Op on Canadian Healthcare....

[trumad]

Just how much medical debt she would left with if she lived in America.

I mean the absolute trama of what she is going through compounded by knowing that you could lose everything because of medical costs.

How anyone could be opposed to socialized Healthcare is beyond me.

[Cleita]

1. I have always maintained that as long as the insurance companies and other

health care for-profits are making money, they will never take their stranglehold off of our health care. We need to kill those parasite industries first.

I found that out when I was able to get Medicare for my husband when he was diagnosed with end stage renal disease. No insurance company back then would insure for it including the Medicare Advantage plans because there was no profit in it, so he was able to qualify for this little niche of socialized medicine.

[Lars39]

2. I went bankrupt due to medical expenses here in the US.

Lost a house, had to pay out the nose for quite a few years, all the while other medical debt kept piling up.
My brother was diagnosed with cancer and given damn few options since he had no insurance. No tests offered. Never even got a PET scan. He died in a hospital bed in the middle of his fucking living room.
The only way he even got *some* radiation treatments was because he was a Vietnam Era veteran who was destitute.
While yes, I want socialized healthcare for everyone, I think there is a huge segment of the population who is so beat-down, time-starved, broke, and unhealthy that they don't have a spare energy-filled good minute, let alone a good day, to contact anybody about shit. If some of us sound a wee bit bitter and envious when we hear of others' experiences with actual healthcare, you must understand that we have very good reason to be.

[freshwest]

3. Same experience but it's not over... But I try not to say anything. It won't help.

One learns that after a while. No help is coming, so one saves their tears for other things.

[daleanime]

6. Hell yes....

[project_bluebook]

10. I'm still paying off a hospital bill from 2011

Checking online I found out that I was charged about 10 times what an insurance company would have been charged for the same tests. I could have paid it off but made small monthly payments and they have to except that, interest free. Probably costs them more to process the small payment then what their getting. Fascist health care and their fascist republican supporters can all go to hell.

[Downwinder]

4. As a spouse she would be liable.

Good reason for divorce. They even have a name, "Medical Divorce."

[BrotherIvan]

5. That's why single payer is the ONLY humane option

I don't know how many times they wouldn't let me into the emergency room to see my mother without going to the payment window first and showing all her insurance cards. She could have died in that time (end stages of cancer) but they didn't care. All about the money. We almost had a mental breakdown trying to deal with her care and it ate up her entire estate in two years. If she didn't have her house to mortgage I have no idea what would have happened. NO ONE should ever have to deal with that. I didn't get two sentences into Nance's post without thinking, "This must be in Canada." Because it sure didn't sound like the US.

[daleanime]

7. Amen.....

[IcyPeas]

8. pharmaceutical companies absolutely SUCK

I heard this on NPR the other day. Here is the article about the costs spiraling of MS (and other) drugs. (bolding mine)

Drug companies are acting much like a cartel such as OPEC, says Stephen Schondelmeyer, a pharmaceutical economist at the University of Minnesota. He says the companies must figure "if we all keep moving [our prices] up and nobody moves down, we can get away with raising the price, because if a person has multiple sclerosis, what other choice do they have?"

A recent study from Oregon State University and the Oregon Health and Science University finds that the cost for MS drugs averages $60,000 a year, compared to $8,000 to $11,000 a year in the 1990s. The price for some climbed by an average of 30 percent per year for two decades, according to the report in the journal Neurology.

The drug industry remains one of the most profitable businesses on the planet, but Reilly argues that the high prices are justified.

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/05/25/408021704/multiple-sclerosis-patients-stressed-out-by-soaring-drug-costs

[MisterP]

9. too bad the law's set up to lock what we have in place

[Bigredhunk]

11. Rich People Get Morons To Do Their Bidding For Them

They convince idiots that what's good for them (the wealthy) applies to their (the idiots) lives. If you're wealthy, the health care in America is great. Chris Rock once said that if people could see what health care is like for the rich (private suites and such), people would revolt. Nobody sees it. Instead they see some numbnuts surfer on welfare, minorities looting, faceless fat people walking down the street, etc...

Socialized care would be better for the 99%. The 1% has the money, power, media...they get the coverage they want. They get the story of the 1 person who had to wait for coverage and came to America for treatment on the news. The however many millions of Americans who didn't get care, went bankrupt paying for care, etc... -- you don't hear shit about that.