Even Insured Can Face Crushing Medical Debt, Study Finds

[Old Codger]

9. I am indeed old

And I do have medicare and they do cover most of it, but that isn't really the point, my point is that the hospitals are way to costly. It makes no difference who is paying for it, whether Medicare or some other insurance program. The ACA made insurance more available but really has no overall effect on medical costs, it just shifted the burden of the cost of insurance from the insured to the taxpayers by subsidizing the insurance. There is no incentive that I can see in any of it to cut medical costs.

Now going back to my situation, in July my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, ended up having a total mastectomy, in order to have some assurance that it would not recur she underwent Chemo, the total cost of this has been over $100,000.00 shortly afterwards I was diagnosed with bladder cancer, fortunately it was caught early and appears to be not too much chance of any long term effect ..still ended up costing well into the $30,000.00 bracket for what amounted to an outpatient procedure, in and out same day..Medicare pays 80% or more but still leaves a healthy chunk to the patient, I do not have enough income to be able to afford any decent supplement and make too much to be eligible for any assistance so now I will probably spend the rest of my life paying this off as I can and spending considerable time arguing with the hospital as to how much I can pay each month,meanwhile as I am in fact elderly health issues are pretty common and I doubt this is the last of my medicals needs but I am forced to delay or completely ignore other health issues that can be tolerated because I cannot afford to have them treated..