Americans are only "One Illness Away from Financial Ruin"

[Joanne98]

"Unless you're a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, you're one illness away from financial ruin in this country"
Lead author Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., of the Harvard Medical School regarding their recent study on medical bills leading to bankruptcies in the US.

Everyone knows that people that go bankrupt have been living beyond their means, enjoyin the good life. Or at least that is what we have been told about the common folk that are unfortunate enough to go bankrupt. But for major corporations and banks that get into trouble, their leaders either get big fat obscene bonuses or big fat obscene golden parachutes while the American public is left to pick up the pieces.

Most people that go bankrupt now are basically indentured servants to banks. The Bankruptcy Act passed a few years back made it very hard to go bankrupt and start fresh. Instead if you now go belly up, you'll likely stay that way for a good long while.

The President and Congress should have changed our present bankruptcy system of indentured servitude back to the more realistic and helpful "fresh start" approach. Instead they recently gave us some phony Credit Card Bill that does little but try to protect the Credit Card Companies from massive public anger and outrage over their abuses.

A recent study found that bankruptcies are really not due to people living it up in Hawaii and buying a Mercedes Benz. Rather, according to the study, 60% of people that go bankrupt are brought down by medical bills. Also, bankruptcies due to medical bills have risen 50% in just 6 years.

Moreover, what is interesting in the stats of the recent study is that three quarters of those that went bankrupt over medical bills had medical insurance.

So unless America gets a real health insurance plan that actually covers medical expenses, like a single payer program (medicare for everyone), then corporate America is just back to playing games with the lives and finances of the American people.

To get rich by ripping off the suffering somehow doesn't seem right to me. Well maybe I am just a bleeding heart do gooder.

I guess people like me used to be called "commie libs," but now most Americans realize that we were just sounding the warnings.

So here is a big fat warning: AMERICANS NEED REAL HEALTH CARE THAT COVERS EVERYONE AND IS TAKEN OUT OF THE HANDS OF PRIVATE INSURERS AND PLACED INTO THE HANDS OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, WHERE IT BELONGS.

The continued corporate control of our public health care system will only bring further suffering and economic hardship for the American people.


Read More Details on the Recent Study at CNN.com
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Americans-are-only-One-Il-by-Grant-Lawrence-090606-2.html

[mediaman007]

1. If you have an hour watch this:

Harvard's Elizabeth Warren speaking at University of California, Berkley about the shrinking middle class:

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/04/the-coming-coll.html

You won't be disappointed.

[Cleita]

2. Remember the story about ten years ago of the woman in Idaho, with

six children, who was thrown in jail because she couldn't pay the property taxes on their home? It turns out her husband contracted some debilitating disease I can't remember exactly what, but the result was that he couldn't work anymore. As the family got poorer and poorer, the husband finally died without any health care towards the end. The woman could hardly feed her children and couldn't pay her bills. Her utilities were turned off. She couldn't afford gas for her car, so their trash started piling up in a barn. It was in a rural place where you have to take your garbage to dumpsters on the road. The county finally sold her house and property, worth about $150,000 for her tax bill which was under $5,000.

The woman and her children were turned into squatters. Things came to a head when she asked a local deputy sheriff to drive her to the food pantry so she could get some food for her children as she had no gas in her car. He arrested her instead. The children frightened by their mother being arrested turned shotguns on the sheriffs and it almost turned into a Ruby Ridge situation. Fortunately, saner heads and some neighbors who knew the children intervened and got them to give up their weapons. However, mom was taken to jail and charged with a felony, some bull shit about resisting arrest, and she was there for almost a week and released after charges were dropped after there was a public outcry about it. I mean really her crime was being poor because an illness had robbed their family of the bread winner.

The children were put into foster care and I don't know what happened eventually to the woman. She's probably living under a bridge somewhere. But what if we had national health care then. The woman's husband might have gotten the medical care he needed and been able to go back to work. I guess we will never know.

[Orrex]

3. More and more Americans are much closer to ruin than that

A great many simply can't afford to get sick or injured at all, because their shitty hourly-wage jobs don't offer paid sick-time.

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Some of us have already been ruined

I have a chronic illness.

Over my past 30 years as an adult, I have put more than half of all the money I've ever made into the medical system because I was uninsurable. In spite of that, I was only able to afford palliative care. In such a situation, you struggle, you lose, you struggle some more. And in spite of that, I was never able to get out of debt.

Today I'm disabled. Had I gotten appropriate medical treatment through the 1980s and 1990s, I would have stayed healthy and productive instead of "going on the dole".

I consider myself lucky -- my family helped out, and I stayed off the street. There are lots of people, even several on DU, who are in far WORSE straits than I am.

The current "crisis" in medical insurance is nothing more that organized and sanctified robbery. Not theft, but robbery -- theft under threat of death. We ought to treat the insurance people and their physician lackeys who are complicit in that system to the same treatment we reserve for armed robbers.

--d!

[Shagbark Hickory]

5. I'm curious... Why didn't you..

Why didn't you move to another country that has a better healthcare system?
I hope that question doesn't come across as being snotty but I ask because there is a good chance I will emigrate if we do not get universal public healthcare. I worked hard to get where I am and I'll be damned if I'm going to lose it all to medical bills. I'm not in a profession that offers health insurance and I'm a human being so I'm not immune to getting injured or needing medical care for some reason. I also don't come from a particularly long lived pedigree so to protect everything I've worked for I would move. Maybe you've tried this. I don't know. I'm single so I could conceivably hook a canuck.

[nichomachus]

6. Because

For many people, getting permanent residency is difficult, if not impossible. Even if you do get permanent residency, you don't necessarily qualify for their medical program. That would only happen if you got in on a permanent work visa and were paying taxes. Getting a work visa is probably the most difficult thing to do, unless you are highly skilled or have a solid job offer (from a company that can prove it can't find the same type of worker locally). If you are an experienced shepherd, however, there are several countries that would welcome you with open arms.

You just don't breeze into England, for example, settle down, and get on the national health service. I have a friend who just got a work visa for the UK. It took two lawyers, five months -- and the fact that he did a highly specialized job for a multi-national corporation. And, he's still not on national health.

I qualify for immigration to several places. However, in none of them would I immediately qualify for health care -- and some would require me to show evidence of private health insurance, although private health insurance in those countries is much cheaper than in the US.

[roguevalley]

8. it doesn't even take a person to be ruined. I have four elderly dogs.

one is blind, one is deaf and both are fifteen. one other is a two time cancer survivor and the last is fairly healthy. I have come close to the edge keeping them healthy. they are strong but for illnesses that come up. I suppose some would put them down but I guess some who abandon their family members if they were ill too. I won't. I have teetered on the brink because of it too.

[Shagbark Hickory]

9. That's interesting. I didn't know that. I guess I shouldn't pack my bags just yet.

Instead I should perfect my fake IDs.

That leads me to my next question.
Would you be able to lie about who you are and just not pay the bill?

And also could you just get treated somewhere healthcare costs less like Mexico, Jamaica, Cuba etc etc?

[nichomachus]

10. Lie about who you are

I went to my doctor the other day. I've been seeing him for over a year. They said I needed to update my info. I filled out the form. They copied my insurance cards. Then, the clerk took out a camera and took my picture. She told me it was to prevent fraud.

Yes, you can get cheaper medical care elsewhere -- Mexico, for example, and many people do. Cuba is still difficult to travel to.

Actually, there are cases of some insurance companies sending people out of the country to get medical care. They would fly them -- and their spouse -- to a foreign country, put them up, and pay for the operation -- and it was still cheaper than having it done in the US.

A good example, a friend of mine lives in Spain. He is not on the national insurance. He went to the ER, they saw him right away. They worked on him for five hours -- xrays, MRI, etc., gave him meds, painkillers, etc. Total bill $130 US. He recently got a prescription that would have cost him $185 in the US. The cost in Spain -- same drug, same manufacturer -- $24.

If he had national health care, it would have been zero.

[Shagbark Hickory]

11. Wow! Incredible

Do you know what hospital he went to in Spain? Or can you find out?
Why is Cuba difficult to travel to? You just have to fly in to mexico first.

I hate to make jokes about this because this is not a laughing matter but I guess if they're taking mugshots in the waiting rooms now, I guess I could stock up on halloween costumes.}( :+

Thanks for all the information.

[Captain Hilts]

7. Yep. It happened to my brother. nt