Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Medical bills are involved in more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, an increase of 50 percent in just six years, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
Can I File Bankruptcy Just on Medical Bills? : Bankruptcy Law Network
High medical bills don'thave to lead to bankruptcy - The Boston Globe
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
It's time for people to put the emphasis on who is responsible for delivering proper single payer health insurance coverage. It isn't Obama as he is just one person with his hands tied behind his back by Congress.
The Senators resist single payer in exchange for money from the health care industry. Nothing more and nothing less and a well known undisputable fact.
Americans have to bombard their Congressional Representatives enmasse to make them more afraid of losing their upcoming election than the money they are getting from the health insurers.
Either do the latter or suffer the consequences. It might take some organizing but it is the only way!
Yep. Sign petitions, write your congressional representative and both your senators, and urge others to do the same if they want universal, comprehensive, publicly funded health benefits. It's not going to happen all by itself.
Medical Bills Underlie 0 Percent Of Bankruptcies In Countries With National Health Care
This sets us apart, aren't we proud of ourselves?
Yes. Write to your congressional rep and both your senators. Keep writing about it.
Congress has to become more afraid of the voters than it is of losing private donations.
Cannot the American people start their own referendum? Millions of names from every town in America asking for real health care reform, not dictated by the highly profitable medical industries.
Thank the GOP for the "for profit" healthcare system in america thats bankrupting people and damaging our once great companies.
ok. but if it was just the GOP, then a Dem majority would help us. they're not. they're placating their constituents and giving their support to appeal to their biggest donors, ie. big business. the Dems are just as dirty as the GOP, just with a smile.
Baucus himself admitted the public option isn't plausible because it would be unfair to the insurance companies. These people don't even hide it anymore. They know that they'll be taken care of by their big business friends. Baucus makes approx. 200k/year. If he doesn't get reelected, then he has a guaranteed job at an insurance company for 500k/year with stock options and bonuses. He'll leave and he'll easily make 1 million/year. So why should he care about keeping his job. He's here to help his donors and then get out so he can make the real money. It's a good plan for him and his family. So what if the regular American gets shafted. He doesn't care.
JM wanted to deregulate the health care industry just like the banking industry
NO, it is the parisite trial lawyers who have created this nightmare. Malpractice insurance, lawsiuts against drug companies, hospitals, etc. and no competition against healthcare because of government programs keep prices so high. I submit it is exactly because of government interference that we face this crisis. If you libs get your way going to the doctor will be like dealing with DMV.
Who's robbing whom? See my post above; it's insurance companies that are allowed to process claims who are robbing both people and govt. If they can pay their CEOs tens of millions each per year, they can pay for the loss of a child, spouse or loved one for their own mistakes. You obviously don't follow the drug wars pharms are waging against the American people very closely, do you?
Malpractice litigation is greatly exaggerated by the GOP, Karl Rove wanted to use tort reform as means to deplete the Democrats of contributions from trial lawyers. In reality tort reform would only resolve 1% of the problem. I know 2 doctors personally and they have told me the insurance industry is killing them from not paying for prescriptions they write, to holding up HMO receipts 120+ days. One doctor told me it cost him more to chase insurance companies for payment than actual bill itself, not to mention cash flow is always a problem. Another friend of mine a ER trauma surgeon left medicine all together, her income wasn't worth the 80 hr work weeks, she gave up clinical medicine to have a better quality of life with her daughter. Another doctor told me that the payment delays started in the 80's and became progressively worse, he told me if his office doesn't chase the money, he will not get payed.
If we do get active and have our voices heard Obama is going to screw us on this. Obama does not talk about health care so much as he talks about every American should have health insurance. There is a huge difference. If the emphasis is on making sure everyone has health insurance. That's not difficult. You can make it mandatory. Almost every state has "affordable" health insurance. But that affordable health insurance becomes unaffordable the minute you use it. Frankly, for me, $259 a month I cannot afford, and then add in those high deductibles, high co-pays, no eye or dental coverage, and it's a no go. I do not feel that Obama understands or cares to listen to the average American about the real issues in health care. The for-profit aspect of health care is the problem.
I have signed numerous petitions online for single-payer, or the Medicare for All bill, and I suggest everyone else do the same.
Here's an interesting link that someone had posted in the comments on the Truthdig site:
http://acc
And, here, of course, is a great site:
http://www
That's all well and good, but could you answer me this:
When is the last time that public opinion won out over what the government wanted to do?
Medical problems are inviolved in every death. Obama and a teleprompter do not make him a surgeon or even in possession of competent medicl thinking.
Obama wants to make health care worse for all of us. No if we cut out defensive medicine to run all kinds of profitible tests just in case we find something to protect the hospital and doc from liability.
how stupid, educate yourself about other heathcare systems around the world in other industrialized countries
the ONLY answer is to remove the profit motive from the healthcare system
until we do that it will about MAKING MONEY - not good health or healthcare
ANNUAL COMPENSATION (2006 and 2007):
� Ronald A. Williams, Chair/ CEO, Aetna Inc., $23,045,834
� H. Edward Hanway, Chair/ CEO, Cigna Corp, $30.16 million
� David B. Snow, Jr, Chair/ CEO, Medco Health, $21.76 million
� Michael B. MCallister, CEO, Humana Inc, $20.06 million
� Stephen J. Hemsley, CEO, UnitedHealth Group, $13,164,529
� Angela F. Braly, President/ CEO, Wellpoint, $9,094,771
� Dale B. Wolf, CEO, Coventry Health Care, $20.86 million
� Jay M. Gellert, President/ CEO, Health Net, $16.65 million
� William C. Van Faasen, Chairman, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, $3 million plus $16.4 million in retirement benefits
� Charlie Baker, President/ CEO, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, $1.5 million
� James Roosevelt, Jr., CEO, Tufts Associated Health Plans, $1.3 million
� Cleve L. Killingsworth, President/CEO Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, $3.6 million
� Raymond McCaskey, CEO, Health Care Service Corp (Blue Cross Blue Shield), $10.3 million
� Daniel P. McCartney, CEO, Healthcare Services Group, Inc, $ 1,061,513
� Daniel Loepp, CEO, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, $1,657,555
� Todd S. Farha, CEO, WellCare Health Plans, $5,270,825
� Michael F. Neidorff, CEO, Centene Corp, $8,750,751
Doawkins- your statement is so laden with snarks about Obama that you negate any point you might have. Not that you have a point, nor does your post even make any sense.
Also, one does not need to be a surgeon to know that it is obscene for the insuranse company brass to be pocketing millions for saying 'no' to needed procedures and meds. THe less care they approve, the more money they make.
Where to think you are Red State? I can see why right wingers need talking points, there just not that creative making any kind of case on there own, that would require thinking.
great fist link, thanks.
but that's just the way it is.
this country works via money. the insurance companies legally bribe the politicians, who want, surprise: money, so that the insurance companies can make more, surprise: money.
if you have a lot, you and your family are set. if you don't or are just middle class, then tough luck. You make money in this country by taking form others. Only in this country is it legal to make money from people suffering medical illness.
CEOs of insurance companies and bigPharma make millions. that's just the way it is and they're not going to give up their money or power. and the average person is irrelevant because they don't have the money or the power.
Let's talk a little reality. Not fantasy.
This is not some Star Trek utopia, this is America.
Money is king, and it makes (or changes) the laws at will for its own needs.
Poor people (including the middle class, because in the end if you're not rich, you're poor and nobody important) having been getting the shaft for centuries.
And that's just the way it is. Sorry and tough luck.
America's system drives this behavior. It condones and even encourages it. Go to school and get a good job (ie. lawyer, or business/finance, maybe doctor). The first two allows you to make a lot of money and amass power. They allow you to reach "the top", so you can take more than you give. In the end, in America, you have to take from others to succeed.
Look around. See what's happening, and look realistically. This is America. That's just the way it is.
Agreed. The really sad part is that "We the people" will do nothing to change this.
A Modest Proposal.
Think 1776.
Common Sense
Insurance comapnies exist for one reason only... PROFIT. They do NOT want to ensure you stay healthy, or get healthy, they only want your money, not your claim.
Why do we have the most advanced industry but the worst health care system in the industrialized world? Because insurance companies have been running it for the last 60 years.
It;s the insurance companies.
This is unprecedented, thank greed for this.
Single payer, single payer, single payer.
Cheesh. When will people accept the fact that Medical insurance companies are squeezing all of us to the brink.
In Mass., my insurance just went up another $100 a month for a grand toral of 893.00 a month. Seriously, this is with Republican Romney's Great Reform. This plan is one of the state sanctioned plans through the health connector. It's all bull. You go on the website, put in your info; get a quote and the actual cost is usually twice as high.
My cost per month 446 per month. Ridiculous. I can't afford this. My small business employer is desperate for a change, because they can't afford the co-pay either.
The MA Connector website is a price fixing tool for the private HMOs. The premise that the costs would be contained because the number of uninsured would drop was clearly misguided.
The MA reform bill with the mandate was a give away to private HMOs. They get more customers forced to buy into their (non) service under threat of penalty. What a perfect scam!
"Here's the real problem with nationalized health care, if the Democrats get their way: the concept of individual freedom and liberty will be obliterated. Washington will be able to regulate every facet of our behavior under the guise that it has some kind of a cost impact on health care. Personal responsibility is a requirement in a free country"
Chicken Little....
"Personal responsibility" doesn't apply when cancer for example drives you into bankruptcy due to being unable to pay your medical bills.
As for freedom and liberty, the rest of the Western world has nationalised healthcare and they don't lack freedom and liberty, nor does the government regulate their behaviour.
This isn't a Dem or Gop issue, it's a "We the people" issue. Dems & Gops are one in the same, they just use different methods to achieve the same end result - squish the people.
Very well said.
You treat me as you treat the least of you
JC
Here's the real problem with nationalized health care, if the Democrats get their way: the concept of individual freedom and liberty will be obliterated. Washington will be able to regulate every facet of our behavior under the guise that it has some kind of a cost impact on health care. Personal responsibility is a requirement in a free country.
That train already left the station. Where were you the last 8 years when the GOP stuck their noses in the Schiavo situation? They want Roe overturned so they can legislate what a woman does with her body.
If the govt can be trusted with keeping us safe, then they can provide health insurance. For that matter, is keeping the consumer safe from unsafe drugs, bad food, polluted water now an act of "personal responsibility"? Health care is not a privilege. It is a necessity much like safe food and medicines. And govt. regulates that - it is not a perfect system, but it is a good system. Especially when one compares it to the horrors of a century ago.
"Personal responsibility is a requirement in a free country." I take personal responsibility. I pay my bills on time, including my insane insurance premiums. It's the insurance industry that has not taken personal responsibility, by skyrocketing premiums and consistently denying coverage. Our insurance just announced that they will no longer cover well-child check-ups or immunizations over 6 years of age, while increasing our premiums by 30%. How is that responsible?
You're spreading lies.
Hogwash
Horse Hockey! The "real problem" with nationalized health care is all of a sudden people don't have to keep their jobs because they're terrified of losing health care. And billions are funneled out of the economy by people who make their profits from killing Americans. And maybe, just maybe the USA no longer has the highest infant mortality rate in the developed world.
And oh yes, it's one more stone on the grave of the GOP canard that Government is the problem instead of the corporations that are feeding off of us.
Fellow dems, we cannot allow this opportunity at REAL healthcare reform to pass. Americans need relif, REAL relief. We know single payer is off the table, but we need to push for PUBLIC option WITHOUT a trigger. I just saw an add funded by insurance interests that attempts to say public healthcare equals government run equals bad - a bald faced lie. Write your congressman and insist on healthcare.
Not surprising.
While everyone loves to point at oil companies as "huge corporate money monsters", they don't hold a candle to the health care industry.
Health care has supplanted energy as the greatest contributor to operating earnings among companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index, representing 28.4% in 2009's first quarter versus 16.01% in the year-ago period.
Energy, which accounted for 23.11% of the S&P 500's operating earnings in the first quarter of 2008, contributed a mere 1.21% of its operating earnings in the latest quarter.
F&P Healthcare, which makes products to treat breathing disorders and heat lamps, announced a net profit after tax of NZ$62.2 million ($38.6 million) for the year ended March 31, compared with NZ$35.3 million a year earlier.
That's a 60% increase in profits in one year.
According to the American Medical Association, 94 percent of insurance markets in the United States are now highly concentrated, and insurers are thriving in the anti-competitive marketplace, raking in enormous profits and paying out huge CEO salaries.
Health care interests have spent more on lobbying than any other sector this year...$12
It is sad when the so-called richest country in the world does not provide healthcare or college to its citizens.
It is sad you have to fear going into bankruptcy if you go to the doctor or the hospital.
One of the biggest fallacies is that doctors are driving up the cost of healthcare. That is not true.
My father is a doctor and his salary has not gone up very much in the last 15 years, so where are these rising costs coming from?
This is what happens when necessities are privatized, people get taken advantage of.
"where are these rising costs coming from?"
Look no further than the Republicans and their friends: the Insurance Companies who bribe them.
If by "their friends" you mean the Democrats, you're correct. The Democrats in Congress get their share of bribe dollars too, lots and lots of them.
Since when it is a federal goverment job to provide healthcare and college?
The question is what kind of person would not want his fellow citizens to have healthcare, housing and education?
Most normal decent human beings would want that for their fellow men and women.
I agree, it's not the doctors. One thing I think everyone has noticed is that tremendous amount of advertising of prescription drugs we are pelted with on television. I don't know if that is a big contributor, but the pharmaceutical companies are sure spending a lot of money on advertising.
I know that people want to villify insurance companies, and some deserve it, but ours (Anthem) does a really good job of keeping costs down. A recent trip to the ER (don't ask) was initially billed at $495. By the time it was all over with, we paid $170. For 2.5 years of leukemia treatment for our son, we paid less than $5000 out of pocket. Our pediatrician had told us at the beginning to expect to have to mortgage our house - even with insurance. Fortunately, it never came to that.
I have a friend in Canada who wonders why people here have such a nightmare impression of their national healthcare system. She says it's great, and when we compared notes, her cost in taxes was far less than my cost in insurance premiums and copayments. I told her that it's only a certain segment of the population that fears national health insurance - the ones most susceptable to F.U.D. campaigns. Before people go knocking Canada - they managed to come through the economic crisis better than most countries because of their stricter regulatory policies. We could learn a few things from our cousins up north.
2/3 of American doctors WANT a Single-payer Health Care plan for this country.
When a doctor can charge $65,000 for a one hour procedure, when an ENT can charge $1100.00 for a 15 minute procedure, when doctors refuse to treat medicaid patients, including our senior citizens, then doctors ARE responsible for the lack of medical care that exists in this country. They work with the insurance companies and do every test that the insurers will cover and to heck with your co pay or deductibles or even if u really need that test. I keep wondering what has happened to their oaths, what happened to "Do no harm"? If you refuse to provide medical services, you ARE doing harm, if you are charging absorbatant fees, you ARE doing harm. There is not one single person in the world that is worth $65,000.00 an hour nor is there anyone worth $4400.00 an hour but here, we have to pay or not get treatment, Without a public single payers system as an option, the health care in this country will still be run by those making money and any saving in the beginning will disappear very quickly without that option. For those that say the government would run our individual health issues, that could not be further from the truth. Now, if your doctor wants to perform a procedure, he has to get pre permission from your insurer, in the government plan, all the government is, is a receiver and payer of bills and no pre authorization is needed for anything.
.
Something to do with the hypocritic oath and money
That is not true.
As I said before my father is a physician, has been one for over 30 years and was a surgeon for 15 years, so I don't know where you are getting your numbers from. If those numbers were true the Cardiologists would be building $10+ million homes and driving Ferrari Enzos and such. The most expensive home that I see any specialist buy is in the $1.3 million range. And the most expensive car is usually a Mercedes S550 or BMW 750.
Loading comments…
First Posted: 06- 4-09 01:36 AM | Updated: 06- 4-09 01:50 AM