http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/InsureYourHealth/whats-most-likely-to-bankrupt-you.aspx
What is new. you can work all you life and not be able to cover the expense of one major illness. If I become real ill, I will tell my family to forget all the real expensive treatments, I would rather just die.
"Medically related bankruptcies have been rising steadily for decades. In 1981, only 8% of families filing for bankruptcy cited a serious medical problem as the reason, while a 2001 study of bankruptcies in five states by the same researchers found that illness or medical bills contributed to 50% of all filings. " This coincides with the falling of the personal savings rate since the 1980. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PSAVERT It's easy to say health care insurance sucks, but it's often "the straw that breaks the camel's back." We've been living beyond our means, and an unexpected financial problem becomes a disaster. The one good thing from the economic mess is that the US savings rate is finally turning up.
Even if you do not live beyond your means. How many people can handle several heart operations or brain operations? Even at 5-10% of the cost of the bill it is huge, just forget it without insurance.
How many people get several heart or brain operations? Yes, medical expense has been rising since 1980 as well. But we don't exactly have much in the way of savings in case something goes wrong.
A lot of people do get cancer though. Heaven forbid they get diagnosed in mid-late stages and are strongly nudged to opt into surgery. But a 7% savings rate and talented graduates changing to a non-financial-$$$$ geared career have been bright spots to this ongoing recession....
I don't buy that the solution to save yourself from bankruptcy after a major illness is to save more. This is a complete cop out by the government. When is this society going to join with the rest of the civilized world and realize that a strong nation depends on the health of their people. <object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9LnY-jy_cE0&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9LnY-jy_cE0&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>
Let's not take into account any lifestyle choices that these people might have made to have such huge medical expenses though. Let's instead blame it on the private insurance system. It's always somebody else's fault right?
Overall sicko is a pretty decent movie, but it leaves out what I think is the number one reason we pay so much for health care, we have the fatest people in the world, of course we are going to have high medical bills.
It's not the private insurance companies that are at fault for people getting sick. It is their fault for prioritizing profit over health and in a lot of cases, life.
Oh it's already here, the generation grew up on bacon and egg for breakfast is dealing with the consequences now.
Any discussion of healthcare has to start here : The problem's a lot less severe in Europe, which accounts for a large reason their healthcare systems are more manageable financially. Which doesn't mean they aren't having problems with it also. In America we wil soon be reaching the stage where healthcare takes up >20% of our GDP, more than defense and education combined. Within 20 years we will be reaching a breaking point if privatized healthcare is allowed to continue and the current standards regarding "basic human needs" in the form of EMTALA insist on being met. No matter what you believe, that is going to be the reality.
Yes, if we don't do something now, in 20 or 30 years people would be asking for the heads for their congressmen. The biggest problem is the cost of which the insurance is a part.
There are two questions here- 1) why does health care cost so much? 2). Why are so many people going into bankruptcy? The answer to the 2nd question is partly because of rising health care costs, but it's also because we've been living way beyond our means.
Point taken, but we're not actually the fattest in the world. We trail Nauru (and other countries in the South Pacific) by a considerable amount. http://www.infoplease.com/world/statistics/obesity.html
This is a very simplistic response. In almost 6 years of representing debtors, I was involved as an attorney in roughly 1,600 consumer bankruptcy cases. Very few of those cases had medical bills as a major component of debt. The most frequent health related complaint I heard was "I got sick and had to take time off from work. Then we fell behind on the mortgage/car." Imagine having to go without, at a minimum, 30% of your income for any significant period of time. I also heard a lot of "___________ died, and I had to bury them." There are myriad reasons why people go bankrupt. I find it very suspect that any one reason accounts for most of them. The situations of debtors are too varied for any one question to tell the tale.
