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Legions of people are not sick at one time. Especially not young people.
This is why the government moved quickly to cut a deal with the insurers to pay for coronavirus health costs, because that has been the single largest one-time demand for the health system in 100 years. If it hadn't, we'd have indeed have had legions of people in an enormous financial mess at once.
Also we have medicare, which covers most of the debilitating finance destroying conditions at the time when most people are likely to get them. We also have medicaid, which covers people who have no assets to lose. If you don't have anything to lose you don't go bankrupt.
Who is very unlucky is anyone who gets a debilitating condition before age 65, does not have a privileged job that provides insurance and/or loses it. And who has assets to lose. My dad was one who fell though that hole.
Above you indicated many more than 500,000 families per year were impacted by debilitating medical bills. I'm telling you straight up that's not real. They'd show up in change of net worth figures.
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Coronavirus is as you said a 1x per 100 year event (hopefully). Much of the .gov direct involvement in covid is to side step legal peril. You know that.
There's no way to record stats for something people don't do, get real
But I'm one example. I've needed two crowns in my mouth for over a year now, and have dental insurance, but still have to pay 50% out of pocket, at time of service. That's $2k out of my pocket (total bill would be $4k). So I've been putting it off until I have the money, and it sucks
That's more indicative of you having poor scene control than any systemic medical problem.
Above you indicated many more than 500,000 families per year were impacted by debilitating medical bills. I'm telling you straight up that's not real. They'd show up in change of net worth figures.
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Coronavirus is as you said a 1x per 100 year event (hopefully). Much of the .gov direct involvement in covid is to side step legal peril. You know that.
I should hope not! if a big percentage was suffering from medical debt it would mean we have something along the lines of the black death happening.
If you are not sick you have none of these problems because healthy people don't need health care. E.g.: I have only been to the doctor about 10 times in my entire life, so yeah, I have no medical debt! Most people are not sick at any given snapshot in time. Net worth figures are determined by surveys, and according to nature their samples will show the vast majority who are going about their lives healthy and never going to the doctor. Take any sample of 1000 people and 950 of them are likely to be perfectly healthy or at least reasonably healthy enough they have not had contact with a hospital. They will be fine until they are not. And if they are fine until age 65 they're all good.
This isn't about the healthy people, it's about the sick ones. Over a lifetime, most people deal with health problems of one kind or another and that's when the debt accrues.
Last edited by redguard57; 04-20-2021 at 05:40 PM..
Medical debt is most severe from hospitals, by far. Secondarily, from oncology.
As a matter of course, the majority or even a sizeable minority of the population between ages 18 and 64 is neither in need of a hospital nor suffering from cancer, on any given day. The hospitals only even have enough room for something like 0.05% of the population at one time... which is why we have all these coronavirus restrictions. Net worth surveys are taken in a snapshot in time. So yeah, no duh, survey a random sample and most of them are going to be reasonably healthy adults within the net worth bell curve.
Cumulatively over many years, millions of people do have contact with a hospital or need oncology, and a percentage of them are not covered, lose coverage, or otherwise have debilitating financial consequences from it. My dad's net worth was fine and quite impressive until it wasn't. So if you'd have surveyed his net worth at any point throughout 8/9ths of his life, he'd have looked fine. Better than fine. It was the unfortunate 1/9th that did him in, and he was dead within 2.5 years so take your survey after that, he wouldn't register at all.
What we need to be concerned about is not the # of medical debt sufferers divided by the entire population. That will always be low by virtue of most living humans being reasonably healthy. If they weren't reasonably healthy they'd be dead. E.g: only 5% of the U.S. population has an active cancer diagnosis at any given time (about 17 million/330 million). 95% of people don't have cancer, today.
What we need to be concerned about is what percentage of sick people accrue debilitating medical debt.
Last edited by redguard57; 04-20-2021 at 06:13 PM..
Medical debt is most severe from hospitals, by far. Secondarily, from oncology.
As a matter of course, the majority or even a sizeable minority of the population between ages 18 and 64 is neither in need of a hospital nor suffering from cancer, on any given day. The hospitals only even have enough room for something like 0.05% of the population at one time... which is why we have all these coronavirus restrictions. Net worth surveys are taken in a snapshot in time. So yeah, no duh, survey a random sample and most of them are going to be reasonably healthy adults within the net worth bell curve.
Cumulatively over many years, millions of people do have contact with a hospital or need oncology, and a percentage of them are not covered, lose coverage, or otherwise have debilitating financial consequences from it. My dad's net worth was fine and quite impressive until it wasn't. So if you'd have surveyed his net worth at any point throughout 8/9ths of his life, he'd have looked fine. Better than fine. It was the unfortunate 1/9th that did him in, and he was dead within 2.5 years so take your survey after that, he wouldn't register at all.
No sale. Above you flatly wrote that more than 500K families are significantly impacted by huge medical bills annually. Now you are saying the opposite.
Recall MIT says 4% of bankruptcies are caused by hospitalizations.
ETA - I'm not missing the point in any way. You are obfuscating as is your MO.
No sale. Above you flatly wrote that more than 500K families are significantly impacted by huge medical bills annually. Now you are saying the opposite.
Recall MIT says 4% of bankruptcies are caused by hospitalizations.
ETA - I'm not missing the point in any way. You are obfuscating as is your MO.
It's very likely more than 500k per year. Probably a low-ball. I already explained that legal bankruptcy is useless for most people and they will never pursue it.
It's very likely more than 500k per year. Probably a low-ball. I already explained that legal bankruptcy is useless for most people and they will never pursue it.
No sale. Above you flatly wrote that more than 500K families are significantly impacted by huge medical bills annually. Now you are saying the opposite.
Recall MIT says 4% of bankruptcies are caused by hospitalizations.
ETA - I'm not missing the point in any way. You are obfuscating as is your MO.
We can just deduce from the stats:
Cancer: 17 million people have an active diagnosis. Percentage of cancer diagnoses under age 65 and therefore ineligible for Medicare, about 40%. . So about 7 million under 65 cancer patients per year.
Hospitalizations: 36 million per year.
Percentage of hospitalizations by patients who are uninsured or on private insurance under age 65: about 41%. The rest are covered by Medicaid & Medicare. So about 22 million hospital visits per year have the potential to be un or under-insured.
Out of 29 million under 65 contacts with the health system for hospital or cancer:
Let's assume 35% are overlap - one and the same cancer patients who went to the hospital. That leave 18.9 million contacts.
Let's assume most private insurance will pay, so 80% will have those contacts covered. That leaves 3.8 million contacts.
So you want to convince me that out of almost 4 million contacts per year with a hospital or for cancer among people who are not covered or have poor private insurance, fewer than 500k, (13%) resulted in debilitating medical bills. Please! That would be arguing that less than 500k per year struggle with medical bills AT ALL!
If it was that good, there wouldn't be very many people complaining about our health system. Not even the NIH article you posted says that:
Quote:
according to a 2014 report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, about 20% of Americans have substantial medical debt yet in a given year less than 1% of Americans file for personal bankruptcy
If anything they admit the problem is worse! They acknowledge 20% of the entire population has "substantial medical debt!" They're just nitpicking on the semantics of the terms "medical" and "bankruptcy." Basically saying that "medical" is too broad a term to account for 60% of the filed bankruptcies per year most of which were due to a variety of factors. Although that so many included medical as a factor at all should in itself should be unacceptable. Whether we have 100k or 500k or 2 million "true" "medical bankruptcies," countries with universal health care have ZERO by any definition!
LOL I read one of the articles the above NIH article cited, and it said that a hospital admission has the same financial effect on someone as a job loss. It also said one of the reasons that uninsured people do not suffer from "medical" bankruptcy at high rates is because there is "informal insurance" of hospitals having to treat the uninsured and then they just never pay! So because they never paid anything, there are not many "medical" bankruptcies among the uninsured, especially relative to the larger problem which is their income reduction. Plus if they don't have the money or assets to pay medical bills, probably the same reason they were uninsured, then what is the point of bankruptcy?! LooooLLLL! https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/...7/aer.20161038 It just makes the system look more pathetic to read about it in those social scientific terms.
Last edited by redguard57; 04-20-2021 at 07:57 PM..
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