I was born in the USA, but every day I question if I will be able to afford to retire in this country, or if I need to plan to emmegrate elsewhere while I still can.
My primary concern is healthcare costs.
How am I supposed to budget for healthcare costs during retirement when it's already so complicated.
530,000 American households are bankrupt each year due to medical costs [1]. It seems like the most complex piece of the retirement planning puzzle.
I once quit a bay area tech startup job in my 20s due to burn out (5 years no vacation, easily 50+ hour weeks) and in those few months of taking time for myself I got hit by a bout of what I assume was appendicitis. I delayed going to the hospital because I didn't have insurance since I had just left my job. The pain passed that day, but then a few weeks later the same excruciating pain came back -- just really indescribable pain -- to the point where I semi-consciously was asking my partner to make sure I didn't die. Ended up at the hospital, they confirmed appendicitis, did the surgery in less than an hour, and I got hit with a $25k bill. I remember an administrator coming into the room before the surgery and asking me for a credit card while I was completely out of it, because I assume someone told them I didn't have insurance.
After it all happened I was talking to a friend of mine who is an ER doctor and he told me, quite frankly, that if you ever find yourself in a situation like that to just leave your wallet at home and give a fake name. As a doctor they're going to treat you no matter what.
It's horrifying that we have to deal with this system in the United States. It does make me consider seeking citizenship elsewhere, which I consider more seriously the older I get.
Some few months ago I was trying to think of some sort of asset protection vehicle to prevent medical organizations from seizing everything I own in the event I face some catastrophic health issue. I don't think you can transfer property to a trust to shelter you from such events, though. They'd just go after the trust as far as I know.
The bigger issue is that I shouldn't have to think about this sort of problem in my emergency or estate planning.
I'm debating this for myself currently. I'm a teacher and, in the low CoL area I live in, I make pretty well with good insurance and decent retirement because of when I started teaching. I am, however, getting a leave of absence to go to Ireland to pursue a masters program in Applied Math and Theoretical Physics.
It's really tempting to just stay and work a data science job, though I do enjoy the time teaching gives me off, the fact it'll pay off my loans and that I can live comfortably with plenty to save to travel abroad for a few weeks every summer (I realize I might be one of the few teachers like this and I credit it solely to being single and no children).
And, yeah, I'll get state insurance when I retire, but it just sounds nice living in Europe (using the Ireland masters as a jumping-off point for networking) and not having to worry about it at all, even if I have to give up a lot of the stuff I value about teaching (namely, 75+ days off a year and a decent work schedule)
I met a girl at a coffee shop with nasal infusion pump and stage IV cancer. She was preparing for her bankruptcy hearing across the street because the doctors and hospitals were taking everything she had and she had to fight to keep some scraps. That's how America works: get sick, die and lose everything to vulture corporations.
Portugal has a great visa program if you can afford to invest in an investment fund or buy a property there (“Golden Visa”). It’s about 250k-500k EUR, but fast tracks your permanent status.
Why are there so many American homeless people? Lack of funds... not the drugs, mental, lazy, etc. excuses.
Why are there so many Americans with so little savings and yet hyperconcentration of wealth by a panoply of billionaires? Income inequality derived from the rich owning the political establishment.
What a bunch of fucking scumbags. Politicians need to step in and make this illegal. This industry is disgusting. Now you are talking about regular people trying to self diagnose to avoid going to the ER in fear of getting a large medical bill. Fuck these people.
When is the last time you went to an ER? We went recently in southern california, and it was saturated by people stopping in for sniffles, flu, and other things that should have been handled in a regular doctor visit. The nurse said as much when we asked if we should go somewhere else for (what turned out to be) an actual emergency. We got right in, thanks to triage.
Is this related to the article? Probably not. But I never get enough chances to point out the myriad abuses and misuses of the health care system.
Physician salaries have certainly outpaced inflation over the past 50 years (in most specialties - pediatrics and internal medicine seem to have dropped slightly) and the profit share of insurance companies has drastically increased over the last 20 years.
After Obamacare, health insurer profitability has actually improved, and health insurance stocks have outperformed the S&P 500 by more than 100%.
If you want a cut, you should really buy some stock.
Yup, these are the same people who run software to scan for plausible errors in past insurance applications, focusing on people who get the most expensive diseases, then use those errors (e.g., a misstatement or omission of a completely minor and unrelated condition or treatment), as a pretext to now deny coverage.
So, not the patient, who has played by the rules their entire life, and properly paid into the system, is now literally fighting for their life, probably without a job, and is now denied the healthcare that they had paid for their entire life.
And when a case manager denies their claim and saves the company $500K, they get promoted for killing the patient.
This is not rumor. This is sworn testimony before congress.
"Fuck these people" indeed!! (except they may no longer qualify as people)
This occurs because it's the area you can get hit with totally extraordinary out of network bills your insurer may have to pay. Super lucrative for hospital / physician / transport providers.
Your kid bumps their head.
"There was no blood, but the baby was inconsolable. Jang and her husband worried he might have an injury they couldn’t see, so they called 911, and an ambulance took the family — tourists from South Korea — to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH).
The doctors at the hospital quickly determined that baby Jeong Whan was fine. He took a short nap in his mother’s arms, drank some infant formula and was discharged a few hours later with a clean bill of health.
... the bill finally arrived at their home: They owed the hospital $18,836, the bulk of which was for a mysterious fee for $15,666 labeled trauma activation"
Hahah. For the insurance companies this happens over and over.
Of course, the lobby groups will get everyone riled up over this and HN contributors will be calling UnitedHealth scumbags / capitalist pigs.
The counter point to this, is that I know of a family member went to the ER after passing out (after the 2nd incident) and was able to diagnose a life threatening condition. If they had a healthcare plan like this, they would have probably not gotten care and would be at risk, because the only reason the diagnosis happened was due to symptoms that only show up immediately after their incident.
The risk here is having patients doing their own triaging. If the insurance company really wants to reduce costs, they can partner with a network of ERs who commit to triaging and transferring to lower cost providers if the issue is not an emergency. The patient is not qualified to make that decision.
I worked at a health tech company where we analyzed bringing down costs through claims data, I can tell you that there are actually hundreds of ways insurance companies can reduce costs that won't risk patient safety, but do not. For example, there are billing mistakes all the time, but insurers do not give a crap. We tried building features to help identify billing mistakes but we never could get insurers to care about it. The amount of times I saw insurers undermine patient safety for "costs" was staggering so I'm really skeptical that the insurers are doing the right thing here. As another example, we saw insurers build "Centers of Excellence" and push patients towards taking care there. Basically what they did was find crappy hospital systems who were willing to take lower rates and they would tailor their insurance plan to push patients that way. Unfortunately when we analyzed claims and outcomes we found these Centers of "Excellence" actually had way worse patient outcomes. We raised this point with the insurers and again, they did not give a crap.
I had mallet finger once. Went to a doctor in a nearby hospital (this is pre-doctor's care places on every corner). He saw me, gave me a plastic splint and said don't let your finger bend for 8 weeks and it should be fine. It was.
Then I got the bill which insurance paid. The hospital decided to code it as a broken limb and everything that goes along with it, xrays (which I didn't have), plaster cast (which I didn't have), etc... Even though insurance paid, this sort of thing just pisses me off. So, I spent hours on the phone getting it fixed which made the bill maybe 1/4 of what is was originally.
The article outlines fairly well the primary reasons why this is an atrocious policy to adopt (even if it's fairly typical of some of the rationales for reimbursement or lack thereof).
Another problem with the policy, though, is that many people are forced into ED use because there are simply not better options. Urgent care in the US has become fairly restricted in scope of services in a lot of areas, so the grey area between "urgent care worthy" and "ED-worthy" is larger than it should be. Many things that are maybe less ED-worthy become ED visits because urgent care is inaccessible, and delaying to urgent care or outpatient might make them emergency in nature. Even things like routine medication refills for certain groups can become ED visits because urgent care is closed, outpatient visits might be scheduling too far out, and so forth.
Do some people abuse the ED? Sure. But then find another solution for those people.
Urgent care is very lacking. I’ve had many episodes where I go in and they refuse to see me, say goto ER. Get to ER and they are annoyed that I didn’t goto an urgent care.
Look I’m sorry my minor stroke annoys you, but something beyond go home and see if it turns into a major stroke would be appreciated.
"In a 2018 analysis published in JAMA Open Network, researchers found that up to 90 percent of the symptoms that prompted an adult to go to the emergency room overlapped with symptoms of non-urgent conditions, which may be denied coverage in the future. But those same symptoms could also be linked to life-threatening conditions."
From the study:
Findings This cross-sectional study found that 1 insurer’s list of nonemergent diagnoses would classify 15.7% of commercially insured adult ED visits for possible coverage denial. However, these visits shared the same presenting symptoms as 87.9% of ED visits, of which 65.1% received emergency-level services.
Classically, you have gastroenteritis (stomach flu) and appendicitis both presenting with stomach pain, or myocardial infarction and heart burn both presenting with chest pain. A policy like this will result in deaths for those that occupy the middle ground between Medicaid and having enough money to not worry about medical bankruptcy.
Healthcare providers tend to overcharge in proportion to how unnegotiable the service is. For example, ambulance charges are a great way to make money, because the person on the hook for the ambulance typically isn't in a position to decline ambulance service.
I agree with the implementation because it puts the burden in the right place. The error here is not that the insurer is denying payment, but that the hospital is then passing the bills onto the patient.
Somehow, we have to reduce unnecessary use of emergency services. The doctors correctly point out that patients can't make that decision. Since the doctors _can_ make that decision, they should be involved in helping reduce ER misusage. The insurance company is setting up the correct incentives for the hospital to do exactly that; however, the hospital is dodging the incentives by passing costs to the patient. So the hospital is in the wrong here.
> Healthcare providers tend to overcharge in proportion to how unnegotiable the service is. For example, ambulance charges are a great way to make money, because the person on the hook for the ambulance typically isn't in a position to decline ambulance service.
That is because ambulance are charged on use basis in the US. The ambulance company has to provide the service even in the patient cannot pay for it. So they charge high rates with the hopes that they can recover from someone with good insurance. There are many rural ambulance systems that are failing due to insufficient insured patients. The real solution is cities/counties fund the service through taxes just like police/fire.
Serious abdomen pain can be gas or something serious.
You can cough hard enough to fracture a rib.
Chest pains can be acid reflux or a heart attack: I had gastritis when this happened to me.
And this is a good deal of the issue: You don't know how serious it is until you go to the doctor.
Now, this doesn't cause all of ER misuse, but we aren't doing anything to make that better. A doctor won't see you if you can't pay upfront. This is the same problem with urgent care: Either pay upfront or don't get helped. The ER, though, will bill you. Which does mean that if you are poor - especially just over the income level to get help with a lot of expenses - you either go to the ER when you need a doctor or you don't get seen and have to wait until it IS serious enough for the ER.
We can solve this by making sure everyone can very easily afford health car (I no longer live in the US: My out of pocket is $300 per year, and this includes necessary prescriptions, doctors, physical therapy, some dental stuff, and so on). The rest is paid in taxes, which are less than federal + state + health insurance was in the states: Nevermind having to pay a deductible before the out of pocket. (I know my GP will bill me, by the way).
But another way to handle this is to have something akin to urgent care on hospital grounds - a place that folks can see a doctor/nurse practitioner for non-emergency things and get billed later.
The insurance company is dumping a giant turd in the patient's lap and forcing them to either eat it or go fight an immensely well funded and resourced organization over the bill. It's a bit baffling to absolve them of responsibility in that action.
I remember a co-worker talking about this happening to her in the 90's - she went to the ER for a sudden, large rash that turned out to be a non-emergency (shingles), but she had no way to know that. AFAIK, she had to pay the whole ER bill herself because she didn't know ahead of time how serious what she had was.
Shingles can cause blindness. Early treatment is very important. A friend of mine was hospitalised and left with bad scaring because they delayed seeking help. At least she didn't have any large bills because she was not in the US. No one should be afraid of going to the hospital.
The company claims this is cost-cutting: "Unnecessary use of the emergency room costs nearly $32 billion annually, driving up healthcare costs for everyone. We are taking steps to make care more affordable"
But: "UHC’s parent company UnitedHealth Group posted a 35 percent year-over-year jump in operating profits in the first quarter of 2021. Despite earning $6.7 billion in a single quarter, UHC enrollees are being asked to pay more for their coverage."
The greediest, most depraved people in the country are responsible for keeping us healthy.
While I have no sympathy for the insurance companies, many hospitals are all too eager to gouge the hell out of emergency services and resist attempts to reduce costs. It's where you get slammed with out-of-network specialists.
So what, that's not something under the patients control. You (as a society) can't (morally) go "oh, well some hospitals are malicious, so we're just going bankrupt random people who get unlucky".
The insurance companies should lobby to make that illegal, if it's already illegal lobby to have that law enforced (if criminal) or take them to court (if civil) or both (if both). In the meantime they shouldn't be shifting the liability to the patients.
Be that as it may, this is not a decision made due to financial pressure on the insurance companies.
"UHC’s parent company UnitedHealth Group posted a 35 percent year-over-year jump in operating profits in the first quarter of 2021. Despite earning $6.7 billion in a single quarter, UHC enrollees are being asked to pay more for their coverage."
Well I don't think it is a human right for the simple reason that medical care is technically a limited resource.l, there is not an infinite supply of doctors or medicine there is a limited supply no matter what that theoretical limit is.
Ergo it can't be a human right because it is limited, a right is something that everyone should have.
Also what do we mean by "healthcare" is it anyone should be allowed to have any medical procedure they want whenever they want it? I ask because by simply having access to penicillin, aspirin, benedryl and ibeprofun you now have better healthcare than any person in human history that lived before the 1950s. So when we say healthcare is a human right we really need to define what we mean by healthcare.
I also want to make clear I in no way support the insurance companies or hospitals as I think they are all greedy filthy parasites, and have been in constant combat with them for years, but I also don't understand how any rational person can justify the comment that healthcare is a human right.
Here in Israel, if you go to the ER without are for referral from an urgent care clinic and the issue is found to be minor, you pay $140. Enough to deter frivolous cases, but not crippling.
Incidentally, that's about the amount my wife paid for a covered visit to an ER with a legitimate reason in the US. Doesn't matter if she had gone in with toe pain or a GSW, it still would have been the $100 copay plus whatever coinsurance the visit would have cost.
I remain mystified why our US Healthcare system seems unable to do common sense things. Also, when I last ran my own business, which was a while ago, the monthly premium for ONE employee+family was $2400. A high-end plan, but still...I was well into my late 20's before my entire paycheck was that much.
Employers need to stop providing healthcare, they should end healthcare as a benefit and provide employees with a one time raise to cover the costs, and then be done with providing healthcare.
Big companies don't want healthcare to go away, because it's means to control employees, it's a way to suppress competition from small businesses, and is suppresses wages.
My friend had a bad asthma incident recently, went to an urgent care, and got referred to a hospital because they were at capacity. I wonder if that would count as an emergency.
For-profit healthcare should be illegal and there should be sufficient doctor appointments to go around. Right now, Americans pay more than anyone, wait weeks or months for appointments, and receive much poorer care than equivalent countries.
So when threatened to have their source of funding cut (as most people wouldn't be able to pay out of pocket), a union of professionals attacked the moved as dangerous/cost cutting/etc? And they were supported by their employer industry representative associations??
[+] [-] schaefer|4 years ago|reply
My primary concern is healthcare costs. How am I supposed to budget for healthcare costs during retirement when it's already so complicated.
530,000 American households are bankrupt each year due to medical costs [1]. It seems like the most complex piece of the retirement planning puzzle.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/this-is-the-real-reason-most...
[+] [-] throwthefuture|4 years ago|reply
I once quit a bay area tech startup job in my 20s due to burn out (5 years no vacation, easily 50+ hour weeks) and in those few months of taking time for myself I got hit by a bout of what I assume was appendicitis. I delayed going to the hospital because I didn't have insurance since I had just left my job. The pain passed that day, but then a few weeks later the same excruciating pain came back -- just really indescribable pain -- to the point where I semi-consciously was asking my partner to make sure I didn't die. Ended up at the hospital, they confirmed appendicitis, did the surgery in less than an hour, and I got hit with a $25k bill. I remember an administrator coming into the room before the surgery and asking me for a credit card while I was completely out of it, because I assume someone told them I didn't have insurance.
After it all happened I was talking to a friend of mine who is an ER doctor and he told me, quite frankly, that if you ever find yourself in a situation like that to just leave your wallet at home and give a fake name. As a doctor they're going to treat you no matter what.
It's horrifying that we have to deal with this system in the United States. It does make me consider seeking citizenship elsewhere, which I consider more seriously the older I get.
[+] [-] andrewmcwatters|4 years ago|reply
The bigger issue is that I shouldn't have to think about this sort of problem in my emergency or estate planning.
[+] [-] dorchadas|4 years ago|reply
It's really tempting to just stay and work a data science job, though I do enjoy the time teaching gives me off, the fact it'll pay off my loans and that I can live comfortably with plenty to save to travel abroad for a few weeks every summer (I realize I might be one of the few teachers like this and I credit it solely to being single and no children).
And, yeah, I'll get state insurance when I retire, but it just sounds nice living in Europe (using the Ireland masters as a jumping-off point for networking) and not having to worry about it at all, even if I have to give up a lot of the stuff I value about teaching (namely, 75+ days off a year and a decent work schedule)
[+] [-] doggodaddo78|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doggodaddo78|4 years ago|reply
Why are there so many Americans with so little savings and yet hyperconcentration of wealth by a panoply of billionaires? Income inequality derived from the rich owning the political establishment.
[+] [-] maxerickson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ping_pong|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvanderbot|4 years ago|reply
Is this related to the article? Probably not. But I never get enough chances to point out the myriad abuses and misuses of the health care system.
[+] [-] dahdum|4 years ago|reply
That would only make the situation even worse, hospitals would raise their absurd gouging rates even higher if government required it.
Reform is needed but on both sides of that table.
[+] [-] musicale|4 years ago|reply
But it's very profitable.
Physician salaries have certainly outpaced inflation over the past 50 years (in most specialties - pediatrics and internal medicine seem to have dropped slightly) and the profit share of insurance companies has drastically increased over the last 20 years.
After Obamacare, health insurer profitability has actually improved, and health insurance stocks have outperformed the S&P 500 by more than 100%.
If you want a cut, you should really buy some stock.
[+] [-] TX0098812|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toss1|4 years ago|reply
So, not the patient, who has played by the rules their entire life, and properly paid into the system, is now literally fighting for their life, probably without a job, and is now denied the healthcare that they had paid for their entire life.
And when a case manager denies their claim and saves the company $500K, they get promoted for killing the patient.
This is not rumor. This is sworn testimony before congress.
"Fuck these people" indeed!! (except they may no longer qualify as people)
[+] [-] R0b0t1|4 years ago|reply
Maybe a stretch, but possible.
[+] [-] slownews45|4 years ago|reply
Your kid bumps their head.
"There was no blood, but the baby was inconsolable. Jang and her husband worried he might have an injury they couldn’t see, so they called 911, and an ambulance took the family — tourists from South Korea — to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH).
The doctors at the hospital quickly determined that baby Jeong Whan was fine. He took a short nap in his mother’s arms, drank some infant formula and was discharged a few hours later with a clean bill of health.
... the bill finally arrived at their home: They owed the hospital $18,836, the bulk of which was for a mysterious fee for $15,666 labeled trauma activation"
Hahah. For the insurance companies this happens over and over.
Of course, the lobby groups will get everyone riled up over this and HN contributors will be calling UnitedHealth scumbags / capitalist pigs.
[+] [-] safdafh|4 years ago|reply
The risk here is having patients doing their own triaging. If the insurance company really wants to reduce costs, they can partner with a network of ERs who commit to triaging and transferring to lower cost providers if the issue is not an emergency. The patient is not qualified to make that decision.
I worked at a health tech company where we analyzed bringing down costs through claims data, I can tell you that there are actually hundreds of ways insurance companies can reduce costs that won't risk patient safety, but do not. For example, there are billing mistakes all the time, but insurers do not give a crap. We tried building features to help identify billing mistakes but we never could get insurers to care about it. The amount of times I saw insurers undermine patient safety for "costs" was staggering so I'm really skeptical that the insurers are doing the right thing here. As another example, we saw insurers build "Centers of Excellence" and push patients towards taking care there. Basically what they did was find crappy hospital systems who were willing to take lower rates and they would tailor their insurance plan to push patients that way. Unfortunately when we analyzed claims and outcomes we found these Centers of "Excellence" actually had way worse patient outcomes. We raised this point with the insurers and again, they did not give a crap.
[+] [-] pavlov|4 years ago|reply
The insurance companies have contributed to making American healthcare so dysfunctional. They are not the victims here.
[+] [-] matwood|4 years ago|reply
Then I got the bill which insurance paid. The hospital decided to code it as a broken limb and everything that goes along with it, xrays (which I didn't have), plaster cast (which I didn't have), etc... Even though insurance paid, this sort of thing just pisses me off. So, I spent hours on the phone getting it fixed which made the bill maybe 1/4 of what is was originally.
[+] [-] gotostatement|4 years ago|reply
"UHC’s parent company UnitedHealth Group posted a 35 percent year-over-year jump in operating profits in the first quarter of 2021"
[+] [-] derbOac|4 years ago|reply
Another problem with the policy, though, is that many people are forced into ED use because there are simply not better options. Urgent care in the US has become fairly restricted in scope of services in a lot of areas, so the grey area between "urgent care worthy" and "ED-worthy" is larger than it should be. Many things that are maybe less ED-worthy become ED visits because urgent care is inaccessible, and delaying to urgent care or outpatient might make them emergency in nature. Even things like routine medication refills for certain groups can become ED visits because urgent care is closed, outpatient visits might be scheduling too far out, and so forth.
Do some people abuse the ED? Sure. But then find another solution for those people.
[+] [-] selectodude|4 years ago|reply
Ironically they tend to be the uninsured because the ER can't turn you away. The solution is to get them insured.
[+] [-] treeman79|4 years ago|reply
Look I’m sorry my minor stroke annoys you, but something beyond go home and see if it turns into a major stroke would be appreciated.
[+] [-] blakesterz|4 years ago|reply
From the study:
Findings This cross-sectional study found that 1 insurer’s list of nonemergent diagnoses would classify 15.7% of commercially insured adult ED visits for possible coverage denial. However, these visits shared the same presenting symptoms as 87.9% of ED visits, of which 65.1% received emergency-level services.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
[+] [-] imadethis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brilee|4 years ago|reply
I agree with the implementation because it puts the burden in the right place. The error here is not that the insurer is denying payment, but that the hospital is then passing the bills onto the patient.
Somehow, we have to reduce unnecessary use of emergency services. The doctors correctly point out that patients can't make that decision. Since the doctors _can_ make that decision, they should be involved in helping reduce ER misusage. The insurance company is setting up the correct incentives for the hospital to do exactly that; however, the hospital is dodging the incentives by passing costs to the patient. So the hospital is in the wrong here.
[+] [-] pkaye|4 years ago|reply
That is because ambulance are charged on use basis in the US. The ambulance company has to provide the service even in the patient cannot pay for it. So they charge high rates with the hopes that they can recover from someone with good insurance. There are many rural ambulance systems that are failing due to insufficient insured patients. The real solution is cities/counties fund the service through taxes just like police/fire.
[+] [-] Broken_Hippo|4 years ago|reply
Serious abdomen pain can be gas or something serious. You can cough hard enough to fracture a rib. Chest pains can be acid reflux or a heart attack: I had gastritis when this happened to me.
And this is a good deal of the issue: You don't know how serious it is until you go to the doctor.
Now, this doesn't cause all of ER misuse, but we aren't doing anything to make that better. A doctor won't see you if you can't pay upfront. This is the same problem with urgent care: Either pay upfront or don't get helped. The ER, though, will bill you. Which does mean that if you are poor - especially just over the income level to get help with a lot of expenses - you either go to the ER when you need a doctor or you don't get seen and have to wait until it IS serious enough for the ER.
We can solve this by making sure everyone can very easily afford health car (I no longer live in the US: My out of pocket is $300 per year, and this includes necessary prescriptions, doctors, physical therapy, some dental stuff, and so on). The rest is paid in taxes, which are less than federal + state + health insurance was in the states: Nevermind having to pay a deductible before the out of pocket. (I know my GP will bill me, by the way).
But another way to handle this is to have something akin to urgent care on hospital grounds - a place that folks can see a doctor/nurse practitioner for non-emergency things and get billed later.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] commandlinefan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexmcc81|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netizen-936824|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gotostatement|4 years ago|reply
But: "UHC’s parent company UnitedHealth Group posted a 35 percent year-over-year jump in operating profits in the first quarter of 2021. Despite earning $6.7 billion in a single quarter, UHC enrollees are being asked to pay more for their coverage."
The greediest, most depraved people in the country are responsible for keeping us healthy.
[+] [-] dahdum|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gpm|4 years ago|reply
The insurance companies should lobby to make that illegal, if it's already illegal lobby to have that law enforced (if criminal) or take them to court (if civil) or both (if both). In the meantime they shouldn't be shifting the liability to the patients.
[+] [-] gotostatement|4 years ago|reply
"UHC’s parent company UnitedHealth Group posted a 35 percent year-over-year jump in operating profits in the first quarter of 2021. Despite earning $6.7 billion in a single quarter, UHC enrollees are being asked to pay more for their coverage."
[+] [-] hibern8|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hpoe|4 years ago|reply
Ergo it can't be a human right because it is limited, a right is something that everyone should have.
Also what do we mean by "healthcare" is it anyone should be allowed to have any medical procedure they want whenever they want it? I ask because by simply having access to penicillin, aspirin, benedryl and ibeprofun you now have better healthcare than any person in human history that lived before the 1950s. So when we say healthcare is a human right we really need to define what we mean by healthcare.
I also want to make clear I in no way support the insurance companies or hospitals as I think they are all greedy filthy parasites, and have been in constant combat with them for years, but I also don't understand how any rational person can justify the comment that healthcare is a human right.
[+] [-] josh_fyi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imadethis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] watertom|4 years ago|reply
Big companies don't want healthcare to go away, because it's means to control employees, it's a way to suppress competition from small businesses, and is suppresses wages.
[+] [-] murph-almighty|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meowster|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] doggodaddo78|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rejectedandsad|4 years ago|reply
This could kill.
[+] [-] aaomidi|4 years ago|reply
Really surprised how much shit Americans are capable of taking.
[+] [-] 1996|4 years ago|reply
Color me surprised!