I am not from the US. Had my close relative fight with cancer. If not for the government which sponsored it almost fully, excluding a couple of procedures like PET, it would cost our family a lot. Just for the scale: pial for one infusion of one out of three drugs would cost us $8k and my relative would’ve needed 16 infusions.
It looks like if a person is above the poverty line and is under 65 they will have to pay like 20% of the medical bill which could be insane, given they have an insurance. Otherwise most first line treatments are covered by Medicare and Medicaid Plan B.
So if a person earns, like not insane $3k/mo, they will most certainly be billed with enormous bills and be refused to be treated again in case of relapse, just because they haven’t paid the previous bill?
So there is also an out of pocket maximum which is the most you’ll pay in a calendar year no matter how much your expenses are which vary by insurance plans but in my experience have generally been between 5-15k with 15k being for much cheaper insurance and 5k being for better insurance so if you have 1m in medical expenses and copay would be 200k it would instead be just that max out of pocket of approximately 10k, which while not great is much more manageable. The unfortunate thing is that is tied to the year so if you start treatment in November and finish treatment in March that 10k per calendar year turns into 20k since it was over the course of 2 years
That’s what I’ve been missing all this time.
Bottom line is:
If you have income above the poverty line, say $2k/mo, don’t pay the insurance fee for some reason (the income is from something shady like onlyfans or etsy), you don’t have a disability, and you’re younger than 65 - only then you can get million dollars bill.
Otherwise, cancer treatment could cost you up to $15-30k and sometimes even be free.
Generally speaking yes, some caveats where people still end up with more debt than they can handle is if you have a family insurance plan your max out of pocket usually doubles, so you can be looking at 2x the amounts I quoted.
The other big one for a lot of health insurance in the United States the employer pays a percentage and the employee pays a percentage for it so generally speaking shittier jobs pay a lower percentage and have worse plans so a person making 30k/yr might have to pay $300/mo for kind of shitty health insurance and if they have the mindset of “I never get sick” that’s an easy expense to cut so they can end up with the uncovered medical expenses
Then there is also if a person leaves a job and before they get a new job they are without insurance and you can pay the entire premiums yourself but those can easily be hundreds of dollars that if you don’t have an income can be rough
Also companies don’t need to contribute to insurance unless you are full time so it’s a common practice that companies like Walmart will intentionally keep people part time so they don’t have to pay benefits and a person ends up working two jobs so they still make too much for Medicaid, don’t get insurance through either job, and are usually still trying to pinch Pennies to save money so shelling out the several hundred dollars a month doesn’t seem worth it
Personally what I find to be the ironic scam of all of this is people in the U.S. generally pay for insurance directly out of their paycheck and so when they talk about their paycheck being so much smaller than their gross salary they always blame “taxes” when in reality a sizable percentage of their salary is going to health insurances, but they don’t want nationalized healthcare because it would raise their taxes more than it is. When in reality US citizens pay more money between health insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, copays, etc then the cost of health care in countries with “free” healthcare by 50-100% and have lifespans that are significantly shorter
Yeah, thanks for the explanation. I think I have a better understanding of the US healthcare system.
As for the people, they are just parroting the media, nothing new here.
In addition, medical costs in the US are higher than many places, because the insurance companies don’t have to bargain with the whole nation at once. Even Medicare and Medicaid have historically been prevented by law from using their full bargaining power in some cases.
I don’t actually know what happens to medical coverage if you have medical debt. It will eventually go to collections and can be used to garnish your wages, I believe.
That’s really sad
If your country has a better system, it is because the unions and the left have fought for it. Don’t let the Macrons of the world do to you what Reagan did to us.
This cannot be screamed loud or often enough!