Here’s more of that “ER Insurance”

August 29th, 2008

Five mistakes that will land you in medical debt – CNN.com
It took the Trim family of Arlington, Texas, three hours to go $15,000 into debt. One evening last spring, Alex Trim was knocked unconscious when a car hit his bike and he slammed into the windshield. Three hours, many stitches and seven CT scans later, Alex was discharged in pretty good shape.

About a month later, the bill arrived in the mail. “I didn’t have a clue you could go into $15,000 debt in one night,” said Alex’s father, Callvin Trim. “When I saw that bill, I was just kind of numb.”

…

A report out last month from the Commonwealth Fund found that 28 percent of the population said they were paying off medical debt in 2007, up from 21 percent in 2005.

“Two-thirds of the people who go into medical debt have insurance,” said Mark Rukavina, executive director of the Access Project. “When medical debt hits, it hits very quickly. It’s a jolt, and it’s generally not very predictable.”

“These are all honest, hardworking people,” added Jessie Maurer, a medical billing advocate in West Des Moines, Iowa, who helped the Trims. “This could happen to just about anybody.”

Filed under: Health Stuff, political malfeasance | Comment (1)

One Response to “Here’s more of that “ER Insurance””

Dim Reaper on August 30, 2008 4:29 am
It’s hard to say which system is better – the UK one or the US. Over here in addition ot income tax we pay Nitional Insurance whic his supposed to go to healthcare and state pension. In return if you’re ill then you go to the doctor or hospital for free.

However, although I pay about hundreds of pounds a month for this, I still have to pay another £13 per month for a private dental practice “just in case” and I have to pay £7 each time I need an inhaler for asthma (two different inhalers actually, so $14 each time).

Add to that the fact that women with breast cancer, or people with kidney cancer are being told that they can not have the latest cancer drugs on the NHS because they are too expensive for what they do (like in some cases giving a person an extra year to live) and at the same time consider that drug addicts are given methadone on the NHS, and drunken fuckwits who go out every Friday & Saturday night, get drunk and into fights then go fill out casualty at the local hospital and have to pay nothing in return and it really makes me wonder whether it would be better over here for everyone to have to get medical insurance to pay private hospitals.