I’ll leave that unanswered and let you draw your own conclusions about my insurance status 
(Yes, I was very very dumb).
Wow, this thread is still in GD? Amazing…
Got a cite for that?
Exactly what I was thinking. This is about the most fact free GQ thread I’ve seen in a while. I came here hoping to actually learn the answer to this one…instead of a bunch of uninformed speculation and anecdotes.
-XT
I am in this situation and simply left the US (I am American) 6 years ago. I would like to come back, but can’t get insurance. So instead of setting up my business in the US, hiring Americans, and spending money in the US, I am contributing to the UAE and Czech economies… and I have excellent health care available to me everywhere in the world except the USA.
You do have the option of continuing coverage from your former employer through COBRA for up to 18 months. While your individual situation may be sad, you have the responsibility to ensure your savings are enough that you can cover your costs between jobs. Our governmental programs (and our obligation as a society) covers those people who are truly destitute. If you don’t want to take a part time job at Starbucks or Walmart (whose coverage is actually quite nice), lacking other employment, it’s not anyone else’s job to ensure you have coverage.
I work with insurance folks all the time. They’re often just as clueless as anyone else is about the costs of health care. Moreso, usually, because they’re seeing the discounted costs proferred to their companies. My thoughts on those who work for insurance companies are probably better left to another forum.
Straw man arguments don’t make your case any stronger. It’s not that you don’t deserve treatment any more than the next person. It’s that treatment isn’t conjured whole cloth out of thin air. Medical costs, particularly malpractice treatments, are huge. You wouldn’t expect to be able to eat without paying for your food, would you?
Hospitals are getting a lot better about being proactive in terms of their un- and under-insured patients. And the immediate tax writeoffs can sometimes be more valuable than trying to squeeze bits and pieces of your bill out of you, only to write off a large portion of it as a loss several years down the line.
The monthly cost of continuing COBRA on my prior, employer-paid policy would have been MORE than the combined cost of every other expense we have. I would have been paying more for that premium than everything else in my life combined. If I had been able to come up with that money, which I can’t because unemployment benefits just barely pay for rent and food. Do you not understand that I am UNABLE to come up with the premium money?
Let’s see - in the past three years both I and my husband have been hospitalized. My parents were both hospitalized and, since they are on a fixed income, I contributed to paying some of their bills so they wouldn’t fall into debt they couldn’t get out of. My mother-in-law fell into the same hole. Are you saying I should have let my parents and in-laws fall into bankruptcy and be evicted from their homes rather than help them? Even if I had done that, paying out of pocket costs for both my husband and I, and the time I missed from work that reduced my income, wiped out our reserves.
Again, it’s blame the victim - after three years of one financial hit after another suddenly we are bad, irresponsible people. I realize that people have a need to be reassured that such things will not happen to them, that only irresponsible people wind up in these circumstances, but it’s not true. We were responsible enough to have six months living expenses in the bank but a couple years of problems made use those resources.
I would be happy to have that part-time Starbucks or Wal-mart job, but when I went to Starbucks I was told they weren’t hiring my area due to an oversupply of applicants. Again, the assumption is that anyone who doesn’t instantly find employment is some sort of lazy jerk - not true. When I went to the unemployment office one of the first things that I was told is that average person looking for work in my area after job loss is taking 6 to 8 months to find work.
But continue to believe that it is an easy matter to find work. I hope to god you never have to find out differently.
I took the job at the insurance company as a means to get coverage for my family. I’m sorry if that puts me into the ranks of the unclean for anyone. It worked quite well as a solution for 13 years. Now I am back to where I was before.
Oh, I have no doubt that I will eventually find employment with health benefits… it just make take a lot longer than people who feel falsely secure in their current coverage might realize. I went through all this once before, many years ago. I guess part of what is pissing me off is that the situation is even worse than the last time I went through this.
Absolutely not. Go back to my post where I stated quite clearly that I would be willing pay higher taxes in order to secure truly universal health coverage for everyone. I am, in no way, suggesting anyone get free care. The problem is that the care is priced higher than I am able to afford. I just don’t have the money to pay the premiums I’ve been quoted.
Yes I sound angry - I am! I’m also angry at the accusations I’ve been irresponsible or haven’t put forth an effort. Every day I am inquiring about insurance coverage, AND I’m applying for jobs and going on interviews. I have no debt, and I used to have savings specifically for hard times but I’ve had hard times for several years even before I lost my job. A job loss, I might add, which was in no way my fault - I was a victim of cost-cutting measures, plain and simple.
Like I said - I realize many people need reassurance that it won’t happen to THEM, that if they lose their job they’ll be re-employed in a week, that they can afford COBRA, that THEY won’t suffer some hardship that leaves them poor and needful. The truth is, we’re all a lot closer to disaster than we’d like to think.
As it is, we are NOT financially ruined. Yet. If we stay healthy until I get a new job with benefits and until the pre-existing limitations run out we’ll be back where we were three months ago. Right now, though, all I need to do is slip on an icy sidewalk and get hurt and we’re bankrupt. If that doesn’t make a person concerned and nervous I have to wonder about their mental state.
Wow, just like at home, I turn my head for a second and the bathroom’s flooded and there’s blood on the floor (unfortunately not hyperbole or metaphor)
I apologize that I can’t respond to every single post deserving a response but I did want to note those actual answers to my question and acknowledge a few posters
Answers:
City or county assistance
Can those who are able to work but unable to find work qualify for such assistance?
Free health care provided by volunteers
Hospital writes off your bills as charity
what kind of documentation do you have to provide to the hospital? If you had a home would you have to sell it to pay your bills before you were eligible for such charity?
Medicare or Medicaid
how hard is it to qualify as “legally disabled” and how long does it take to be declared such? Why just end-stage renal disease and black-lung for “go directly to the front of the line”? why not end-stage pancreatic cancer and 85% burns over your body or thousands of other really sucky diagnoses?
The Straight Dope as coping mechanism
I am so sorry for your terrible situation! I think you deserve all the ranting you can get. (as well as all the medical treatment you can’t get)
Leave the U.S.
And a few other responses …
Broomstick Your situation is the one I fear the most. Unexpected job loss followed by unexpected inability to find a new job followed by inability to ever have some conditions ever covered again. Plus, folks, it is possible to lose a job and have no access to COBRA at any price (if say, totally hypothetically, the company totally ceases to exist taking with it the policy you would be participating in). Best of luck Broomstick!
I think the general education level of Americans would suck worse if you could only go to school if your parent had a certain kind of job and you had to change schools every time your parent changed jobs or sometimes even if your parent stayed at the same job, and if your parent lost their job you had to stop going to school until (if) they got a new job.
My deepest sympathes Shagnasty. We also lost a baby daughter, at the age of four months 
Thanks for all the responses and I apologize for oversights or mistakes on my part (this was written while being mercilessly pestered by children who don’t know how good they have it)
I personally do not want a forced single payer solution but I do think that everyone should be able to buy into the same system that our elected officals get. Over here I spend about $300/mo for health insurance for my wife and I. The deductible is about $1000 and covers up to 10 million USD… it is not valid in the USA, but works everywhere else.
Since leaving the US I have spent more than half a million dollars that would have been spent in the US had I been able to get health insurance. I have hired a couple people for my business and am adding to the economy (but not the US one). I did ask about a group plan, but was told if I was in it my cost for my wife and I would be in the area of $6,000/mo. No thanks.
BTW I have had no medical costs in these 6 years but have a preexisting condition that apparantly excludes me from ever getting insurance at home.
I have the money to buy reasonable insurace (as I have done here), but the US system is broken.
Okay, how about if the food sellers charged more than your rent for a cheeseburger? Is it your fault you can’t afford to eat today? Your analogy is worthless.
Didn’t you just say something about strawmen? 
No one is saying we shouldn’t have to pay, but it can’t be 95% of your income.
This is what happened to me - the company I worked for went under, I could not get any alternative coverage so I bought a one way ticket out of the US and abandoned my life there. I hope someday I can live in my own country again.
To have my hospital bill covered (the guy said “charity”, but I am guessing that the hospital simply ate the charge, or maybe there was some sort of trust that covered it) I had to provide all of my billing statements (utilities et. al.), a lease agreement, a copy of a check for my rent, pay stub, and a bank statement.
May I say that I am utterly amazed by these accounts about the American position. I live in Oz. I have a reasonably well-paid professional job (not medical), by reference to average incomes. I have some pre-existing health issues that require me to pop into hospital once or twice a year for a week for a tune-up.
Private health insurance (to the max) costs me $400 a month ($US450 or so)and covers my whole family. This has nothing to do with my employer. You can’t be refused private insurance, but there are waiting times after you sign up for the first time, before you can claim for pre-existing conditions (obviously, 9 months for obstetrics, etc) and the waiting time typically maxes out at a year or two. Accordingly, I get a private room in a resort style hospital when I go in, and I pay nothing for the hospital and a relatively modest amount for the doctor (a few hundred).
If I lost my job or otherwise couldn’t or didn’t pay insurance, I would have a couple of percent taken out of my pay for tax to cover the universal system to which everyone is entitled. ( I have 1.5% taken out anyway, but I would have more taken if I had no insurance.) This covers free public medical care in hospitals and heavily subsidised GP care. I should add that there is also here compulsory superannuation which can be accessed in cases of medical emergency before retirement age if necessary.
There are many complaints about the public system with respect to waiting lists for surgery, and I am sure that the waiting lists are used as triage because the public’s expectation of perfect health care can never be met. But in truth, my experience is that you get first class service if you need it, for free, in cases such as accident and emergency, or serious illness. By comparison with what I hear the Americans in this thread are saying, it is astonishingly good.
Meanwhile, a visit to the local GP can be free or can involve up to a contribution of $50 or so, depending on the GP. And drugs (other than exotic ones) are almost all available on a system in which the max a person will pay for a prescription is $30.
So why can’t the US do this?
I suspect the reason is to do with incremental changes over time. Here, the idea of universal public health care is very old, dating back to a time when the most expensive thing that could be done was a snappy appendix operation, or the prescription of some simple drugs. The community got used to the relatively modest public expense involved in that, and as medicine gradually became more expensive and complex, with zillions of machines that go ping!, the increased expense was manageable as a relatively regular slow increment to public expenses.
Yet it is all do-able. Oz is hardly poor, and while health care is a huge expense in the budget, we have not bankrupted ourselves.
(And no, you can’t come here looking for health care. They screen out immigrants with pre-existing medical conditions.)
If, however, the Oz system was to be introduced to the US today, the set-up costs would be enormous. And managing public expectations would be a huge task. (We who are used to our system have a sense of what it can do. Only drop-kicks turn up to the emergency ward because they have a cold, for example, and they are discouraged by being made to wait hours and hours for treatment.)
I wish you Americans luck in solving this dilemma.
I understand you’re very upset about this. However, your emotions belong in discussions in MPSIMS, not in GQ or (the place this thread should be) GD. Health insurance is expensive, yes. That’s because our country produces the highest quality healthcare in the world, by far. European physicians have the same amount of training PAs in this country has, and almost all of the high end medical research and development happens here. There are costs that come with that, and paying full boat for COBRA insurance is just facing those costs.
All right, you in particular have run into a very run of luck. It’s not a prolem with the system: no system is going to be set up to properly handle worst-case scenarios. People die waiting for coverage in countries with socialized medicine. Ifthosepeople were insured and living in the US, they would live. It’s a trade-off, and a necessary one if you don’t somehow assume that high value health coverage is somehow a right, as opposed to a privilege.
I don’t assume anything about you. However, there are many outlets to find coverage in this country. If you’re unable to work, the government takes care of you; if you can work, large corporations foot the bill. Slipping between those cracks is just part of the suckiness of life.
The problem is that I’m not willing to pay for your health care. Health care isn’t part of my obligation to you as a fellow potentially productive citizen. Pit the costs of health care all you want, and I’ll be right there with you: they’re jacked up because of malpractice suits and the unwillingness of people to use non-MDs to take care of their health issues. That doesn’t mean UHC is the answer.
I really don’t think comparing healtchcare to food is a strawman argument: both are required to sustain life, and both involve costs to provide. The costs of healthcare in the US are due to irresponsible use by the consumer, not by the system itself.
A law was passed in 1973 that included ESRD in Medicare coverage. Black Lung as included because it’s pneumoconiosis (I’m not a doc, the spelling is probably wrong) is caused by mine-working. The federal government determined back in the 80’s that the main cause of death of people who had worked in terrible condiditons for low pay for long periods of time fora pulic good should be paid for by a public trust.
I don’t work with disability. Perhaps someone else here can answer that question.
And I am not exited to pay for a school to teach your children how to read, a fire department to put out your burning home, a police department to protect you from the various thugs who want to rape and murder your family and the roads you use to get to the local Quik -n- Save. But I’ll do it because you being safe makes the country better.
What if universal coverage could be had for a 1% increase in taxes? Would you be willing to cover 100 million americans for 1% of your money? What if it actually cost the same thing. What if your taxes remained the same, would you be willing to cover 100 million americans?
What if it saved you money. Could you find it in your heart to give coverage to the 100 million americans if you saved 1% on your taxes?
Every cent of profit (obviously doctors and such need to be paid. A police department isn’t for profit and the chief makes 120k a year.) made in insurance and hospitals is repugnant so long as one of your countrymen goes without care.
Would you be okay with 100 million american living without police coverage?
It’s a straw man because anyone who has a job in america can afford to feed themselves. Your fallacy is that it’s somehow equitable to insurance. For instance for it to be a valid comparison you’d have to have limited places to go for food, it would cost more than 1/3rd of the country could afford to pay and the vendors would refuse to sell to you unless you weren’t hungry.
So no, it is a strawman.
Cite please.
Also, do you think it’s a good idea to make healthcare unavailable to 1/3rd of the population of this country? Does that strike you as a good system? Why is our system the better than a universal system when 1/3rd of our population has no access to care and it’s far more expensive? Your argument is unconvincing.
When a MODERATOR tells me I am being too emotional I will tone it done. Otherwise, no, I will not back off because YOU are uncomfortable. I am extremely passionate about this so obviously it comes through, and that passion is because this is a concern I have every day. It’s not theoretical to me, it’s a reality I have to deal with.
I also find it just a little odd that it’s the people who disagree with my position on this issue who are accusing me of being lazy, irresponsible, mistaken, and emotional. Too bad if the reality of my situation doesn’t meet your preconceived notions of how the world works. I didn’t come here to look for sympathy - someone asked what happens to people without insurance in the US and I answered with my own situation. Obviously, other people have different experiences (and have related them) but whether my situation is common or rare, it IS one outcome of what happens when you fall through the cracks.
What good is that health care to those who can’t access it? It might as well not exist.
Do you understand that you have to pay COBRA on the insurance your *employer * chooses? I couldn’t opt for a less expensive policy. I had no choice, no means of negotiation - it was take it or leave it. Other people would have less expense per month for COBRA because their employers paid for less, but because I had an employer that bought an extremely generous policy I got screwed when I was laid off. My COBRA cost per month would have been 2-3 times that charged to other people I know who worked at different companies at my income level. The system is NOT equitable.
That’s also why the notion of “consumer choice” and “consumer responsibility” is crap - the consumer, that is, the potential and actual patients, do NOT get a choice! The vast majority of the time their employer makes that choice and they are stuck with whatever that is. The only option is to buy your own policy, and for many, many people that is priced so far out of their reach that it effectively doesn’t exist.
The truly frightening thing to me is that this is NOT a worse case scenario!
People die HERE because they don’t have coverage and can’t access that oh-so-wonderful health care. Yes, if they were here and insured they would live - if they aren’t insured they’re betting off taking their chances abroad. There are 47 million people in that position in the US right now - that’s more than the population of many countries!
Then there are the underinsured - people who have “coverage” but it’s lousy. One of the companies I applied to work for has a policy that offers a maximum payout of only $7.500 per year! That’s it. For $240 a month premium sure, they covered doctor visits and even hospital and surgical charges - but as soon as the total hits $7,500 >ding!< that’s it! That is a ridiculously low amount - $7,500 wouldn’t pay for appendix removal, and Og forbid you had a heart attack or cancer. And, of course, it doesn’t cover anything pre-existing. But because it’s an employer-sponsored plan if you work for the company THAT’s your health insurance (for which you must pay $240 per month). Because you are eligible for employer sponsored insurance it automatically disqualifies you from the state plan for the uninsured - which, by the way, is much better coverage, and has a lower monthly premium. Just one more way in which our so-called system plays “gotcha!”
What we really need, my husband and I, is coverage for catastrophic costs - coverage for events like cancer or major, major injuries. If we had to we could scrape together 10k or 20k (particularly when I’m employed again). A 30k charge? That’s like buying a new car, isn’t it? Talk to the billing department and arrange a 5 year payback plan. Or get a loan from our credit union. Something. That would be painful but something we could manage. MY big fear is something in the 100k range which could ruin us for life (in which case when we’re old and destitute we’d be bad, irresponsible people for not saving for retirement because we were foolish enough to become seriously ill or have an accident when we were younger). I can’t seem to find that anywhere.
The problem is that right now we don’t have any health insurance, high value or not. It’s not a matter of us wanting a Cadillac or a Porsche - we can’t even get a freakin’ bicycle.
No, it doesn’t. It took two years two get my mother on disability. For my husband, we are six months into the process to get him on disability. We have been told that IF he gets disability there will be a “waiting period” before he qualifies for Medicare. WTF? Someone officially disabled and unable to to work has to WAIT to get coverage? Where is the sense in that?
Actually, more and more companies are cutting back or eliminating benefits altogether. Large corporations - regardless of their wishes - can’t employ everyone.
See above comments from another poster about public education, fire departments, police, and other institutions funded for the greater public good. Maybe health care SHOULD be part of your obligation to society. Maybe your fellow citizens would be more productive if they could get the health care they need. I hope I never need the fire department or the police, but I pay for those things just in case I might need them. I would prefer to never need health care but I’m willing to pay for that safety net, too - it’s just that right now I’m shut out of the system.
Or do you think that you are somehow invulnerable to job loss, poor health, and bad luck?
No, I don’t think the answer is that simple. I think the insurance companies have a LOT to do with it, particularly the ones run as for-profit operations. Ditto for for-profit hospitals. I think there’s a fair dose of human greed involved for doctors. I think the system is rotten all over and not just in one or two neat spots that could easily be sliced out.
It also doesn’t mean it’s NOT the answer. Tell me, if it works well most of the time for the rest of the world why wouldn’t it work here?
Cite? My understanding is that we pay more for worse care than many countries.For instance,
The big problem is getting cancer diagnosed early enough for it to be treatable. Which is not something done in the average emergency room.
And ability to pay does affect the treatments offered, even in the finest hospitals.
Of course, you may not be indigent but uninsured–or underinsured. (And, yes, those big companies don’t want to pay more than they have too–even if that means the best treatments are not available.) So you can wait until you’re totally indigent to qualify for “free” treatment. Which may mean mere comfort care–too late for a chance at long term survival.