Ok say someone is diagnosed with cancer and they don’t have insurance and can’t afford treatments. What happens? Do they have to apply for Medicaid and that will pay for their treatments? Are they just up shit creek without a paddle?
Some hospitals (Children’s Hospital in Seattle is the one I have experience with on this topic) have financial-aid programs. If your income is low enough to qualify for aid, much or all of your medical costs can be waived.
That’s the only expertise I have on this issue, so I’ll wait for someone more knowledgeable to come along with more info.
Not having health insurance does not necessarily equal not having access to health care. The U.S. social safety net — which includes community health centers, public and non-profit hospitals, any emergency room, and charity care by physicians — absorbs two-thirds of the cost of the health care consumed by the uninsured. This safety net, while not a single, unified, easy-to-manage system, essentially functions as a catastrophic health insurance policy. The more health care the uninsured need, the less they pay. Uninsured individuals pay a mere 9 percent of the hospital inpatient costs they incur.
My sister-in-law had a mastectomy and the cancer moved to her bones and all over the place. They treated her for the mastectomy for free and they pretty much diagnosted her as terminal for the rest. She paid $20/mo. Then she took out a reverse mortgage, hired a private caregiver, and spent her money like the Russians were next door.
My other sister-in-law died of liver failure. She was treated for free as well.
The annual out-of-pocket expenses for health care are similar for the insured and the uninsured, with the former spending $211 each year and the latter shelling out $242, according to a 2001 study reported by Yale’s Bradley Herring.
sorry for an off topic post-but where does this expression come from and what does it mean?
(if someone has a quick one-sentence answer that would be nice, but let’s not hijack the thread)
=Like the world was gonna end.
Found nothing for “like the Russians were next door” or “like Russians were next door” on Google.
I presume that phrase was invented during the Cold War, as it’s rather anachronistic these days.
In my experience, it would be extremely rare for someone to not have adequate access to health care as long as they have someone helping them pursue the right channels. In my home state of Louisiana, the state teaching hospitals (LSU hospitals) and Charity hospitals fulfill that role. My home town is extremely poor and the biggest problem people in poverty with critical conditions had was finding someone to drive them 40+ miles to the closest state hospital. I knew a few people in poverty that had critical conditions and they all got good care and even cutting edge treatments as long as they could find a way to get to the hospital on a regular basis.
The type of person who will be affected most seriously by the situation that you describe is someone who has assets and income but no insurance. Much of the social safety net will require them to spend down their assets, and spend their income, before they are eligible for charity and Medicaid. This is especially sad if you think of two people, perhaps doing the same job, one self-employed and one employed by a company (or the gov’t) that provides health insurance. The cancer would affect those two people very differently. The person with insurance pays some co-pays, the person without insurance loses their life savings, house, etc.
Now, in some ways this is only logical. If you want the risk protection of insurance, of course you have to pay for it. If you like saving the cost of a premium every month, it’s not really fair to cry foul when you are the unlucky person who gets cancer and loses your house. But access to insurance is so unequally distributed, there is some unfairness here.
I’m not sure who the subjects of that study were, but it is bullshit. I spent over $350 last week on medications for one month. That didn’t include the doctor’s visit ($100) or the other medications I take (Prilosec is fairly cheap, but Mirapex is over $60 a month). Or the annual gyn exam coming up in two weeks. Or the MRI the doctor wants to do on my back, which I am not going to have done because I can’t afford it.
$242 a year? It is to laugh.
On the other end from you, in the three years I’ve been paying my monthly premiums for insurance, the first two years I had zero out-of-pocket costs - because I didn’t go to the doctor for anything. This year I’ve had $80, for a doctor’s appointment and 2 co-pay meds. So my low average would pull your high one down quite a bit, and I expect that’s how the numbers got the way they are.
So does that mean (I’m not reading that long speech, sorry.) that they’re not counting premiums and deductibles as “out-of-pocket” expenses? 'Cause that’s just meaningless, innit? If I’m paying $450 a month in premiums (private policy, not employer) and have a $2500 deductible, then I’m paying, out of my pocket, $5400 a year at minimum, and $7,900 before he’s even going to start counting. What’s the point of that statistic?
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey.
The $211 and $242 figures above were from the 1996-1997 survey.
It’s an average. Most years, I spend nothing. I literally spend more on pantyhose.
That’s a good point…and I don’t actually know, either. With numbers as low as those listed, I’d assume they’re not counting the premium payments. Deductibles, maybe (I’m counting the deductible as “out-of-pocket.”) But again, while I probably don’t have near the policy you do, I’m only paying $75/month with a $250 deductible (I’m pretty sure there’s a much bigger deductible for something like major surgery, but I haven’t really looked at the policy since I signed up.) Private policy, since my employer only has 2 employees, myself included.
Cancer is probably one of the diseases that you can get treated for pretty effectively even if poor. As someone previously mentioned, there is a safety net set up to provide care, if the disease is willing to wait until you work your way through the system.
Don’t plan that if you have an acute onset disease without insurance, or even if your insurance is inadequate. I’m speaking as someone who lost the sight in one eye to a curable condition, but it needed to be treated quickly, and my insurance was not willing to guarantee payment until all options had been exhausted.
Correct. It is a Cold War reference.
I am actually in this situation. I am self employed but am unable to buy health insurance… not because I can’t afford it, but because I am “uninsureable” due to a pre-existing genetic condition. This condition does not affect me in day-to-day life and I require no ongoing treatment.
I applied through every insurance company licensed in my state (declined by all) and with no other options, I moved out of the US more than 5 years ago. I was born in the US and am a US citizen. Now I feel like I am locked out of my own country because I am not willing to risk financial ruin if something happens to me. Today I have excellent coverage though a UK company valid everywhere in the world except the USA.
If I went out and got a job that covered me, I would be earning only about 1/4 of what I do now and I would have to close my company down. And because I do not have more than 2 employees, I can’t get a group plan for my company. I am hoping that the US will eventually allow citizens to optionally buy into a government guranteed-issue health plan or similar so I can return home.
Sorry - this issue makes me really bitter. In all my adult life, I have required no more health care than average, yet I can’t get insurance at any price.