Modern medicine may be providing patients with significant improvements in key treatment areas, but the cost of care has become so crushing that online campaigns for charitable medical aid have become heartbreakingly common in the United States. A team of researchers from institutions across the country reported that the well-known GoFundMe website, between May 2010….
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Here are 7 big reasons why Americans should worry a lot about health care
Americans have made health care a central concern of the upcoming elections with excellent reasons. Their nightmares about this issue are getting worse, not better: Medical debt, one of the disgraces of the world’s most expensive health care in the planet’s wealthiest nations, has spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic. A consumer finance firm recently found….
Continue ReadingWith conventions over, who will support or tear down crucial health supports?
Health care persists as one of the top concerns for voters as they consider candidates this fall — not just for the presidency but up and down the ballot. A lot got said at the political conventions in the last two weeks on the topic, and, to their credit, media organizations have engaged in fact-checking….
Continue ReadingMissouri the latest state to show big backing for Medicaid and Obamacare
Voters keep sending Republicans — in statehouses, Congress, and the White House — a clear message: Americans want affordable, accessible health insurance, most notably as offered under the GOP-loathed Affordable Care Act, and especially for the poor and working poor via Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid. This issue, if anything, may be rising in importance to….
Continue ReadingHospital tries to stick ER nurse with $1 million in debt for her preemie’s care
It’s the price and cost problem, stupid. That’s a fictitious but new tattoo that voters might want politicians to take up as they consider the many major problems with the American health care system, especially as yet more medical billing outrages surface. Marshall Allen, a reporter for ProPublica, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative site, posted about….
Continue ReadingIs Sanders’ plan to erase $81 billion in U.S. medical debt really all that crazy?
Critics have attacked Sen. Bernie Sanders for his proposal to wipe out $81 billion in medical debt, including by changing rules around debt collection and bankruptcy. He also called for “replacing the giant credit reporting agencies with a ‘public credit registry’ that would ignore medical debt when calculating credit scores,” reported the New York Times…..
Continue ReadingThere hospitals go again: UVA Health backpedals on draconian debt collection
Is a public pillorying the only way to stop big hospitals from pursuing patients for medical debt with the zeal of demons from the underworld? The University of Virginia Health System — an enterprise that racked up an $87 million operating profit on revenue of $1.7 billion in the fiscal year ending in June and….
Continue ReadingWith GOP still tearing at ACA, uninsured rate rises for first time in decade
The Grand Old Party may have just won the dictionary definition of a Pyrrhic Victory. That’s because Republicans’ decade-long assault on the Affordable Care Act his finally showing predictable results, with the share of Americans lacking health insurance increasing for the first time in 10 years. The rate and number of people without health insurance….
Continue ReadingTransplant patient’s nightmares illustrate why patients fear and loathe medical bills
It may be bad for the blood pressure. But to understand a key reason why Americans seethe when talking about medical bills and medical costs, just start perusing a timely new magazine report on hospitals and debt collection. The Atlantic article — “What Happens When You Don’t Pay a Hospital Bill” — details the horrors….
Continue ReadingFaith-based charity as the answer to crushing medical debt? Only in America.
Praise be: Churches nationwide are leaping in with their congregations’ blessing and financial support, putting up small sums to buy up and wipe out one of the huge shames of the American health care system: patients’ medical debt. The faithful work with RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit organization based in Rye, N.Y., that provides the….
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