The American health-care system is in a tug of war between physicians, hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceuticals and shareholders. At the center of it all are the patients.
Ashley Palmiscino’s insurance company was billed roughly $4 million for her five-month-old son Luca’s lung transplant. Her family had to turn to fundraising almost immediately just to keep up with the medical bills, and she’s not alone. One-third of the money raised on GoFundMe last year went to medical campaigns.
So how did we get here, and how do we turn things around?
“Once there’s all this money sloshing around in a system, there’s this sort of pile-on effect where everyone wants to grab their bit of this huge pot of money,” said Elisabeth Rosenthal, a former physician who wrote a book about how health care became big business.
“Now what we have as we’re trying to take it back and reduce costs is everyone is desperately clinging to their piece of the pie.”
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Why Medical Bills In The US Are So Expensive
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How to suffer, become american but poor
USA is the CAPITAL of FRAUD from HEALTHCARE and PHARMACEUTICAL Manipulation KILLING PEOPLE.
What i feel the US should do is adopt what the UK do. in the UK they have the government fund all hospitals and scans and everything.
Insurance is a scam
How can you people bear to live like this ?
USA healthcare system is a vulture system. It waits for you to get sick, so it can strip you bare to the bone.
why arent you all in the streets advocating for universal healthcare i cant comprehend this, this is insanity, im from EU and its far from perfect but this is whole another universe
Ny nursing ER instructor told us homelessness in USA is one critical illness and two paychecks away.
If your child requires a half million dollars for a bone transplant, and still dies, parents still owe hundreds of thousands in premiums and hospital expenses.
Thats different from Native and white people thinking they owned alot lot land/property "allotment" .
Most Hospitals Taken Profits From everyone including the low income family that have a fix income SSI/SSID to different things information..
H.M.O Policy
America's biggest scam is Healthcare!
Growing old in America is a death trap – now I see why Americans relocate to other countries after retirement
Thank God I have free healthcare in Canada.
Those who support this current system (I'm looking at you GOP) should be barred from running for any office.
usa= a scam where shareholders and millionarees fleece everyone else
Probably the best thing to do when you turn 18 is to invest all your money into medical companies. Then use the profits to pay your bills as you age.
How is medical insurance not bankrupt 🤔🫤
I would like to know where that money goes, first there is not regulation on the fees like in other countries and even with insurance you can be ruined. They set it up so people are ruined . I'm from Germany, I never saw a hospital bill – not even for my c – sections or my kids in the hospital. Thanks to socialist medicine!!!! Same, why are the medications so expensive in the US? Some things for example a epi pen costs here 80 Euros, patient pays like 12 on that – in the USA $ 600? How can ANYBODY pay this ridiculous prices? And WHY? There was even an article about people die, because they can't afford the medications – people with diabetes. Germany – like 12 Euros or so USA $ 100? WHY? Who pockets that money and Why not make them going into competition and let people buy their medications outside the country so they can afford it? There should be a cap on all procedures what they are allowed to charge same for meds. Like in Germany there is a catalog where EVERYBODY can see how much they are allowed to take for service. Like entry fee for appointment Euros 20, IV laying Euro 15 etc. if it is difficult or after hours they are allowed 3 times that. But not more. This is something they should fix in the USA – the health care. Kids should be free of all charge till they are 18 and after that health insurance should cover all, no co pays, no deductible and clear what they pay and what not. Not this we let the dice decide if we pay the x – ray ,which was necessary for the diagnosis, or not. Not all social stuff is bad ! if it works in other countries it can work there too.
Now Im from the UK and fully admit our own health care system ( NHS ) is under pressure however, the US system frightens me. How do normal everyday people in the US get medical care? When visiting Florida years ago I spoke to a waiter at a well known restaurant who had kidney problems. He informed me that he couldn't afford to pay to pay insurance and had resorted to alternative medication which wasn't working. It seems that being wealthy pays.
I dont have medical insurance. One of my kidneys is bad. I can barely walk. Im trying to heal it with natural remedies. I'll just die if it doesn't work. I cant afford hospital bills. They'd probably just deny me anyway 😂
Really!? Okay so you need to study the way billing works in healthcare. Just because they bill insurance a high amount. They have a contract agreement with the insurance company. Then they set prices in the contract. The billed price is then countered with the allowed price ( the contracted amount). This price is usually greatly reduced and then they will tell you the deductible for the patient or the coinsurance. So there. Open your ears and eyes and learn.
People eventually are going to have to accept death as a reality we all will face. A helicopter flight costs over $1k a flight minute. We have a Cadillac healthcare system and a Ford escort society.
If a person can not pay, they leave this world. It was not very long ago that many ailments meant a person would be passing away. I remind myself to be grateful because the act of going to a drug store for a simple over the counter medicine is a blessing. Many in the world do not have accessibility.
1 word: Capitalism.
US healthcare sucks it's a business just like anything else there. 🤮
Why can't your country just regulate it
medical billls are the least of my worries..all covered in norway.
Hospitals complaining they dont get paid what they charge???!!!! Of course you don't get paid! You are STEALING and people DO NOT HAVE THAT AMMOUNT OF MONEY!!!
Their is no explanation for this, it simple and plain fraud and abuse. I hate all the explanation. Its wrong, unethical, criminal. Period. It HAS to change ASAP!
The only true reason is that your taxes are paid to bomb the sh*t out of my brothers and sisters everywhere on the planet instead of making your life better and healthier,
And the irony here is that we have free health care and we pay 0 dollars on medicine 💊💉
The american healthcare system is one of the worst in the entire world by far.
My friends wife had a medical emergency, so he drove her to an emergency room. They didn't have the equipment they needed at that hospital so they shoved her into an ambulance to take her to a hospital that did down the block. My friend was so stressed about his wifes safety, he wasn't thinking about money. Until a multi thousand dollar bill came in the mail for that ambulance ride that took her only a couple of blocks…
Why Medical Bills In The US Are So Expensive? Because USA is a first world country, a military power in decline whose socioeconomic model is underdevelopment. Next question?
I felt bad about people putting their parents in retirement homes but I realized the US is literally just trash in terms of health forcing people to do it.
Hey robertmaxa, let's talk here!
In 2018, a 45 year old woman in Boston got her leg stuck in a subway station in the gap between a train and the platform. She suffered a severe injury that caused a deep cut that went through her bone. Witnesses around her came in and helped her out. However she begged all of them not to call an ambulance because she can't afford it. Imagine making your healthcare so expensive to the point where it's a lot more than just expensive and to the point that some people accept their fate of losing a body part or even their life because of that.
Hospitals don't advertise their prices. Even insurers don't know how much they'll be charged. There's no 'marketplace' if prices are secret.
Cost of healthcare in America in 2024 is ridiculous and the insurance companies never want to pay. The doctors are thinking about their next Ferrari purchase….let see if I can get you in this new drug…not mentioning the cancer risks towards the patient. Going bankrupt for shifty educated doctors. Any time you have a private medical system versus a government ran system it’s not good for-the patient….other countries have better healthcare for less. How does the U.S. government allow this to happen.
I'm a Canadian, and insanely lucky to be. But for whatever reason, you still get Canadian conservatives, many of whom are elderly and would be dead or broke without universal healthcare, complaining about our quote unquote "communist healthcare system."
The US healthcare system is sick and needs urgent care which is too expensive for everyone as US society as whole needs to be reworked in order to fix the issue (too many stakeholders involved).
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