In a 60 Minutes interview aired on Sunday evening, Mitt Romney suggested that the uninsured have options if Obamacare is repealed. They can go to the emergency room:
Interestingly enough, I recently went to the emergency room. I don't remember what happened, but according to my friends, I fell and hit my head. I started bleeding heavily from my right eyebrow and I seemed dazed. I was unable to answer very basic questions, so my friends took me to the hospital. The fog doesn't really lift for me until after I am in the ER being treated by a nurse.
My interactions with the receptionist occurred during the foggy period and I do not remember any of our conversation. Last night, I received a bill from the hospital for the cost of my treatment, which consisted of a CT scan, seven stitches, and a tetanus shot. Without insurance, I owed $13,960.41.
I panicked until I read more of the bill and realized that the hospital did not have my insurance information. My new insurance card had not arrived by the evening of my accident, and I was apparently unable to provide enough information on my own for the hospital to process my claim. I just got off the phone with the hospital's billing department and they are now working with my insurance company on my bill. I have a friend with the same insurance who had a more serious--and expensive--visit to the ER than I several months ago. Based on what she told me, I'm expecting to pay only a fraction of the $13,000.
But this is the thing. I have insurance. I don't have to worry about paying that $13,000 back. Were I without insurance, I would be SCREWED. My colleague just pointed out to me that my bill is more than the minimum annual salary for graduate students at my school. There is no way I could afford to pay that back on what I currently earn. Fortunately, I expect to get a much better job next year that could potentially allow me to pay such a sum over time, but most people aren't that lucky.
My injury was pretty minor, compared to what sends many other people to the emergency room and my bill was over thirteen grand. How can you expect somebody who can't afford insurance to pay bills like that? How is that any kind of solution to our health care crisis?
Comments
The one and only solution to our healthcare crisis
is Medicare for all. Until then, millions of people will go without healthcare and only go to the ER in dire situations but not always.
I hope you're feeling better.
Agreed.
Medicare for all. If we put that on the ballot, it would win hands down.
I'm fine. The only permanent damage is to my dignity. LOL
I'll tell you what happens
If you don't have insurance and get slammed with a hefty ER bill. You ignore it and let your credit get ruined, and impact your finances, employment, and housing for the next seven or more years of your life. This can happen to you even if it wasn't you, but a member of your family who wasn't covered and had to visit the ER. Even if you get divorced from that person, the debt is still yours, and will ruin your life. In California employers aren't supposed to discriminate against you if you have bad credit anymore due to a new law, but elsewhere in the country you can be denied a job because of that bad medical debt you incurred in this great land of ours. Oh say can you see, by the dawn's early light, what so proudly we hailed, at the twilight's last gleaming? Yeah, that's the carcass of our country's commitment to its own people, being eaten by the vultures of crony capitalism.
I had a debate with one of my conservative friends
while the health care bill was still moving through Congress. Her basic argument was that people who couldn't pay their bills could just file for medical bankruptcy. See? No need to reform the insurance system at all. Just file for bankruptcy.
Medicare for all!
they're not supposed to discriminate........but some do
when a back ground check is ran one of the pieces of information that can be requested is a credit report. yeah, if that pops up with a score of 450 you can pretty much kiss that job offer goodbye. {oh, and I pity the poor Ukrainian hacker who steals my son's identity - with that boy's credit score the hacker will give him back his identity post haste!}
yep, i was wondering wtf Mittens was talking about
when he said the emergency room is free care... on what planet?
ok, in Louisiana and the city of Chicago, if you are provably indigent, it is free. everywhere else, nope, not a chance.... most of the time, they get the billing info before they even treat you....
i came to Louisiana from Cali and i can tell you, in Cali, an ER trip without insurance is pretty much what you got type1...
i do have to say a good thing about Louisiana, idiot politicians tho it has, i had MRSA (didn't know it) went to ER, they admitted me on site and was there for the week through 3 surgeries, w/ my own room even, and then 4 follow up appts and because i was unemployed, the entire thing cost me nothing.... thank gawd i wasn't still in Cali for that... i would've been bankruptcy city....
and i hear you speak a sharp Swahili, lol... ;>
LOL
I'm just glad that I can't remember what I can't remember. The first thing I remember when the fog was lifting was that I kept asking the same questions over and over again. Lord only knows what came out of my mouth before that!
ahhh - you were sweet and a bit scared, but
you were making sense by the time we talked... :D
This is a problem humans will never solve
Unfortunately, the only thing that motivates people is profit, so there is no way to provide reasonable health care for poor people. No country in the world has ever managed to pull it off. (Not counting those godless socialism experiments taking place everywhere in the civilized world except the U.S., of course, because socialism makes the people in those countries evil.)
So its a problem only good people cannot solve.
Evil people can solve it. Yup.
I went to the ER for a burn a couple of year ago ... my hospital costs were waived, due to low income, but it took my six months to finish paying my doctor's bill.
It sounds to me like Mitt has switched into what the Ozzies call deck chairs mode ... the Titanic is sinking, and he's trying to save the deck chairs, keep enough of the radical reactionary base electorate to come out and vote R to hold onto the gerrymandered Republican seats.
That's the pitfall of gerrymandering after all ~ you trade off fewer 30%+ seats for more 10%+ seats, packing the other faction's voters into as few seats as possible and spreading your voters around more.
But if you get the high independent turnout of a Presidential election year, combined with a depressed base turnout, its possible for the marginal swing to top the natural partisan tilt level that acts as your electoral levy. That only has to happen in two or three gerrymandered Tory faction ("R") states, combined with the Whig faction ("D") gerrymanders in Illinois and a few other states and also the larger number of swing districts in California after they went to a less gerrymandered boundary drawing system, for the balance of power in the House to tilt radically. A 10 seats Tory majority and the worries of Tory congressmen who are simple corporate whores and blame the ideologues for putting the majority in jeopardy would make for brutal intra-Tory faction infighting and possibilities of majorities being cobbled together across faction boundaries from both the Tory and Whig factions of the Corporate Party.