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What do Americans do if they have no healthcare?

489 replies

summeriscomingsoon · 25/03/2021 22:43

Seeing posts on Reddit about the costs of routine medical visits and the astronomical breakdown of figures charged, but I'm assuming these are all covered by health insurance.

But what if you have no insurance. What happens if you get cancer etc. Are you left to die?

OP posts:
HeronLanyon · 27/03/2021 11:35

I have a sibling who is currently receiving astonishingly good cancer treatment on the nhs - with everything else going on. Cannot praise them enough.
Obviously this won’t be universal view as electives and outpatient stuff has been badly compromised in many cases.
Feel Humbled and privileged by our nhs provision when at its best.

summeriscomingsoon · 27/03/2021 12:01

The majority of co sultanas who work privately also do NHS work.
*
*
You raisin a good point

OP posts:
Miasicarisatia · 27/03/2021 12:11

What I don't understand is why the healthcare in the US is so expensive. We can opt in to private healthcare here and the cost if you compare like for like is world's apart
when there is money to be made this attracts 'middlemen' who try to insert themselves adding extra steps and layers to siphon off some of the profit, this tends to push the cost up.

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about this subject:

HeronLanyon · 27/03/2021 12:18

@summeriscomingsoon

The majority of co sultanas who work privately also do NHS work. * * You raisin a good point
But the message could have been pruned to aid clarity ?
something2say · 27/03/2021 12:35

I worked briefly in a private hospital. Mental health and addiction specialist. The interplay between 'I'm rich and paying for this, so I want....' and what was actually good for them / needed was an eye opener.

Health and money is a big area for the world to agree on...

MobyDicksTinyCanoe · 27/03/2021 12:45

UsedUp anyone can ask for a double appointment when they book. If You feel you aren't given enough time just ask for more.

drspouse · 27/03/2021 13:24

@something2say

I worked briefly in a private hospital. Mental health and addiction specialist. The interplay between 'I'm rich and paying for this, so I want....' and what was actually good for them / needed was an eye opener.

Health and money is a big area for the world to agree on...

This happens so much with private intervention for children with SEN as well. Part of it is lack of evidence based practice, so parents are prey to snake oil merchants. Schools too - they pay for therapy or training that has only ever been researched by the company selling it.
NeverDropYourMoonCup · 27/03/2021 13:47

I worked handling Travel Insurance claims back in the 90s. I ended up being given all the US Medical claims and make direct transfers digitally (it was a long time ago, electronic payments were a very new thing).

The pre approved individual signing limit for all staff handling medical claims was no more than £2000. A senior manager had to apply for permission from underwriters to pay for helicopter airlifts from ski resorts on an individual basis.

Except me. My signing limit was a blanket £5 million for any single medical invoice. As was pointed out to me by the company accountant, he only had a limit of £250,000, but because I handled medical claims from the US, all the different underwriters we worked for gave me that level of authority - because they knew I was going to need it.

The most expensive things were;

Premature babies
RTAs
Strokes/Brain haemorrhages, especially where the patient had to be airlifted off cruise ships and then didn't die quickly or, worse, whilst pregnant.
Elderly travellers where a minor ED visit for something unconnected revealed that they had cancer/a benign tumour.

There were cases where they were effectively prisoners because the hospital would say they weren't fit to fly. At times, we paid for high dependency air ambulances just because it was a) inhumane to leave them trapped out there with random relatives being phoned up at 3am and chased for payment/credit card details - despite our guaranteeing the costs already/contact us and b) it was ultimately cheaper to fly them home to be cared for by the NHS than have the hospitals charging tens of thousands a day for somebody who was terminally ill and wanted to come home.

There were also many occasions where patients were being subjected to medically unnecessary and invasive treatment and tests - for example, somebody who had just given birth to a premature baby did not need a pregnancy test every week 'in case she'd got pregnant again'. They stopped happening when they were asked if they were saying there was a substantial chance that she was being regularly raped by a member of staff whilst in Intensive Care.

The US medical system is abominable for all but the rich and not operated particularly in the best interests of anybody with good coverage, either - never mind the poor.

My monthly medication is delivered to me free with a sharps bin, disposal of old injectors, free advice on phonecalls, free regular blood tests and admittedly, an occasional phone call from the consultant (which works better for me than a day off work to go up there at the moment - although I've also been given immediate appointments in person when I've called up with a particular issue).

My medication alone costs around the equivalent of $13,000 a year to the NHS and absolutely zero to me. The same medication costs up to & around $65,000 in the US even if it's part covered by Medicare (only about 2/3 of Medicare schemes cover it at all).

And they screech about the NHS having fucking 'Death Panels'.

MrsFezziwig · 27/03/2021 14:09

@UsedUpUsername
I mean, I guess you pay through your taxes but I don’t see what’s wrong with paying at point of service? I paid after discharge after having DC2 and didn’t think it was ridiculous at all

In that situation, of course you wouldn’t think it was ridiculous - you were going home with a baby! A friend has just died of incurable cancer - three months from diagnosis to death. The stress on both her and the family has been off the scale - if they’d had to include addressing the payment of bills and what they could afford they couldn’t have coped.

Moonstone1234 · 27/03/2021 14:31

The NHS is long overdue for a complete overhaul. Some parts are good but other parts are awful. I think some people love the NHS because it’s free. Of course we pay taxes for it but most people who use it regularly don’t even touch the sides of their own costs.

We could do with more of a shared cost model. There is a view amongst some that regardless of how you live your life, eat to excess, get so drunk you need medical attention and the good old NHS will treat you for free.

SchadenfreudePersonified · 27/03/2021 14:32

@sashh

No woman here has to take her knickers off for her GP or his nurse. When we need birth control, pap smears, general reproductive health checks, breast exams etc we make an appointment with our gynecologist and/or obstetrician of our choice. We also select our GP and it is not based on where we live. I travel up to 100 miles to see my favorite doctor.

If you pay or have insurance you can do all of that here.

The reason you need to register with a GP who is local is because UK doctors make house calls.

About 10/12 years ago a lady from the ME travelled to the UK in the very final stages of pregnancy. She had had fertility treatment and was carrying 6 babies. It cost over £500,000.

You don't get to the 'final stages' of a pregnancy when you are carrying 6 babies. You are lucky to get to 30 weeks. Also the father's employer paid the bill.

www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/7097152.bosses-agree-pay-sextuplets-care/

Everytime myself or my family has used the NHS it has been absolutely shite. Poor care, mistakes made, just generally crap. Everytime we have used our private healthcare it has been great.

I worked for one of the best private hospitals in the country, I got my own care via the NHS.

Where do you think all those private hospital employees were trained?

As far as I am aware, they didn't pay anything towards the bill (I worked in that hospital at the time (completely different department) and I can't recall any money being reimbursed. If it was paid, then the hospital was lucky, as there was nothing they could legally have done to recoup it, and this was a huge chunk of the budget (and 6 preemie baby beds) used by this one family. Of course, there was never any question but that they would receive the best care the hospital would offer - but this was a deliberate attempt (and possibly a successful one) to kelp the NHS

There was a sum of money (£50,000) that the family got from journalists for their story, which they publicly said they would donate to the hospital out of gratitude for saving their babies. As far as I am aware, they didn't .

SchadenfreudePersonified · 27/03/2021 14:33

*skelp, not kelp

Kitkat151 · 27/03/2021 15:00

@UsedUpUsername

The majority of co sultanas who work privately also do NHS work.....so are you saying they do a shit job when they seeing their nhs patients and a good job when they see their private patients.....because I’m sure they would find that assumption very offensive

Maybe so. But I bet that GPs and dentists give more time to paying customers instead of whatever piddly amount the NHS offers. It would be unfair otherwise

Not always....in fact with cancer patients...they often get seen and treated far quicker than private patients because it’s harder to coordinate all the private consultations and scans ( although they probably get nicer environments ).... many cancer patients move over to NHS very quickly because of private delays
Kendodd · 27/03/2021 15:05

The NHS is long overdue for a complete overhaul.
Of God no that's the last thing it needs yet more 'reorganisation'. Just fund it properly and leave the doctors and nurses to do their jobs.

WiseUpJanetWeiss · 27/03/2021 15:06

It has been implied that the gynecologist does the pap smear and pelvic exam in order to unnecessarily operate on them - in order to make extra $$$$$.

That’s a misrepresentation of what I said. I said that over-diagnosis and over-treatment harms women and benefits healthcare providers and insurance companies.

You may choose to believe that annual examinations are more beneficial to you than they are harmful, but you have no actual evidence of that. Frequent screening of the worried well does lead to some problems being identified and treated early, but many if not most of those problems would never have led to any significant health impacts. The result is that many women are subsequently harmed by treatments that they do not need.

UsedUpUsername · 27/03/2021 15:07

[quote MrsFezziwig]**@UsedUpUsername
I mean, I guess you pay through your taxes but I don’t see what’s wrong with paying at point of service? I paid after discharge after having DC2 and didn’t think it was ridiculous at all

In that situation, of course you wouldn’t think it was ridiculous - you were going home with a baby! A friend has just died of incurable cancer - three months from diagnosis to death. The stress on both her and the family has been off the scale - if they’d had to include addressing the payment of bills and what they could afford they couldn’t have coped.[/quote]
Well, in most cases you actually would be getting the bill two or three months later but it’s no different than paying the funeral home, though is it?

I guess I grew up in that culture so don’t see it as weird or offensive

mathanxiety · 27/03/2021 18:58

The result is that many women are subsequently harmed by treatments that they do not need.

That's utter nonsense, and there is no logic to your argument against annual exams either.

SofiaMichelle · 27/03/2021 19:00

@Kendodd

The NHS is long overdue for a complete overhaul. Of God no that's the last thing it needs yet more 'reorganisation'. Just fund it properly and leave the doctors and nurses to do their jobs.
Just exactly how much is 'fund it properly' going to cost?

More and more money is pumped in hand-over-fist, year on year.

It needs stripping back and rebuilding, or completely scrapping in favour of something like a French style system, or preferably the German type.

The problem now would be unraveling the PFI mess (which is where a fair amount of the NHS's funding gets wasted in the first place. Thanks Tony).

TalbotAMan · 27/03/2021 19:04

@SpiderinaWingMirror

Indeed. My dbro has been in the states 25 years Before he was let go, he was paying 600 dollars a month for his contribution towards insurance, his employer was paying 3 times that. Now he has no job so no insurance and like many pasty faced brits in a hot country has a history of skin cancer. He has also previously had a minor stroke. There is literally nothing he can do.
My late uncle was similar, though in his case he was what the Americans call undocumented.

When he got too old and sick he came back to the UK and the NHS picked up his healthcare and the Benefits Agency his living costs.

Moonstone1234 · 27/03/2021 19:20

People mean fund it properly with other people’s money. People love the idea of it being completely free (including for those from abroad). If they had to personally wait to be treated then it would be different matter.

I was a large supplier to the NHS for many years. The waste, pontificating and endless meetings about very little was criminal.

STARmyarse · 27/03/2021 19:31

Haven’t RTFT but how much would someone earning equivalent of £50/60k as a family expect to pay monthly for health insurance? Say no medical issues for talking purposes.

Kitkat151 · 27/03/2021 19:33

@WiseUpJanetWeiss

It has been implied that the gynecologist does the pap smear and pelvic exam in order to unnecessarily operate on them - in order to make extra $$$$$.

That’s a misrepresentation of what I said. I said that over-diagnosis and over-treatment harms women and benefits healthcare providers and insurance companies.

You may choose to believe that annual examinations are more beneficial to you than they are harmful, but you have no actual evidence of that. Frequent screening of the worried well does lead to some problems being identified and treated early, but many if not most of those problems would never have led to any significant health impacts. The result is that many women are subsequently harmed by treatments that they do not need.

There’s lots of evidence.....loads and loads....there is a wealth of literature out there by people far more educated than you and far more intelligent.....you don’t want the screening ....fine, don’t have it....but keep your Ignorant comments to yourself
Scr1bblyGum · 27/03/2021 19:37

Why does the NHS need stripping back, it’s amazing. Just this week we’ve had 2 Covid jabs excellently organised and my dc has had a lump scanned and an appointment made with a consultant for two weeks. Bar cahms which needs a major restructure the rest is superb and never fails to deliver.

Focus on what it does do day in and day out so well. We are so lucky.

tilder · 27/03/2021 19:46

@mathanxiety

The result is that many women are subsequently harmed by treatments that they do not need.

That's utter nonsense, and there is no logic to your argument against annual exams either.

Not nonsense, actually. Every procedure has a risk.
Kitkat151 · 27/03/2021 19:51

@tilder
Yes there will be a risk....but the benefits usually far outweigh the risks.... you are perfectly entitled to make your own informed decision as an adult with capacity....you are entitled to make unwise decisions...your body ....your health.