Morse criticizes UVA Health Systems for suing patients to recover unpaid balances for treatment.
That raises the question, is there any point at which people should be held accountable for their choices?
The people being sued are those who made the choice, in spite of the subsidies available under Obamacare, to remain uninsured. In this country, if you show up sick at a hospital, you will be treated whether you have insurance or not. If you have no insurance, you will be billed, and you may have to go bankrupt, but you will be treated. Medical treatment cannot be repossessed, so there is no other way to hold people accountable.
So, no one is dying for lack of insurance, but they are being held accountable financially for their choice to not get the highly discounted insurance.
What’s wrong with that?
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What is wrong with UVA suing patients,”seizing wages and bank accounts, putting liens on property and homes and forcing families into bankruptcy?”
Well, I suppose, in your ideal society – nothing. Nothing at all. And, there is nothing wrong with a provider charging John Q. Citizen $5,000 for a service that it charges Ajax Insurance Corp $500 for. Nothing wrong at all.
As is often noted, other countries do not have this kind of problem because instead of a dog’s breakfast of financing and armies of bureaucrats trying to pass the buck to someone else, they have Single Payer systems in which EVERYONE pays and EVERYONE is covered. They end up with healthier, happier, freer people and far lower overall costs and, of course, ZERO medical bankruptcies.
Medicare-for-all. Now.
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Now, answer the question asked.
What’s wrong with holding people accountable for their choices.
Before Obamacare was passed to fix everything, people with preexisting conditions couldn’t get health insurance at any cost. It could be claimed that low income people just couldn’t afford insurance. OK, Obamacare eliminated preexisting conditions as a bar to insurance and provided subsidies so that anyone who made too much for Medicaid could afford insurance. And still, millions choose not to take advantage of it.
So, is there no point at which people should be held accountable, at least financially, for their choices?
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What’s wrong with holding people accountable for their choices?
In the context of healthcare it is simply the wrong question.
Of course, there are some of the people of your imaginings, but to pretend that everybody – even with subsidies – can actually afford insurance is simply wrong. And doubly so since Trump has done everything within his power to destroy the ACA.
Unless we are going to let people and their children just whither and die because they cannot afford insurance, or are too dumb to buy it, or are deliberately diverting money to more immediate pleasures then SOMEBODY is going to have to pay the cost of their treatment even after they have been bankrupt with no ability left to pay. The brokenness of such a system is obvious to all but the willfully blind. Or those who think that such feckless or unlucky people deserve the death penalty.
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RE: “or are too dumb to buy it [insurance]”
The dumb ones, on average, are those who do buy insurance. Most will go to their deathbeds having paid vastly more in premiums than they ever received in benefits. The system couldn’t operate any other way.
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Well Doc, you are an improvement over most “Conservatives”.
By that I mean that to most of the old Pilot Conservative commenters, “MAGA” meant a return to the better times before 1861. At least you are more for 1961.
1961 — Pre-Medicare. Those were the days when most people died without insurance (and damned few had it), the hospitals and doctors enriched themselves on the paltry estates left behind. I remember when my maternal grandmother died, and my uncle (her executor) paid out what was left to the hospital.
Hey, but THAT was a big improvement over 1921, a time where most “retirees” died in poorhouses.
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RE: “What’s wrong with that?”
There’s nothing wrong with it. In fact, collections are morally justified. Without them, all patients would have to pay more for care.
I suppose it is possible that some hospitals engage in price gouging wherein uninsured patients pay higher prices than insured patients. But that seems unlikely. If price gouging were easy to prove, there’d be no shortage of lawsuits alleging it.
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Of course, if there are no consequences for irresponsible choices, why would anyone choose responsibly?
You cannot have liberty without consequences for irresponsible choice,
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“I suppose it is possible that some hospitals engage in price gouging wherein uninsured patients pay higher prices than insured patients.”
There isn’t a hospital, medical provider or drug service that doesn’t charge much higher rates for the uninsured.
Every bill has a ridiculously high fee, then a line for what insurance pays and finally your part, of any.
Which is really strange. Most of those with no insurance can’t afford premiums for one reason or another, but they get billed full “retail” by providers.
Try to get a price list from a hospital. Their argument for denying you that is that it is proprietary in the interest of competition among insurance company contracts.
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RE: “There isn’t a hospital, medical provider or drug service that doesn’t charge much higher rates for the uninsured.”
Maybe not. The question is whether the higher prices are justified. Unless it can shown that they are not, there no reason to suspect price gouging.
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You win. I quit.
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What business doesn’t give better rates to customers who buy in bulk?
That’s why we are better off using an insurer with a PPO to bargain on our behalf.
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I understand the discount for bulk. But often the differences are 10 and 20 or more TIMES the insured rates. Like the lady in the original article that was bill $2000 for a $20 tube.
There is a lot more to our healthcare mess.
We are the only industrial country that has medical bankruptcies as a major cause of economic distress.
Our life expectancy has decreased.
Infant mortality is higher than most.
Outcomes for major procedures are, at best, middling.
Keeping all this in mind, only the Democrats are actually addressing this issue. Zero suggestions, input even attention from the Republicans or the regime.
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RE: “Like the lady in the original article that was bill $2000 for a $20 tube.”
How do you know that’s unjustified? Without a breakdown to show how the hospital arrives at the billing price, we’re just making assumptions.
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She was the same person who charged $180,000+ for emergency surgery. The insured rate was reported to be less than half.
Since I can’t be there myself, I would have take her word for it I suppose.
There is plenty of evidence of charges for common drugs like Tylenol that are in the many dollars per pill.
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RE: “The insured rate was reported to be less than half.”
Surely, as an experienced business man, you can see how that might be, and legitimately so?
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No, i can’t. Not at these amounts nor in healthcare which is dealing in people’s lives.
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As I don’t see it anywhere, I am wondering if the UVA Health System attempted to work with the patients in debt on a repayment plan of some type. Seems to me that it would be more efficient to try and work with someone instead of just suing them for payment. Even the IRS will do that if you owe taxes and can’t afford to pay them all at once.
Another lawyerly grab, perhaps?
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