Posted on 07/27/2015 7:50:23 PM PDT by TurboZamboni
The number of Minnesotans struggling to pay their medical bills is rising sharply, despite an increase in the number of residents who have health insurance. In the past year, Minnesota’s main hospital and clinic groups filed nearly 9,000 lawsuits against people with large or long-standing medical debts — a sharp increase since 2005, according to a Star Tribune analysis of court records. Once a leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States, medical debt was widely expected to decline as more Americans got health insurance following federal health reform. Instead, shifts in the insurance market are pushing more people toward high-deductible policies that can require them to pay as much as $7,500 before any insurance benefits kick in. “Patients are being exposed to a greater proportion of their bill,” said Dan Fromm, chief financial officer of Minneapolis-based Fairview Health Services. “That is certainly a factor in what we are seeing in our bad debt.” The same pressures appear to be squeezing consumers across the country. A recent study by the New York-based Commonwealth Fund estimated that more than 31 million Americans were under-insured in 2014 — unable to afford the cost-sharing that is now often a part of getting sick.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
I hope the individuals that voted for Obama lose every damn dime they’ve got.
Only the Star-Tribune was surprised by this outcome
It means you're paying for insurance ... that helps after you've coughed up $6K.
Which is useful to very few.
My doctor gave me six months to live. I told him I couldn’t pay the bill that quick, so he gave me another 10 years.
Take my wife, please.
LMAO
Comrade obama is exempt from obamacare. Too bad.
There simply is no way to make it work where people get unlimited “free” care. That economic model doesn’t work for any other product/consumer. What makes people think it can work for the US in health care? Even an entity with supposedly unlimited money printing capability, aka the US government, can’t print enough money to pay for “free” care for every American.
The problem is, some people get more than they would if they had to actually work for it, so those people vote for the freebies. They don’t realize or don’t care that they’re living off the work/efforts (taxes) of others, or that they are giving up liberty and an opportunity for something much better for a handout.
When we say democracy is two lions and a lamb voting over what’s for dinner, that’s literally a truism. Sadly, the lions in America are starting to outnumber the lambs. Worse, our political class wants to import even more lions as a means to hang onto power forever. It works...until it doesn’t.
There really is no such thing as a free ride, but I think Americans are going to have to see it all come apart before they’ll believe it. Either that or we’ll have a totalitarian system like Venezuela where I hear buying toilet paper is getting to be a bit of a challenge. Everyone will have “free” care, but we’ll have to queue up for an aspirin. Yeah, it can happen here, too.
By comparison, in 2005 they initiated 2,475 court cases to recover $8.4 million.
2014 has been a banner year for lawyers and collections. Coming home to roost..
I believe you are getting your wish.
Of course Obama and the media will put the blame for that squarely on people like you and me, and they will believe that, too.
Its a Catch 22. The government has killed the economy so you can’t get a job to pay health insurance. If you do have a job you can’t afford to get the health insurance because the cost of everything has gone up at the grocery store save gas which finally came back down but not by the hand of 0. And even if you DO have insurance the deductibles are so high you can’t use them unless you have a serious confition or illness. And to top it off if you can’t afford it Obama forces you to pay a penalty for what you can’t afford.
Isn’t hope and change grand?
My cousin, who works a lot but just doesn’t make a lot of money, has had Obamacare since the start. Her premium started out around $10 a month but she still used the free clinic because she couldn’t pay the deductible. Now it’s $94 a month and she is still using the free clinic for the same reason......except now she’s peeved. She’s paying $100 a month for something she’s never used.....not once. And $100 is a lot to her.
The doctors you do get are idiot third world docs who can’t speak English and refer you to other doctors that are about halfway there. Then there’s the problem of taking time off from work to do any tests they prescribe. You have a choice of taking the tests and being reprimanded at work for taking off or loose your job because you become sick, then you can’t afford the insurance then your stuck on welfare.
Jerry Brown found a way to get the gas back up to $4.35.9 a gallon. I had to fuel a car today. Last time I fueled one of the cars (two weeks ago) it was #3.77.9 a gallon.
(Premium)
My wife says she wants to go someplace she’s never been.
I said try the kitchen.
Have any politicians anywhere tried to rectify this? Imagine if we had 50 states to choose to buy health insurance from instead of one.
Guess who has paid them off to make sure we don't have that choice.
they can’t get to an ACA participating doctor, either, because they’re all on Pluto.
> My cousin, who works a lot but just doesn’t make a lot of money, has had Obamacare since the start. Her premium started out around $10 a month but she still used the free clinic because she couldn’t pay the deductible. Now it’s $94 a month and she is still using the free clinic for the same reason......except now she’s peeved. She’s paying $100 a month for something she’s never used.....not once. And $100 is a lot to her.
$100 used to be nothing to me. I used to have many of them in my wallet at any given time. But oh how times have changed under The One. I’m lucky if I have a $20 bill in there these days and a $100 is a lot more to me than it used to be even though its worth far less under this administration. Meanwhile his piles of money build on the broken backs of taxpayers. His comeuppance won’t be pretty.
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