Posted on 04/21/2016 6:32:03 PM PDT by Nachum
If you had to make a sudden visit to the emergency room, would you have enough money to pay for it without selling something or borrowing the funds from somewhere?
Most Americans may not realize this, but this is something that the Federal Reserve has actually been tracking for several years now. And according to the Fed, an astounding 47 percent of all Americans could not come up with $400 to pay for an emergency room visit without borrowing it or selling something.
Various surveys that I have talked about in the past have found that more than 60 percent of all Americans are living to paycheck to paycheck, but I didn’t realize that things were quite this bad for about half the country. If you can’t even come up with $400 for an unexpected emergency room visit, then you are just surviving from month to month by the skin of your teeth. Unfortunately, about half of us are currently in that situation.
Earlier today someone pointed me toward an excellent article in The Atlantic that discussed this, and I have to admit that The Atlantic is one of the last remaining bastions of old school excellence in journalism that you will find in the mainstream media. Of course I don’t see eye to eye with them on a lot of things philosophically, but there are some really hard working journalists over there.
The article where I found the 47 percent figure comes from The Atlantic, and it is entitled “The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans“. It was authored by Neal Gabler, and he says that he can identify with the 47 percent of Americans that don’t have $400 for an unexpected emergency room visit because he is one of them…
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
There is that pesky 47% number again. Romney was wrong about a lot of things but he nailed that 47% number. It even pissed off the liberal, state controlled “media” so bad they all had to go hide in their “safe zones” until they could be rescued by their shrinks. Forty seven percent of the people in this country are riding on the backs of the other 53%.
This is Serfdom by any name.
Quite a few, I am sure.
[Tell me where you can find an ER and a 400 buck visit. LOL]
Elaine knows.
Not shot. Dog bite! ‘Woof! Woof!’. Not ‘Bang! Bang!’.
Neal Gabler tried to live an upper-middle-class life while working as a writer. He was somewhat successful for a while, but eventual an irregular income catches up with you.
Because he asked for a private room, and they wouldn't let him have one.
Thirty five years ago I took my daughter to the emergency room. There was a couple ahead of us with a child and no money.
They got good treatment and it didn’t cost them anything out of pocket.
When our turn came, we had INSURANCE and still had to come up with $100 deductable for service.
My better half went to the hospital(I was right all along with the strained knee...cartiledge/tendon strecthed)...after an X-ray and ulta-sound...it was an initial bill of 1600$....they deducted an amount of 400 some odd dollars (adjustment) that the bambi care she has never paid....because she will never meet the yearly deductible of 5,700 a year....so anyway it came to a magical amount of 1,079 and change....the insurance would only pay 822 $ of the initial billing so I called and offered 600$ now or they will get 10 dollars a month for ever....they refused my offer I told them F ya then....(I have no bambi insurance I consider it illegal/illegitimate)...I have a co-op of doctors that take NO insurance of any kind from the government...cash or credit period ...prices known before service...I am self-employed....never make above poverty level (whatever that is)....claim way over on fed tax and basically tell the fed F U....go give money to some sand monkey here illegally. Bullshit rates and they would not take a 600$ payment ....but will opt to send billing forever...Fk em...my last words to the idiot on the phone from Maine general hospital.
Poor are poor — for the most part — because they are lazy, stupid, or both. This is why pandering to poor people with free obamaphones, foodstamps, or “jobs from Mexico”, will result in a poor and a demoralized nation.
47% of Americans are bums? How many are RAT voters? All?
Here is the link to the actual source. Allows you to look at it a bit more in scope.
Might just mean that people aren’t very good at budgeting.
You could make a million dollars a month and spend a million dollars a month and never save any money.
There should be an urgency room for people who can pay.
Yup.
The same 47% that pay nothing in taxes and get others money back.
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Why don’t they just..... charge it?
Isn’t that what everyone does these days?
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