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 ...
How many of that 47% have $1200 smart phones?
100%, likely. And free internets.
Wife managed a department where all the clerks, making half of her pay, had newer phones and cars. Mentality was to get as much as you can while as young as possible. Consequently they had no savings, lived paycheck to paycheck, and remained slaves to debt with no foresight to ever free themselves.
My Romneycare ER deductible is $500.
Don’t worry, the government will redistribute the money from those who were disciplined enough to build a nest egg.
But they have cable and a smartphone.
True, but I bet all 47% could come up with $400.00 to pay their drug dealer.
I have had even worse luck with dentists. One went bankrupt owing me $400 (I was noted in his paperwork), and another mysteriously had a credit of $1000 from an overpayment we made that just “disappeared.”
There are 24 hour clinics popping up all over our suburban area. The newer ones do not accept any insurance, all their docs are D.O.’s, not M.D.’s. Anyone seeking treatment pays $250 at the time the paperwork is completed and only credit cards are accepted. That pays for a doc to see you - if you need anything else, like lab work or x-ray, the charges can mount pretty fast.
One of the most interesting additions to our area is a free standing lab. Anyone can go there and request any kind of lab work without having a doctor involved. Tests run while you wait and report given to patient. Charges are very, very reasonable - about a third of what clinics charge or less and they do accept cash, check and credit card - but they are incredibly busy.
, 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....Oh, horseshiite. Obamacare took of this. Just ask any Dem politician.
My wife and I have been poor, and we have been well off. We talked about this once and decided that the first $1,000 in the bank was a major change. There wasn’t the worry of the car breaking down or other unexpected expense. It also changed the way we thought about saving—it was possible to save money each month. The next big change was at $10,000 (although it took a few years to get there). You could start to see that savings can generate its own income.
I have been there, and I think anyone can but money into a saving account each month. The first thing to do is to cut back in places that you spend money without really thinking about it. Smoking, that designer cup of coffee each morning, the extended cable plan, etc.
One thing that worked for us was to compare expenses with something you want. For a long time being able to afford to go out for a pizza was a big deal. We don’t go out for pizza much anymore, but we still talk about expenses in terms of the number of pizzas it could buy.
Last ER visit I had was $1500, not including the doctor fees, lab fees and ambulance ride (total was well over $2800)
Only $400? Even Urgent Care is expensive. Last year I cut my finger. Small but all the way to the bone. I went to Walgreens and got $20 worth of supplies. Fixed it up myself. How much would an ER visit cost for that little boo-boo? No way was I going to pay it.
How many are RAT voters?.....Why do you ask? I realized about 20 years ago the peoples vote does not count. As Mark Twain said (before I was born), “If the people’s vote counted, they wouldn’t let us do it”.
If the providers are participating with your insurance, refuse payment until AFTER billings are run through insurance. My insurance discourages patient payments until accurate patient responsible amounts are determined. Providers that demand upfront payments are told to contact the carrier and can have their contracts voided.
But the Medicaid people don’t care because it’s free to them. Obama will have the taxpayers paying for the whole thing with backdoor single payer before he leaves office…and Paul Ryan will give him more for Obamacare than Obama asks for.
Sadly, you are correct. More than a decade ago, my sister worked at a billing firm for one of the largest hospitals in DFW. A billing for a hospital stay for someone with a name that strongly resembled one from south of the border, racked up charges in excess of $250K. His ‘insurance’? ‘Self-pay’. That is billing codespeak for no insurance.
Must include the 45% that don’t pay income taxes.
Pretty sure a lot of people know how it all works and claim not to have the money.
Meanwhile Chinese making 70 US dollars a month have 30,000 US dollars in savings
It’s free if you are an illegal alien.
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