Health Buzz: Americans Bankrupted by Health Costs and Other Health News
Reader Comments
Your Health Is Your Most Important Investment
I know from having a few years in a row where my out of pocket costs were around $38K, an illness can easiy wipe out one's savings even while having health insurance. Prioritize caring for our health along the way and hope for improvements in the insurance industry. I wrote an article on why your health is your most important investment: http://www.livelifewellinfo.com/Articles.html#Your_Health_As_Your_Most_Important_Investment
Not quite sure what Christian America has to do with it but...
I agree with Muser. I have a friend in a group of nephrologists that had to hire 2 billing specialists (read: an extra $80,000 a year passed on to the patients) to ensure that medicaid, medicare (read: government inefficiency) and other private insurers (who are following the government's examples of declining reimbursements for the doctors) are actually paying up. He said the practice would easily lose 150k+ a year if they let all the rejected claims by the insurance companies slide (spread out over 5 doctors). The extra costs are passed on to the patient by spending less time with them or charging more for certain procedures. I didn't ask about uncollectible via bankruptcy claims, but I'm sure too many lawyers are getting rich while the patient suffers.
No individual in so-called Christian America
should be bankrupted by medical bills. If we're going to give people care, then take all they've got, then write off the rest of their bills as uncollectible via bankruptcy---all the while paying insurance agents, underwriters, claim adjusters, case managers, billing specialists, collection agencies, lawyers, courts and tons of incorporated entites FOR THE PAPERWORK PROCESS, we're collectively nuts.
