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The cost of health care in the U.S. has grown worse in recent years as Americans continue taking on unprecedented levels of medical debt.
The issue has gotten so bad that one New York-based 501 charity, RIP Medical Health, uses donations to buy up people’s medical debt. The organization recently announced a purchase of $278 million in medical debt owed by roughly 82,000 patients in the Tennessee and Virginia regions.
“Medical debt is the no. 1 cause of bankruptcy in the United States, which is something that’s obviously a uniquely American problem,” Allison Sesso, executive director of RIP Medical Debt, said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “So we’re out there trying to give people relief from this economic burden. We’ve got donors that are excited across the country to do more of this debt relief. That number — 278 million — we’re very proud of that, but we have a lot more debt relief ahead of us.”
And one industry that is hard to get competing prices for and the price seems to vary for all.
Hopefully next year hospital prices will be more transparent.
I was in Panama recently a met a bunch of expats. The healthcare there is awesome and dirt cheap. They even have a Johns Hopkins in Panama City. One thing the US got very wrong is our healthcare system.
It may be the cause of a lot of youngins having little saved .
Being inexperienced in investing for the most part to many look at crypto as their lottery .
That ship likely sailed already and thinking they know so much about investing many are way to heavy in to this stuff after the fact it went up.
The bigger fool money is already out of it while those left saw a 50% decline if they had it at the peak ..now it needs a 100% gain to get back to where it was .
So I don’t know about bankruptcy but it sure may leave many with a lot less then they planned on
Quote:
The cost of health care in the U.S. has grown worse in recent years as Americans continue taking on unprecedented levels of medical debt.
The issue has gotten so bad that one New York-based 501 charity, RIP Medical Health, uses donations to buy up people’s medical debt. The organization recently announced a purchase of $278 million in medical debt owed by roughly 82,000 patients in the Tennessee and Virginia regions.
“Medical debt is the no. 1 cause of bankruptcy in the United States, which is something that’s obviously a uniquely American problem,” Allison Sesso, executive director of RIP Medical Debt, said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “So we’re out there trying to give people relief from this economic burden. We’ve got donors that are excited across the country to do more of this debt relief. That number — 278 million — we’re very proud of that, but we have a lot more debt relief ahead of us.”
I can understand the problem of a family struggling to make ends meet and then they get hit with a medical bill of $50K to $100K or more that they're required to pay, but those situations are fairly rare for a number of reasons. In fact, your own data shows that this isn't typical of the bankruptcy situations.
If you look at the numbers from your quoted post ($278 million in medical debt owed by roughly 82,000 patients) and do some simple math, you'll find that the average medical debt of those 82,000 patients is about $3,400. Yeah, $3,400 is a lot of money for someone who is broke, but the bigger questions is "Why are they broke in the first place?" I'll bet that poor life decisions combined with poor money management plays a FAR greater role in them being broke than does a medical debt of $3,400.
Heck, if we just look at recent events where people who got laid off from work and had ZERO income from a job, many of them were drawing about $350/week in state unemployment plus $600/week from the Feds. That figures out to about $4,000 per month or almost $50,000 per year... and this is for NOT WORKING. If they did some little side gig a day or two per week for cash, they could easily be making $60K or more per year.
So, while medical debt can play a role in SOME bankruptcies, I think it's likely a problem that's faced by middle income Americans who don't qualify for any government welfare or assistance/support programs. The rich don't have a problem paying their medical bills and the poor don't have to pay their medical bills, so it's the middle class that gets hammered by a humongous medical bill and may have to file for bankruptcy. Those who file for bankruptcy while owing $3,400 in medical bills have other problems far more serious than the medical bill.
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