zachster77 t1_jaa1a7a wrote on February 27, 2023 at 10:58 PM

Reply to comment by OriginalCompetitive in The Desert of the Virtual. The metaverse heralds an age in which hardly anyone still believes that tech firms can actually solve our problems by Maxwellsdemon17

Is it so easy to minimize the trauma of medical bankruptcies by reducing them to a percentage? 500,000 people dealing with physical and emotional struggles, also having to start their financial lives over? Every year?

If you think about the human experience of these people, I doubt you can dismiss them as a rounding error.

And again, most medical innovation is done with public money, or at the very least R&D tax rebates. The pharmaceutical companies often spend more on marketing elective drugs than they do developing treatments.

Publicly funded innovation should be provided at cost to patients.

OriginalCompetitive t1_jab4401 wrote on February 28, 2023 at 3:42 AM

I don’t think I’m minimizing, just putting into context.

I genuinely am puzzled by medical bankruptcies though. I often think people who complain about US health insurance don’t actually understand the system. Assuming you don’t have insurance through work, Americans who earn less than $55k per year are eligible for insurance subsidies. And even on the lowest bronze plan, the total maximum out of pocket payment is $7000 per year.

Granted, it’s possible to go bankrupt over $7000, but my hunch is that most of them are people who never signed up. I’m still sympathetic, but there’s only so much the government can do. That said, I’d be ok with public healthcare too.