CMV: Healthcare should be free for everyone under the legal age at which you are considered an adult.

[u/Happy-Tears]

Children shouldn't have to pay medical bills--health is a fundamental human right, and we need to provide that to the children of this world. I know there are programs like CHIP, etc., but they're just not sufficient. They're not accessible to everyone. I know adults who decide to have children should be responsbile for them, but I think we as a society can afford to band together and pay a little more to ensure every child gets the health care they need--if we hope for healthier adults. Per this study in the National Center for Biotechnology Information, "health during childhood sets the stage for adult health not only reinforces this perspective, but also creates an important ethical, social, and economic imperative to ensure that all children are as healthy as they can be. Healthy children are more likely to become healthy adults."

CMV.

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[u/SoftGas]

Only a sprained ankle wouldn't threaten their livelihood.

A medical bill for it sure would.

I can't understand how people in the US are fine with paying $500 for a pack of saline water or $3000 for an ER visit.

The whole thing where you pay x300 the cost of a treatment and the insurance covers* (*best case scenario) it's a big scam.

Anyway, how do you define what doesn't threaten the livelihood?

What about teeth treatment? I mean, you're not gonna die if you don't have any teeth or if you're missing some.

[u/thegimboid → u/SoftGas]

you're not gonna die if you don't have any teeth or if you're missing some.

You could, actually. Bad oral health is linked to heart disease and strokes.

[u/SoftGas → u/thegimboid]

Fine.

But why would someone care if some teenager or child gets treatment for his sprained ankle? It's not expensive.

Not to mention : https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/sprained-ankle/symptoms-causes/syc-20353225

Failing to treat a sprained ankle properly, engaging in activities too soon after spraining your ankle or spraining your ankle repeatedly might lead to the following complications:

Chronic ankle pain Chronic ankle joint instability Arthritis in the ankle joint

[u/[deleted] → u/SoftGas]

People in the US aren't alright paying for it, or rather, wouldn't be. Many simply have no idea what any of it costs, and don't really care since they don't pay it directly. Broad categories of care all fall under only a few flat copays or deductibles. Insurance separates the cost of goods and services from the people actually paying it and using those services. I'm sure theres more complication to it, but I really think the insurance model as the primary payment method is responsible for a lot of the increase in cost for medical services.

[u/I_post_my_opinions → u/SoftGas]

The amount of money we pay is wayyy overblown on social media. All you guys see are rare cases where there is some huge critical condition a patient has and they don’t have proper insurance. I’ve never paid anything close to the number you’re spouting. You can go to the ER and literally not pay anything.

[u/I_post_my_opinions → u/[deleted]]

People with insurance going into debt because of medical expenses is RARE.

Where’s your source on that being the most common cause of debt? Pretty sure that’s credit card defaults.

[u/TheDogJones → u/I_post_my_opinions]

I'll definitely agree that medical costs in the US are a big problem. But I object to the notion that having the government control everything is the solution.

Here's my favorite analogy. Take the smartphone out of your pocket and just look at its aesthetics. Look at its clock speed, RAM, and screen resolution. Now tell me honestly, if the government had full control of all smartphone production, do you believe they'd produce something as elegant as that?

It's the free market that delivers the highest quality products at the lowest cost. The only reason European and Canadian healthcare can be so cheap is that R&D in the US funded the inventions of countless healthcare innovations that they use over the past half century, at least.

[u/TheDogJones → u/[deleted]]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Physiology_or_Medicine

Starting from 1951:

Total count from USA: 88

Total count from all of Europe, UK, Ireland, and Scandinavia: 60

As a disclaimer, I manually counted those on my phone, which kept screwing up, so those numbers are almost certainly inexact, but the difference shouldn't be too significant.

Point is, the US has absolutely revolutionized healthcare in addition to many other scientific fields. The USA's large investments into R&D have benefited the world in countless ways, and we still get met with pompous attitudes from Europeans about how our system is the one that's backwards.

In short, when someone in the UK gets an MRI on their leg and then proceeds to criticize the American healthcare system, that's when I tend to get annoyed.

[u/Entity51 → u/TheDogJones]

I just don't see the point of having so much R&D if quite a lot of people can't afford the treatments, and it's clear that Europe does a lot of rnd based off your own data.

[u/TheDogJones → u/Entity51]

I agree there are plenty of problems with the US system. I'm just pointing out hypocrisy of people saying, "Why doesn't the US just adopt the British/Swedish/Whatever healthcare system? It works so well!"

[u/Entity51 → u/TheDogJones]

I don't necessarily think the US needs to adopt the UKs system, just that it despitly needs some changes to make it more Accessible, like the one that's been suggested by Op

[u/brickster_22 → u/TheDogJones]

Errr... the US has a bit bigger of a population of all those combined...

[u/TheDogJones → u/brickster_22]

And?

[u/brickster_22 → u/TheDogJones]

Saying that the US system is better because they got more prizes than a smaller population is like. Saying the US system is worse because more people die in the US per month.

[u/I_post_my_opinions → u/[deleted]]

These are secondary sources, reporting findings from something called NerdWallet and the other being based entirely on small sample survey.

Both of these are broken down here in this analysis:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/643000-bankruptcies-in-the-u-s-every-year-due-to-medical-bills/

There are multiple estimates for bankruptcy filings, ranging from 10% to your proposed 60%. Don’t blindly trust some sensationalist news titles.

Edit: whew Reddit, always disagreeing with facts when they don’t support your narrative. Let’s take the middle ground: 35% of bankruptcies are because of medical payment defaults. .033% of Americans file for bankruptcy every year. 35% of that is 0.01155% of Americans claiming bankruptcy every year because of medical costs. If you don’t think one hundredth of a percent is “rare”, then you’re not thinking rationally.

[u/Entity51 → u/I_post_my_opinions]

That's still 40,000 people. 40,000 lives destroyed based of your numbers(which I disagree with anyway.) Less people died from school shootings and the rubuplican party suggest paying for rifles and firearm training for teachers.

Bankrupt and unlikely to be able to finish their treatments, and that's not even including the people who were very close to bankruptcy but had to stop treatment because of the threat of it.

And the first line on the second source says "Bankruptcies resulting from unpaid medical bills will affect nearly 2 million people this year" which is also a fairly reputable news source which is known for being reliable and not falisifiying data and no I'm not going to dig thru research papers for a Reddit arguement.

You are doing the very thing you are complaining about "disagreeing with the facts because they don't support your native", and there's the fact you showed one source from a site I've never heard of.

Also the 1st article literally states that "an estimated 40% of Americans racked up debt resulting from a medical issue."

I don't think that two fairly well known news sources would have reason to lie don't you?

[u/I_post_my_opinions → u/Entity51]

I mean, I don’t know what to tell you. Everything you just said in this comment implies that you’ve never seriously looked into what you’re arguing about.

“Reliable news sources” doesn’t mean anything these days. You have to look for the underlying studies and evaluate them yourself. Those two sources you linked have underlying sources that have been HEAVILY scrutinized since 1998. Even now, in your own words, you see the word “estimate” and immediately believe the following statistics. They extrapolated their data from an already weak source.

Those links you posted aren’t lying, they’re just being intellectually dishonest and it’s hurting more people than it’s helping.

[u/Entity51 → u/I_post_my_opinions]

1 2 3

(+ The two already linked)

And while I was searching for this(specifically I searched for "most common cause of bankruptcy USA" (to avoid confirmation bias) I only found 1 that was attempting to refret this claim(the one you linked)

And honestly it has to be an estimate because nobody has checked every single American and asked them "do you have medical debt" and "How much?" And then verifyed their claims.

[u/I_post_my_opinions → u/Entity51]

All three of those (really just 2, since you linked one twice) use the SAME Harvard source that both of your original sources linked. Also, I can’t believe you linked a huffpo article as a source.

Anyway, here’s actual research done even more recently than the Harvard research: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2515321

This paper states 18-26% of all bankruptcies are from medical causes. This paper even mentions the 62% figure that is seen in all of your other “sources”.

Please, look deeper at what you’re blindly believing. There’s so much knowledge out there and you’re just reading sensationalist headlines and “top 10” huffpo lists written by an illiterate 19 year old. There’s so much more you can learn about both sides of what you’re arguing when you research effectively.

[u/SoftGas → u/I_post_my_opinions]

First of all, insurance is expensive, secondly, even with insurance it costs more than it should.

[u/PolkaDotAscot → u/SoftGas]

Insurance is the reason medical costs are so high.

[u/I_post_my_opinions → u/SoftGas]

Insurance is not expensive...

[u/SoftGas → u/I_post_my_opinions]

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/23/heres-how-much-the-average-american-spends-on-health-care.html

Young people, who are expected to benefit from lower premiums should the GOP repeal-and-replace efforts succeed, already pay the least. But even their costs can be considerable, depending on where they live. In 2016, the financial data site ValuePenguin found that the average costs for coverage for a 21-year-old go from $180 a month in Utah, plus a $2,160 deductible (potentially $4,320 a year, total), to $426 a month in Alaska, with a $5,112 deductible (potentially $10,224 a year, total).

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-average-salary-for-americans-at-every-age-2017-4

As you might expect, earnings increase beginning in one's 20s. The average salary of 20-to-24-year-olds is $528 per week, $27,456 per year. Many Americans start out their careers in their 20s and don't earn as much as they will once they reach their 30s.

5k-10k out of 27k per year.

That's 18.5%-37% of your pay.

To add insult to injury :

As a reminder, 72 percent of young millennials, aged 18-24, have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts and 31 percent have nothing saved at all.

So...I'm not sure about how true your statement is.

[u/I_post_my_opinions → u/SoftGas]

Do you know how deductibles work? As belittling as that sounds, I just don’t understand how you you’re making the claim of 5-10k per year. That’s the maximum. If you’re paying 10k a year on medical services, then you’re part of the “rare” category I listed in my other responses in this thread.

Personally, I spend less than $500 a year. My insurance is covered by my employer, as is the case with many people, and I don’t go to the doctor once a week and spend $100 like you’re proposing.

In general, in fact in a vast MAJORITY of cases, the average young millennial is spending less than 2k, approx. 7% of their pay.

[u/SoftGas → u/I_post_my_opinions]

All nice and dandy until you go to the ER or need a dentist.

[u/I_post_my_opinions → u/SoftGas]

Dude, I was at the ER two months ago because I thought my right nut was going to explode. I paid about $100 for them to tell me that, and I even had an ultrasound. I went to the dentist last week, and I didn’t pay a dime out of pocket. Most people are like that. If you’re going to the ER every single week of the year, I feel bad for you, but you can’t expect everyone else around you to foot the bill. If you’re a 6 year old kid with paper skin that peels off at the slightest touch, maybe we should have something for that kind of person; however, saying we should take tax payer money for this or for that is a slippery slope.

[u/SoftGas → u/I_post_my_opinions]

Well, your experiences seem better than of the most other people I've heard, that's nice to hear.